Navigating cultural nuances as a new leader of a diverse team can be really interesting and rewarding yet challenging, but these challenges can be made easier with the right strategies, insights, guidance and support.
As organisations design or refine (New) Leader Programs, I encourage them to fuse this important component of a leader’s growth journey into the program contents, to set leaders up for success in a multi-cultural / multinational organisation, rather than leaving them to figure it out as they go along.
While figuring it out, can be a hugely valuable learning journey, it can ironically be a more expensive one as costly mistakes that could impact employee / team engagement, collaboration and retention may inadvertently be made despite the leader being highly skilled and having noble intentions.
Navigating cultural complexities does not (yet) come with a manual, so here are 7 strategies, that I have crafted while learning from experience, to support leaders of culturally diverse teams to lead intentionally, thereby reducing leader frustration while enhancing team engagement, collaboration, productivity and unity.
**5 of my strategies are in the comments section due to Linkedin maximum character limits**
Please share your additional tips in the comments too, to support established leaders and emerging leaders.
1. Clarify Team Goals and Expectations: Make sure goals, roles, and performance expectations are clear and universally understood. Use simple language. It reduces misinterpretation when everyone understands and buys into the goal. This goal then becomes the common ‘cultural’ currency.
2. Invest time to listen and learn – This demonstrates respect and gives you valuable insights into cultural norms that may affect how people approach tasks and interactions. Invest time to learn about each team member’s background, values, and communication styles. I recall utilising a simple exercise is to get my team to introduce themselves on a deeper level. What new insights and fun we had! Ask questions and listen to their stories, note what they love to talk about when there is no agenda and no time constraints to regulate them. Notice what you have in common. Note their body language as they talk about different subjects. Notice how they react to your verbal and not verbal cues.
