Teamwork and leadership in an intercultural context, management of multicultural teams: an analysis of interaction in postgraduate projects

Introduction

A recent in-depth interview research by MultiCulti Inc. (a team for Leadership and Teamwork group project, further LTW team) shows that today employers, regardless their industry, stress the importance of intercultural competency and the ability to communicate effectively across cultures. Good knowledge of a foreign language is a competitive advantage while applying for a job, but it is not essential. Employers pay particular attention to such skills as multicultural team management, negotiation and problem-solving with people of different cultural background, mobility and openmindness. As a matter of fact, the number of employees moving across countries or applying for multinational corporations has been increasing (Adler, 2008; Mountain & Davidson, 2011; Thomas, 2008). Moreover, international trade flows, investment, tourism, educational and cultural exchange as well as development of global telecommunications, including the Internet, make people unconsciously use such expressions as trusting in a global brand, working for a global company, aiming at global partnership and communicating with global people (Charnovits, 2005; Magala, 2005; Maurer et. al., 2010; Osland, 2003). Thus, the process of globalization is thought to have a reasonable impact on the society and working culture changing corporate rules of interaction both internally and externally (Brett, 2006; Charnovits, 2005; Guirdham, 1999; Thomas, 2008). With this in mind, this essay will focus on difficulties in interaction in and management of multicultural teams at education centers and workplace. Basing on empirical results, it will discuss how leadership and teamwork may be done in students’ multicultural teams and if multicultural teams might be consider ‘better’ than monocultural from management perspective. The essay aims at comparing empirical results with the existing theoretical frameworks for leadership and teamwork as well as management in global and local scale. In addition, observations and recordings of the group meetings were used as methods of data collection for this research.

Literature review

To begin with, it is important to clarify what is usually understood by leadership and team work in different disciplines and how leadership styles and types of teams may be classified. In addition, due to the limitations of scope, this essay will review only impact of gender and humor factors on doing leadership and teamwork and discuss the key differences between monocultural and multicultural teams.

Thus, a team may be described as a group of people united with a common goal – a task to be completed over a period of time (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Archer & Cameron, 2012; Brett, 2006; Higgs, 1996; Katzenbach & Smith, 2005; Miller et al., 2000; Thompson, 2000; Thomas, 2008; Tozer, 1997). The team may share similar organizational values and culture and use the same working language, including special jargons, metaphors and jokes (Avolio, 1999; Byrne, et al., 1996; Calabrese, 2000; Earley et al., 1999; Gibson, 2001; Schnurr, 2009). The modern literature generally differentiates teams as monocultural and multicultural (more than 2 nations involved) and as local and virtual (Adler, 2012; Brett, 2006; Steers et al., 2011; Thompson, 2000; Thomas, 2008).

By leadership this essay understands a means to motivate, coordinate, control and/or panelize a group of people or individuals working on a common task (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Archer & Cameron, 2012; Brett, 2006; Higgs, 1996; Katzenbach & Smith, 2005; Miller et al., 2000; Schien, 2010; Thomas, 2008; Tozer, 1997). From linguistic perspective the way of doing leadership may be analyzed through a leader’s word and grammar usage while from management perspective it may be analyzed though actions taken and strategies implemented (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Baxter, 2009; Brett, 2006; Byrne, & FitzGerald, 1996; Higgs, 1996; Kessler, & Wong-MingJi, 2009; Thomas, 2008; Von Glinow, et al., 2004). Leadership style may have less or more masculine (dictatorial) or feminine (participative) features and be either shared or one mostly by one-person (Barry, 1991; Holmes, 2006; Steers et al., 2011; Thompson, 2000; Thomas, 2008).

Some scholars find leadership as a gendered concept (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Helgesen, 1948; Holmes, 2006; Loginova, 2013). Doing power is traditionally considered to be male business, however, over last half of a century the number of female workers involved in management, including in top management, has increased significantly (Adler, 2008; Mountain & Davidson, 2011; Thomas, 2008). As early as in mid. 20th century Helgesen (1948) described women as less defensive leaders in terms of reaching the objective and as more involved and responsible team members. The recent Russian research shows the high role of a woman at a modern world workplace stressing out more effective performance and more loyal and people-oriented way of leadership (Loginova, 2013). Despite a positive trend, the gender issue, correlated with gender inequalities, still exists: depending on a region and nationality this issue may be expressed more explicitly and result in gender misbalance in a team and/or discrimination (Holmes, 2006). That is why it is worth keeping in mind that gender dimension may have a significant impact on teamwork, overall interaction in a team and performance of particular team members.

