Create a Game Plan to Cross the Cultural Divide

You want to build an effective team, but you run into painful silences when it comes to people voicing their opinions. You yourself recall those times when you had a boss that preferred to get his own way through intimidation, and your decision to stay mum was largely driven by fear.

You know you aren’t that way - as a manager you want to create an environment where decision making is more consensus driven than authoritative. So what’s the problem? You know your team is resourceful and creative, but your team members defer constantly to your authority, even though you’ve never had an autocratic style. You are starting to create stories in your head about these individuals about why they are the way they are….but what is the truth? More importantly, how can you get this team into higher gear? How can you get them to become adaptable to all of the changes that the company is facing? Frankly, the top down decision making is becoming exhausting.

To help your team get into high gear, start with coming together to build shared agreements on how you will interact with each other, so you can stop guessing and start communicating.

We all have a very human instinct to belong in the tribe, because being part of the tribe represents safety. This instinct carries over in team behavior, but layered on top of that is our social conditioning and cultural backgrounds. But no matter our backgrounds, we can all relate to the risks we don’t take to stay safe.

If you have a team with diverse cultural backgrounds, you don’t need to become an expert on their cultures, nor should they be expected to change. What you can do is create a Team Agreement to create awareness and understanding of how you want to be with each other, i.e.; respected, trusted, and when conflicts arise, how you will handle it. For example, agreeing that it's OK to disagree removes the threat of rejection. When there is an impasse, agreeing that anyone has permission to step in and ask, “what’s really important here?”, helps refocus what the team does agree on.

Once your team agreements become internalized for every member of the team, you not only create a sense of safety and trust, you also build a more unified vision of who your team’s stakeholders are, and what they need.

What does this mean in terms of team performance? When we have agreements set up, it’s like having a game plan for crossing the communication barriers that can divide us, particularly when we have culturally different backgrounds . When we have this sense of certainty, we feel more positive - our brains literally work better, and we contribute ideas, building on other ideas. Contrast that to when we are feeling uncertain and insecure, when our natural threat response kicks in - the usual fight, flight or freeze. Now, think about how capable you are of making decisions or engaging in collaboration when you are feeling threatened.

Stop guessing what your own team’s needs are, and what triggers their fear response. Bring in a team coach to be the objective facilitator so you can learn alongside your team and become an unstoppable, self-directed unit, sharing a unified vision of what success looks like, empowered to move forward into action. Interested to hear more on how to make this happen? Set up a time for a complimentary conversation using the link below.