Management institute Roffey Park today publishes research, Managing teams across cultures: How to manage across borders, time-zones and cultures, detailing the complex challenges of managing multi-cultural teams. The research highlights the unique demands of running teams of different nationalities and suggests only an elite cadre of managers is able to meet the challenge.
The research is the only current investigation of the realities of managing multi-cultural teams working across borders. The findings are based on 37 in-depth interviews with managers and members of multicultural teams from 12 global organisations, operating in a range of industries from banking and finance to oil and gas. Companies involved include Raiffeisen Bank, Rexam, Ricardo and Threadneedle.
“At Roffey Park, we have experienced strong interest from our clients on how to manage cross cultural teams”, says Jo Hennessy, director of research at Roffey Park. “Many organisations now operate internationally and require their employees to manage across cultures and, with globalisation ever increasing, this trend is set to continue. In parallel, understanding of how to manage individuals and teams from unfamiliar cultures will become an ever more important commodity.”
Successfully managing individuals from different cultures, the research suggests, is more demanding than managing people of the same nationality working in a single location. Not only do managers need to be, amongst other things, supreme communicators and highly adept at encouraging participation, but also extremely self-aware. This means not only accommodating and adapting to the working style of other nationalities, but also the capacity to appreciate how other cultures react to their actions. This level of awareness, combined with investing significant time in developing relationships with team members is the foundation stone of effective multi-cultural management.
Highlighted by organisations successful at managing cross cultural teams is the ability of managers to adopt a flexible, non-dogmatic approach to management. The research suggests, when necessary, managers should be prepared to divert from corporate consistency and introduce non-traditional ways of managing and leading. Successfully accommodating different approaches to working and avoiding the apparent logic of an average working style – an averaging out of different cultural working styles – is essential.
“Successful management of cross-cultural teams makes great demands of managers. Self-awareness, a willingness to devote time to establishing relationships and an enthusiasm for experimenting with new ways of working are the hallmarks of those who do this well,” says Jo Hennessy. “We expect the demand for these skills, currently possessed only by the ‘super-manager’, to increase as the balance of companies’ activities becomes more global.”
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About Roffey Park
With 60 years experience, Roffey Park is one of the UK’s longest established executive education and research providers as well as recognised as the UK’s leading centre for Organisational Development. From its inception, Roffey Park’s ethos has remained consistent: to work with organisations and their people to create a more enlightened way of working. Its commitment to do so do, plus its research and work in the Private, Public and Not-for-Profit sectors, has enabled Roffey Park to be recognised as a leading authority in its areas of specialism: leadership, people management, personal effectiveness, human resources and organisational development. The institute’s services include bespoke development training and consultancy, courses and qualification programmes for individuals and a wide range of conferences and seminars.
For more information, please contact:
Lucy Buckley or Lisa Pantelli
Mantra PR
lbuckley@mantra-pr.com/ lpantelli@mantra-pr.com
020 7438 4924 / 0207 438 4932