Leading a Multicultural Team through a Change Process - Research Paper Example

Topic: Leading a Multicultural Team through a Change Process Introduction Multicultural teams have become acommon occurrence in the recent times and with the ease of cross border mobility that is being experienced, people move from one country to another in rates that are increasing. This has developed intermarriages between the people that come from different cultural backgrounds where the children born grow up in different countries and have cultural identities that can be perceived to be hybrid. Globalization and internationalization as well as improvements in the transport and communication industry have decreased the trade restrictions that traditionally existed which have increased interaction among people. There is a significant increase in the number of multicultural teams in organizations these days, which has lead to the modern international literature identifying that the management of the cultural teams is an important attribute of human resource management. Studies have directed their attention on the positive effects of employing multicultural teams are utilized since they are seen to be more efficient than the mono-culture teams in the situations that need more than a single skill and judgment (Halverson & Tirmizi, 2008). Leadership in the organizational work teams has developed to become one of the most common and quickly growing areas of the leadership theory and research where a group of a particular type that is composed of members who depend on each other and have mutual goals who must coordinate their activities to accomplish the tasks at hand. Examples of these teams are project management teams, quality teams, multicultural teams as well as task forces. The teams possess an applied function in relation to the organization in that; it has roles that are specific for the members with requisite knowledge and skills to perform (Northouse, 2004). People always make the assumption that the challenges on multicultural teams come from differences in the styles of communication, but this is not the case since there are other sources of challenges as far as multicultural teams are concerned which can generate barriers to the success of the team. They include communication, trouble that is associated with accents and fluency, differing perceptions towards hierarchy and ethics that conflict in the cases of decision-making. The Change Process There is the probability that work teams may not often have an understanding of the changes that the leaders are coming up with since there may not be enough information about the issues that should be undergoing changes and the reasons for these changes. In most of the cases, the members may not really recognize the issues that will be done in a different in the case that there is a change in approach or a change in leadership. In fact, many develop the fear that they might lose their jobs and therefore do not welcome the changes. Many of the leaders in different organizations continually face management problems that are associated with innovation, performance and accountability while the rate and degree of change is progressing to levels that have never been reached previously. The challenges that are associated with the intricacies entail a diverse workforce and a variety of culturally driven values and expectations, which makes the challenge that managers have to experience daunting. As we ease away from a monocultural to a non-discriminatory and ultimately a multicultural level that exists in the multicultural organization development, the approaches that are employed for organizational changes transfer from targeting change at the individual level, to targeting it at the system level. A suitable approach in the multicultural stage is to align the internal mechanisms, mission, the connections to the environment as well as the multicultural plan of an organization. Researchers have stated that throughout the 1980s to 90s, over seventy percent of change approaches were unsuccessful or stopped midstream. An increase in the attention that is afforded to urgency or the reasons that necessitate the change is very important. To dealing with the multicultural group at hand will require focusing on the front end of the change process, which is founded on urgencies. The urgent explanation of why the changes took place will be more important that downplaying the issues that are considered hard that include a clear examination of what necessitated the termination of duties of the previous leader and how he was held accountable for his actions. Doing this as soon as possible will assist in making sure that the team understands the situation in the best way possible and they continue with the tasks that are at hand as soon as possible. This will avoid situations where they have the feeling that their preferred leader has been unfairly dismissed, which might make them be uncooperative towards the new one. There is well-established technique that is aimed at structuring interactions and communications that can manage a change in leadership that is in a model that is simple to understand. In following the model, a sense of urgency will need to be adopted and it will be designed in such a way that it adapts to the cultures that are represented since there are some people who might not react to urgency in the same way as others. To correct this, other means of instilling urgency, which will be based on cultural values, will have to be devised. The communication with the team will have to be done in a manner that will be brief and to the point to avoid situations that involve over-communication. This will be through an approach that will consider the cultures of the people that are being communicated to ensure that they get a good understanding of the issues that will be discussed and the project that is at hand. The resistance indicators that may be displayed by the people in the team because of their preferred leader being dismissed will be addressed using an approach that focuses on effective communication that will be tasked with lowering resistance while fostering trust. The team members will have to believe that change is moral and the right thing to do and the changes will have to be communicated in terms of the general organization ethics. This is likely to make the members of the team adopt the changes and work towards the success of the project since there are incentives and bonuses if it records success. Decision Making In both the domestic and global setting, multicultural workforce has progressively become a reality but the effects of this phenomenon vary significantly based on form of competitive environment and the overall strategy that the firm employs. Before the 1980s, global cultural diversity had a minimum effect on the domestic firms even as the domestic multiculturalism was highly influencing the business outcomes of these firms. Managing people that are different culturally entails using styles of leadership, motivating, communicating, making decisions, planning, organizing and staffing in ways that are different from the way that the conventional firms do it. Traditionally, conflict and debate are considered to be important in the decision-making process sine they help in coming up with better decisions but for some cultures, this is considered to be a rude way of expressing oneself. The team whose members hail from different places, with varying backgrounds afford special demands on the team leader especially when there is a conflict between the members. It becomes obvious that the members from the different cultures will differ in making decisions, especially in how quickly they are made, as well as the assessment that is needed before making the decisions. This means that the manner in which one culture handles decision making should not be imposed on the other cultures that are part of the team. The best solution for coming up with decisions that will be favored by most of the members of the team will be through having minor concessions on progress and also learning to make adjustments that will accommodate and respect other techniques of decision-making (Brett, Behfar & Kern, 2006). Ethics Multicultural issues in teams that work together are not always visible but this does not mean that they do not exist and managing the multicultural team is a herculean task. The leader must makes sure that all the members of the team are taking part in the assigned tasks and are also benefitting from the interaction that is associated with it. If a there is trust in the team, then the communication between the members and the leader will become simpler and easier to manage. The policies and procedures that are developed are necessary for the members to adhere to and respect to make the running of the team smooth (Adler, 1991). Multicultural teams bring together different cultures so that they can be able to provide their company with an advantage that is competitive when they embark on a project with other entities to make sure that the products that they support do not fail. Multicultural issues come up with time and difficulties of working across multiple cultures start to exhibit themselves. The leader in the multicultural group therefore has to develop way that will handle the effect of culture on the output of the group, reliance and other dynamics. Managerial issues will need to be understood better for the teams to be able to work together smoothly in the project that the company has assigned without alienating any member of the team based on age or gender. References Adler, N. J. (1991). International dimensions of organizational behavior. Boston, Mass.: PWS- KENT Pub. Co. Brett, J., Behfar, K. & Kern, M. C. (2006). Managing multicultural teams. Harvard Business Review, 84 (11), p. 84. Halverson, C. B. & Tirmizi, S. A. (2008). Effective Multicultural Teams: Theory and Practice. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Northouse, P. G. (2004). Leadership. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Read More