| Introduction
Leading a team can be a huge challenge for a manager at the best of times. Assembling a group of people, calling them a team and expecting to get easy results with little management input has never been very realistic. In a world where teams are increasingly made up of different cultures, team leadership becomes more difficult and more time consuming for the team leader.
Effectively leading an international team requires an understanding of how national cultural values shape behavior at work, and in particular, in the team context. This article will highlight the key areas where national culture has an impact on teamwork and provide suggestions for dealing with the challenges of international team leadership.
Classifying cultures
Whether managing a mixed nationality team in your home country, or managing abroad as an expatriate, you will undoubtedly notice differences in the way various nationalities behave in and out of work. Team behavior cannot of course be accurately predicted based on nationality, but useful guidelines can be drawn from intercultural research.
Putting different countries into boxes is fraught with difficulties. It’s always dangerous to stereotype, partly because it’s so easy to ascribe behavior just to nationality and not to look further. Of course people in France, Belgium and Spain don’t all behave in the same way. But the values of French and Spanish nationals will tend to be more similar than say French and Swedish, or Spanish and Chinese nationals.
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