The Challenges of Managing a Multi-Cultural Team

Although leading a team for a global competition sounds exciting, you never know about the challenges that follow until you put on those shoes. Leading and managing a multi-cultural team is really hard as you have to learn how to accommodate each and everyone according to their likes and dislikes. Your culture and your language are some of the major things that make you the individual that you are. However, while working in a multi-cultural group, these two factors can be the same reason why you might face several obstacles while connecting with others. 

As a leader of one of the teams of the Globcom Project, a global communications project to pitch new PR and marketing ideas for a company, I had my own share of problems while managing this extremely multi-cultural team. 

1. Overcoming language barriers

One of the major problems that I faced while leading my team was the various language issues. While some people were only comfortable with speaking English, some others were comfortable with understanding English, but could not speak the language properly. Although we consider English the universal language, there were some people who just couldn't get a hold of the language. We had teammates from Lithuania, Barcelona, Russia, and Germany. While all of them talked English, understanding them was another ball game. To solve this major issue, I decided to help anyone who was having trouble understanding by explaining things to them in a much simpler way. We also made it normal in our team to tell each other to repeat themselves if we had a problem understanding what the other person said. 

2. Planning projects around various time zones

Given the fact I was the leader, I was the one responsible for organizing meetings wherein we would discuss each others' roles and what would be made of the final presentation to our client. However, organizing meetings was definitely not an easy task. Since all of us lived in different time zones, it was hard enough for us to decide on a particular time zone by which we would decide the timings of the meetings. Once we took a final decision on that, it was time to decide on when we will be having the meeting. When the majority voted for a particular time, there were a few people who were either in class or working at that time. While we did want to accommodate everyone during the meeting, we did not have one meeting where all of us attended the meeting as a team. Finally, my deputy and I decided to hold meetings according to the teams which we had divided them into so that at least a representative from each team would attend our discussions. 

3. Allowing time to research whenever they needed it 

Although we would give them ample time to research and submit the final documents as each stage passes by, there arose some situations where we had to give them extra time taking into account the fact that all of them lived in different time zones. While some of them could gather together to finish the task that was given to them, others just couldn't join them due to prior commitments. I had to understand that as all of them lived in various time zones, we had to give them more time than was needed to finish up the task that was required of them. 

Managing a team of members from various cultural backgrounds can be difficult. Make every effort to make your coworkers feel at ease in the workplace. Since acquiring the required collection of skills necessitates a significant amount of effort, use this article as a resource if you're having trouble. We hope that these suggestions will assist you in effectively managing your multicultural squad.