How to Manage a Multicultural Team
How to Manage a Multicultural Team
Working as a manager for a multicultural team is an exciting endeavor. However, it presents a lot of challenges that can prove taxing to a manager who has little or no experience at all in handling people of different cultures and beliefs. In order for a manager to effectively manage a multicultural team, he has to rid himself of prejudices and biases that can hinder his objectivity. A good manager should be able to garner respect from people of different cultural orientations.
Here are some of the tips to keep in mind in order to become an effective manager of a multicultural team:
Learn to Appreciate Each Person’s Unique Qualities
Each person has his unique qualities and this is ten times true when dealing with an employee from a foreign country. Instead of focusing on the potential hassles that cultural differences can bring, you should focus instead on the benefits of having employees from different cultures; each has something different to the bring to the table. Effective management courses teach this all the time to potential managers. Appreciating one’s unique qualities makes you intolerant of discrimination and helps promote inclusiveness in your team.
Take Note of Individual Differences
Some managers assume that all differences that employees may have in the workplace are all cultural in nature. This is not true most of the time because issues in diversity can also stem from individual differences, not just from cultural ones. If one employee has a certain quirk, it does not necessarily mean that other employees with the same cultural group share that particular quirk. One Asian employee can’t really speak for the rest of the Asians in the group.
Keep in mind that there are other factors aside from culture that are responsible for differences. These factors include origin, sex, creed, race, and color, which are not strictly related to culture. project management courses teach leaders not to classify behavior
Working as a manager for a multicultural team is an exciting endeavor. However, it presents a lot of challenges that can prove taxing to a manager who has little or no experience at all in handling people of different cultures and beliefs. In order for a manager to effectively manage a multicultural team, he has to rid himself of prejudices and biases that can hinder his objectivity. A good manager should be able to garner respect from people of different cultural orientations.
Here are some of the tips to keep in mind in order to become an effective manager of a multicultural team:
Learn to Appreciate Each Person’s Unique Qualities
Each person has his unique qualities and this is ten times true when dealing with an employee from a foreign country. Instead of focusing on the potential hassles that cultural differences can bring, you should focus instead on the benefits of having employees from different cultures; each has something different to the bring to the table. Effective management courses teach this all the time to potential managers. Appreciating one’s unique qualities makes you intolerant of discrimination and helps promote inclusiveness in your team.
Take Note of Individual Differences
Some managers assume that all differences that employees may have in the workplace are all cultural in nature. This is not true most of the time because issues in diversity can also stem from individual differences, not just from cultural ones. If one employee has a certain quirk, it does not necessarily mean that other employees with the same cultural group share that particular quirk. One Asian employee can’t really speak for the rest of the Asians in the group.
Keep in mind that there are other factors aside from culture that are responsible for differences. These factors include origin, sex, creed, race, and color, which are not strictly related to culture. project management courses teach leaders not to classify behavior