Cultural Teaming

Cultural Teaming

With the expansion and diversification of business, as well as the global supply chain, more and more companies and organizations are operating globally. In this context, cross-cultural teams are on the rise. We all know the importance of functioning as a cohesive team. Effective teamwork becomes even more crucial when we manage or involve in cross-cultural teaming. The biggest challenge for cross-cultural teaming is cultural differences based on the team members diversity backgrounds. The following part will be based on “culture map” to further analyze the cultural challenges in cross-cultural teaming.

Erin Meyer proposed cultural gaps that we most encounter in managing cross-cultural teams through eight scales, which includes communicating, evaluating, persuading, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing and scheduling.(Meyer,2014) For cross-cultural teams, team members’ inner interactions and communications usually are more complex than single-cultural teams. To make teamwork smoother, we should put the cultural differences in a very first place. Different cultures have different communicating scales. In most Eastern cultures the meaning of messages was embedded in the way it is presented, rather than it being simple and clear in most Western cultures. It is really important for us to know the differences in communicating .I remembered that when I worked in Kodak Company, I was in charge of international employee hiring process. The hiring manager was an American and he needed me to recruit an American who worked in China’s Auditor department. The job title for the American employee was “Senior Audit Consultant”. However，according to China’s work permit policy, the foreigner employees cannot be hired with job title lower than “manager”. In Chinese traditional culture, when I encountered this situation, I usually write a long e-mail that includes a lot of layered messages to deny my supervisor’s request indirectly and vaguely. For this case, I realized the differences between American and Chinese culture and Americans prefer direct and clear communication way. I wrote a mail to deny the hiring manager’s request directly based on China’s policy and also gave him two optional choices according to my analysis. Finally, the hiring manager replied me that he was delighted to know the result quickly and help him to save time on hiring process and win more time on thinking reasonable plans. Cross-cultural communication is a key factor in better cross-cultural teaming performance. For leading scale, different cultures have different attitudes toward hierarchy. Traditional Chinese culture more emphasizes on authority than American culture. I remembered that the Auditor Manager in US Company wanted me to involve in a project but he just sent a notice mail to me and didn’t get the approval from my boss in advance. When I told my boss about the project, my boss rejected his request based on no prior notice and my full schedule. This case implies us that we need to realize and openly accept issues about culture gaps and try to find ways to work around them when we work in a cross-cultural teaming.