Leading international teams successfully

Diverse international teams are a reality in many industries and companies, and it is often considered a quality feature by the companies, because they want to be close to the customers, speak their language and also have the best technical experts on board. This is all true – as long as the teams are well organised and managed. Otherwise, the potential for frustration, misunderstandings, extra loops and missed project goals is great. In this article, I share anecdotes from my experience and show what the stumbling blocks are in international teams and how they can better achieve their goals.

Develop a common language in the team

The difficulties of working in international teams are very similar to those of diverse teams (blog post). International teams are often interdisciplinary at the same time, i.e. the members from different countries also represent other disciplines and come from different fields. If a project manager, a designer and a procurement officer from the same culture work together on a construction project, common understanding is already somewhat easier to obtain.

I have already emphasised the importance of a common language in diverse teams. And in this context, I don’t mean English or any other language for communication, but a common understanding of the work, the content, the procedures and the processes. Here it is important to be aware of how different languages, but also the whole culture, influence values and ways of thinking. Researchers have found that this shared mindset is increasingly important in the current circumstances of diverse, international, digital and dynamic teams (Harvard Business Review article).

For this reason, it is important to meet on a common playing field. A common model or framework is a good basis. It is no problem at all if a large part of the team members do not know the model, then you can develop an understanding together and fit your theories into this framework. I have made the experience that even people from the same field in different countries work with different theories and models and therefore find it difficult to communicate. In this case, too, you have to find a new basis. As much as possible should be represented graphically in order to reduce the language barrier somewhat.

Here, too, it is important that all people really understand the content and form of the collaboration. Otherwise, the same procedure as for other teams can be used (blog post Collaboration).

A few years ago I was a participant in a Design Thinking course in China with European and Chinese participants. The Europeans were mainly somewhat familiar with the method and, after a short introduction, immediately got started with the task. The Chinese participants had probably hardly heard of Design Thinking or at least applied the philosophy differently. They were especially unfamiliar with the proposed creativity techniques and felt out of place from the start. In the end, their contribution was extremely modest. If these people had been decisive for the final result (which is usually to be expected in a project in China), the project would have failed massively. In retrospect, the introduction of the method was far too short and one was satisfied that the majority of the participants understood the method and the task. They were confident that they would be able to take the rest with them.

In international teams, the physical distance and the time difference make things even more difficult. Work is often asynchronous, there are only a few opportunities for exchange. There are fewer physical meetings and communication tools are used that transport less information. This is also a fact today with distributed teams, for example in home office. Meeting is still the most efficient form of communication because the most information is transported. I have always tried to meet the other people at least at the beginning of the collaboration. After that, communication was always much easier.

Differences between cultures

I have led a total of 5 international development projects (Europe and India) and have been involved in countless client projects (Europe, Asia, South America). The following insights reflect my subjective insights and experiences from these projects.

In other cultures, the primary differences are as follows (there are certainly more):

• Dealing with errors, error culture
• Communication, especially of problems and obstacles
• Value and binding nature of an agreement, reliability, punctuality
• Wert und Verbindlichkeit einer Vereinbarung, Zuverlässigkeit, Pünktlichkeit
• Freedom, flexibility and courage to try new things and take risks
• Attitude towards creativity
• Psychological security, especially for lower hierarchical levels
• sometimes also working conditions and available resources

These points are strongly influenced by culture. One cannot assume that a person who speaks English very well is therefore also closer to Western or European culture in these other points. I was always surprised how punctuality for an online meeting was interpreted differently in neighbouring countries.

Appreciation, respect and understanding as door openers

I think the most important point is the awareness of differences and a strong empathy. I have had very good experiences with meeting all people appreciatively and respectfully and then observing. People appreciate that you make an effort. Many mistakes are accepted, perhaps with a smile at the ignorance. So it is okay to shake hands with an ‘untouchable’ in India (that was before Corona, of course).

Of course, you can make an effort to understand the other culture. But that takes time and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. For example, I have never understood the caste system in India. And of course I don’t see where people fit in. But with an appreciative and respectful attitude, many doors open.

You can also develop a lot of understanding by visiting each other and working together. In India, for example, I experienced first-hand that work is incomparably more tedious when you sit in a noisy room with the entire department, have to ask your supervisor for permission to make a photocopy, and the internet is interrupted several times a day and you have to switch to private hotspots for long periods of time. And conversely, during visits, colleagues were surprised that we also have very long and full working days and understood that it is not always a lack of interest or appreciation if we do not respond immediately to requests. With this understanding, one can change one’s own perspective and perhaps even change the frustration about the slow progress of the project into admiration for having achieved so much under these conditions after all.

Many doors open with an appreciative and respectful behaviour

At some point, you always come up against tangible obstacles when working together in very different cultures because, for example, attitudes to mistakes are different, because an agreement is (repeatedly) interpreted differently, or because a piece of work has slipped to the bottom of the hierarchical order of clients and no one communicates this. It doesn’t help much to plan as many processes as possible at the beginning of the collaboration and to define the consequences of non-compliance. But it certainly helps to define certain responsibilities and a procedure in case of disagreements. This prevents a small task that is repeatedly not done from escalating into great frustration. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a universal tool to slay all these cultural problems at the same time. In the future, too, it will probably take understanding and a feeling for the other person and some creativity to reach the goal.

It certainly helps that foreigners are allowed to move outside the hierarchy from time to time. You can speak directly with certain people at another level of the hierarchy and thus also moderate a process or point out obstacles and missing resources.

I always make an effort to get to know people also outside of work. I’m interested in who I’m working with anyway and it promotes understanding of the team member’s situation and culture. And personal meetings convey a lot of additional information.

In addition, I have often experienced how prejudices towards other people or cultures existed at the beginning of a cooperation. These stereotypes are probably an attempt by our brain to reduce the complexity of our environment somewhat by dividing people into boxes. But this process must be actively prevented.

• Promote positive attitudes towards diversity in a targeted way: Training, experiencing culture (for example, visiting each other in person and working together in one place).
• Generate understanding of diversity: personality tests such as 16 personalities with their respective strengths and blind spots

If you often work in interdisciplinary/diverse teams, this article will interest you. If you need to build an international team, I will soon publish a new article on this topic.

More information

Mastrogiacomo, S., & Osterwalder, A. (2021). High-Impact Tools for Teams. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. https://amzn.to/3GJMoBW

A great article on the secrets of successful teamwork in Harvard Business Review:
HBR – The Secret of Great Teamwork

Blog post Cooperation in Teams

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