Many authors associate leadership also with humor considering it as an important means of building motivation and friendly atmosphere in a team (Avolio et al., 1999; Kangasharju & Nikko, 2009; Schnurr, 2009). Humor may be also described as a ‘moderator of the impact of stress on the individual performance’ that stimulates a shift to more creative working approach (Avolio et al., 1999, p.219). In addition, humor is thought to help coworkers to express frustration and dissent or in-group solidarity and neglect conflict situations (Schnurr, 2009). Shared laughter, as a result of successful humor, increases the level of trust and mutual understanding in a team (Kangasharju & Nikko, 2009). However, it is important to keep in mind that humor at a workplace may have a double meaning depending who uses humor and how. According to a team culture, the right to use humor may vary from team members depending on power relations (Schnurr, 2009). Such types of humor as sarcasm and irony, usually used by a leader or team members with higher status, may cause anger, confusion, tensions and uncomfortable feeling either for the whole group or particular group members (Calabrese, 2000; Hatch, 1997). In comparison to humor, that may be both contextual and general, irony is mostly contextual and dependent on interpretation (Hatch, 1997). Sarcasm has more obvious and direct meaning, so that it is more violent than irony and has direct impact on interpersonal conflicts and aggressive atmosphere in a team (Calabrese, 2000). All in all, humor seems to be a very powerful tool that may indicate a leadership style and power relations in a team. It may grant a leader with the ability to manipulate a team either in a positive, creative and motivating, or negative, destructive and stressful, way. In case of teams with democratic, shared leadership style, humor is thought to provide team members with the opportunity to express themselves better in a funny and understandable way and reduce interpersonal conflicts, while teams with autocratic one-manager leadership style may suffer from humor (Avolio et al., 1999; Calabrese, 2000; Hatch, 1997; Kangasharju & Nikko, 2009; Schnurr, 2009).

Both gender and humor factors may become particularly challenging while working in a multicultural team with potentially different attitude towards gender issues and what to consider funny. Interestingly, that despite adopting ‘a lingua franca’ (Tietze, 2008), multicultural teams often face internal misunderstandings due to not only differences in communication styles, but also in listening, interpreting ideas and understanding of politeness. That is why, various studies in linguistic, social sciences and management are partly devoted to differences between mono- and multicultural teams (See Appendix 1), with communication and management difficulties being one of the key issues in functioning of both team types (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Archer & Cameron, 2012; Avolio et al., 1999; Barry, 1991; Baxter, 2009; Brett, 2006; Byrne & FitzGerald, 1996; Earley et al., 1999; Gibson et al., 2001; Higgs, 1996; Hofstede, 2005; Holmes, 2012; Kangasharju & Nikko, 2009; Katzenbach & Smith, 2005; Kessler & Wong-MingJi, 2009; Kim et al., 1996; Miller et al., 2000; Ralston et al., 2008; Schein, 1990; Steers et al., 2011; Stivers et al., 2009; Von Glinow et al., 2004).

Traditionally monocultural teams are thought to consist of people with the same cultural and national background, speak the same language (mother toung), share similar organizational and cultural values and have culturally similar attitude towards space, time, discipline, motivation and decision-making (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Brett, 2006; Higgs, 1996; Hofstede, 2005; Katzenbach & Smith, 2005; Miller et al., 2000; Steers et al., 2011; Stivers et al., 2009; Thomas, 2008; Thompson, 2000). In contrary, the term ‘multicultural team’ indicates that a team might have various attitudes towards above mentioned factors due to the diversity of its team members. Furthermore, the understanding of a goal and motivation, as a combination of trust and enthusiasm, seems to be one the most important factors, influencing a team’s effective performance, together with a correct recognition and integration of all represented cultures (Barry, 1991; Higgs, 1996; Holmes, 2012; Kim et al., 1996; Steers et al., 2011; Stivers et al., 2009; Thomas, 2008; Tietze, 2008). Lack of equal motivation may result in lowered productivity and tensions among team members while partial integration may have a negative impact on the way of reaching the agreement or ‘maintaining an I’m OK, You’re Ok position’ among team members (Mountain & Davidson, 2011; Steers et al., 2011; Thomas, 2008).

Another important factor that may vary across cultures and have a strong influence on productivity, in particular in terms of decision-making, is power distance (Hofstede, 2005; Thompson, 2000). If a monocultural team can manage it according to clear for everyone rules, multicultural teams may face difficulties in communicating among different genders, age groups and position and making decisions either together or through delegation the authority to a leader. Along with power distance, the norms and rules of organization have a direct impact on discipline that may vary among team members due to monocronic and polichronic attitude towards time, perceptions towards personal space and universal communication norms with ‘minimal gap-minimal overlap’ (Hofstede, 2005; Mountain & Davidson, 2011; Schein, 1990; Stivers et al., 2009).

Despite having a number of strengths, such as diversity of ideas, knowledge and work approach, multicultural teams are often noticed to create less value that expected (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Distefano & Maznevski, 2000; Thompson, 2000). Distefano & Maznevski (2000) claim that ‘diverse teams tend to perform either better or worse than homogenous ones, with more performing worse than better’. This may be due to misperceptions, miscommunication, misinterpretation and misevaluation of team members and a task (Adler & Gundersen, 2008). Furthermore, such teams are also known for spending too much time on building interpersonal relationship and reaching agreements (Steers et al., 2011; Thompson, 2000). In comparison to monocultural teams, multicultural teams demonstrate less trust among team members and the phenomena of ‘sticking together’ among people with the same cultural and language background (Adler & Gundersen, 2008). All these make management of such teams more complicated and seem to demand extra interpersonal skills such as open-mindness, flexibility etc. to reflect adequately to colleges’ differences.