Discussion

Basing on the analysis of the project work discussed above one may say that the LTW team was quite successful in doing team work and leadership without any open conflicts between team members both in terms of communication and management. On the one hand, the absence of male team members might give equal opportunities to express opinions and take turns for female with different cultural attitude towards a man’s dominating role, on the other hand, the age difference might result in extra respect of representatives of superior colleges by collectivistic, in particular, confusion societies, and unwillingness to compete for taking turns and making decisions (Adler & Gundersen, 2008; Hofstede, 2005; Holmes, 2006; Kessler & Wong-MingJi, 2009; Kim et al., 1996; Miller et al., 2000).

With the view to analyze deeper the strengths and weaknesses of LTW team, it seems appropriate to compare it, for example, to another MSc multicultural team working on a project for International Business module (IB team).

Both groups performed as small ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger, 1998) out of 5 people formed on non-voluntary bases (by course tutors) and united with the same goal – to create a group project (See Appendix 3). Both teams had representatives of collectivistic and individualistic societies and spoke English as a working language. The groups had to choose their management style themselves, with or without an appointed leader, and had no limitations to form their own team cultures. However, teams got different tasks that might have a slight impact on their motivation and teambuilding strategies. In comparison to LTW team, IB team had to prepare one marked project and 2 unmarked presentations.

Getting a task was considered as a starting point of teamwork by both communities. Unlike LTW team, IB team went for only working relations rejecting the idea to have any team building events such as lunches or coffee brakes. Team members agreed to discuss all issues either at fixed meetings or at the created Facebook page. Unwillingness to have a ‘welcome’ team-building event probably resulted in the bad identification of group members’ skills and, finally, had a negative impact on building friendly relations based on trust and intersubstitutability (Brett, 2006; Higgs, 1996; Katzenbach & Smith, 2005; Steers et al., 2011; Thompson, 2000). Since the key goal for the group was the marked assignment, the level of motivation for doing unmarked presentations was a little bit lower and led to delays in providing ppts to project managers.

As the LTW group, the IB group came up with the project idea very quickly: only one topic was introduced (by me, the researcher) and quickly supported by all team members. The topic was thought to appeal for all team members because everyone liked chocolates and was glad to research the market. At the initial stage one person took the leadership to shape the general vision of the whole project.

In comparison to LTW team ‘universal communication style’ (Stivers et al., 2009), followed by all group members, IB team communication style, especially turn-taking, was noticed to vary a lot among team members while some members were observed to use a lot of overlaps, interruptions and slightly aggressive body language. These unsettled differences in communication at the initial stage of team development resulted in further lack of cohesiveness, stress and mistrust (Brett, 2006; Higgs, 1996; Katzenbach & Smith, 2005; Steers et al., 2011; Thompson, 2000) and caused a number of problems. Furthermore, the tutor’s notice that leadership was unshared resulted in strong competition for leadership among 3 participants and miscommunication while creating a final project and meeting deadlines. Moreover, Chinese students formed a block and at further meetings presented the block’s point of view after discussing issues with code-switching - in their native language.

Since our IB team culture did not include phone or Skype talks as a means of communication, everything was commented on Facebook group page. And it might be regarded as a management mistake, partly because ‘talk is effective in repairing relationship’ (Glinov et. al, 2004, p 579) in teams with different levels of trust and attitudes towards politeness. My high-context communication style as well as relatively high level of trust to the groupmates formed within BA studies might have caused a serious miscommunication within the IB team, in particular with the editor who presented a final draft as a final paper.

According to my BA monocultural team work experience, we usually formed teams ourselves that resulted in very high level of trust and consensus on the project leader’s role. We used to have friendly projects-related chats, mostly in informal settings. And it was normal for my Russian university culture to write messages in any form (including smiles, many question or exclamation marks etc.). If one of group members was not happy with the paper, a leader (editor or summing up person) reviewed it as many times as necessary regardless time pressure. Normally the friendly and polite communication style without strong overlaps or interruption was maintained and people felt free to make any comments they found relevant.

Within my several attempts to do leadership in the IB team, one (decision-making – tasks splitting sctivity) may be considered as unsuccessful and face-threatening and identified me as a leader who could not prevent people from quarreling and motivate them to work for the benefit of the whole group. In comparison to my BA and LTW team, my offer to harmonize the final product with all Facebook comments as well as suggestion to do it myself was considered as underestimation of others skills and input while my writing style was said to be very rude (more that one question or exclamation mark is unacceptable in Chinese tradition and means disrespect and written shouting). Finally, I took the leadership from the position of force (age and experience) imposing my vision of paper. It was a big risk because (1) I had to defense my face and make people believe in my skills and devotedness to the team and the common goal, (2) if the mark was low, I would seriously spoil the relationship with team members. Luckily, despite internal communication and management difficulties the IB team got the highest mark in the module. None of us would be able to collect all the necessary data and translate it from native languages to English working under time pressure.

To sum it up, LTW team is thought to be much better managed than IB team. Moreover, in comparison to the IB team, mutual respect performed in polite communication (no overlaps and interruptions) and interpersonal behavior (for ex., meeting deadlines) helped the LTW team to avoid internal conflicts, maintain good relationship with group members and, hopefully, develop interpersonal and professional skills. In comparison to my BA team work experience, both LTW and IB teams were formed in a setting where people had unequal skills, knew each other for a relatively short time and also were limited in time for building in the team culture. The use of a lingua franca instead of a native for all team members language as well as developing communication style through out the working period resulted, in case of IB team, in deep misunderstanding among participants. In contrary, despite speaking a non-native language, the usage of universal communication norms allowed LTW team to evolve into a team with joint vision on trust and motivation similar to that of my monocultural teams. Although one may argue, that friendliness and politeness in a multicultural team may be considered as a way to avoid conflict and frustration in different communication styles (Adler & Gundersen, 2008), the LTW team case seems to evolve naturally with true sympathy among team members. Despite reasonable differences in communication and management styles, both LTW and IB teams demonstrated high level of productivity and creativity. National competence and knowledge, brought to multicultural teams, gave team members the opportunity to create good-standard projects with high level of diverse ideas. Also it helped to learn more about other management and communication cultures. But most importantly these experiences helped, at least me, to make ‘study’ mistakes that I would try not to repeat at the real work place.