International Focus Magazine Premiere Edition | Page 20

• Diversity among team members
can create out-of-the-ordinary
creative solutions such as product development or cracking new
markets.
• International team members can
provide insights to better understand cultural issues and business
protocol for operating in global
markets.

Challenges of International
Cultural Diversity
Achieving internationally diverse
high-performance teams requires
developing awareness of cultural differences that impact communication,
values, practices and personal interactions. Developing awareness and
understanding of others helps team
members learn to coexist and collaborate with people from completely
different backgrounds. This is why
teambuilding training is so important to the process. Internationally
diverse work teams can experience
more conflict upfront than groups
that share more similarities because
of lack of awareness of the cultural
differences.

Management Influence
Managers can lead team building
success by offering training and expecting top management and frontline managers in an internationally
diverse organization to set the tone
for an effective culture.

Communication Barriers
Each country and culture has its
unique set of communication filters
and language barriers that impact internal and external communication
processes. Initially, team members
must overcome these language and
culture issues to prevent misunderstandings. Team building training can
help team members to work through
these communication challenges of
diversity.
20 iF Magazine | July 2016

Cultural Resistance
The multinational differences can
lower a team’s performance if the
differences are not respected and understood. As teams become more
culturally diverse, the relationships
and culture of the team changes.
Resistance to these changes is to be
expected and can cause stress among
team members if not well planned
and managed. Training team members about diversity is important if it
will impact their work roles and processes.

The Impact of Diversity In
Creating A High Performance
Team

viewpoints and opinions, then the
team is likely to fail.
Teams that possess a diverse range of
demographics and culture are wellrounded teams. A well-rounded
team usually performs at a high level,
thus making the team a high-performance team.
Internationally diverse teams enhance team productivity through the
integration of different viewpoints
and opinions when compared to homogeneous teams.

Here are some key advantages to
consider. International diversity:
• Enhances creativity.
The purpose of creating teams is to • Encourages the search for novel
solve a problem or issue through the
information and perspectives,
use of diverse ideas and solutions.
leading to better decision-making
and problem solving.
Cultural diversity is an essential piece • Can improve the bottom line of
of the team-building puzzle. A culcompanies and lead to valuable
turally diverse team brings the obvidiscoveries and breakthrough inous cultural differences in language,
novations.
dress and traditions. In addition, less • Can change the way you think by
tangible characteristic such as moral
even simply being exposed to divalues are equally, if not more imversity.
portant. These different methodologies and teachings help influence the The Rothschild Corporation is exteam’s direction. When team mem- perienced in facilitating team buildbers take the time to learn and un- ing workshops, consulting and soft
derstand each culture’s moral value, skills training to help organizations
the result is a strong team foundation. maximize teamwork and effective
• High performance teams can in- communications. They listen to your
corporate cultural differences and needs to focus the outcomes on your
use these different beliefs and val- target goals.
ues to attain the team goal.
• Each member from a d