Leading Multicultural Teams


Book Description

Churches and mission agencies are increasingly characterized by cultural diversity. As a result, many Christians find themselves working as part of a multicultural team. Leading these teams is a complex challenge that requires team leaders to understand how to help multicultural teams thrive. Team leaders need to know how to help team members grow in particular qualities and acquire specific skills related to multicultural teamwork. This book integrates insights from the Bible, team theory, leadership, and intercultural studies to explain how leaders of multicultural teams can help their teams become enriching and enjoyable contexts to work in, at the same time as achieving their purpose.




Effective Multicultural Teams: Theory and Practice


Book Description

Multicultural and multinational teams have become an important strategic and structural element of organizational work in our globalized world today. These teams are demonstrating their importance from the factory floors to the boardrooms of contemporary organizations. The emergence of multicultural teams is evident across a variety of organizations in the private, public, and civil society sectors. These developments have led to an increasing interest in the theory and practice of multicultural teams. Management educational and training programs are giving increasing attention to these developments. At the same time, there is emerging interest in research about and study of multicultural teams. This book emerged from our teaching, research, and consulting with multic- tural and diverse teams in multiple sectors over the last several years. In particular, we have developed and refined our ideas about the concepts in this book from teaching an advanced course called Effective Multicultural Teams in the Graduate Program at the School for International Training (SIT) in Vermont. We have learned from the rich background of students who are from, and have worked in, six con- nents, and who are, or plan to be, working in the public, educational, not-for-profit, and for-profit sectors. Additionally, we have engaged with a variety of teams through our consulting and training, providing consultation to teams in a variety of sectors and continents as they struggled to become more effective.




The Culture Map


Book Description

An international business expert helps you understand and navigate cultural differences in this insightful and practical guide, perfect for both your work and personal life. Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out. In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice.




Biblical Multicultural Teams


Book Description

Biblical Multicultural Teams speaks to the heart of cultural misunderstanding- our childhood upbringing. Sheryl Takagi Silzer is able in this work to provide both an honest look at her own cross-cultural experience and an astute academic understanding of cross-cultural communication. We all work and function in a multicultural world. The advice and wisdom in Biblical Multicultural Teams will thus enable you to take a hard look at assumptions and attitudes found in your team and to work on submitting them to biblical standards of interaction.Sign up for the WCIU Press newsletter to be notified about new books from this author and more! http: //eepurl.com/rB15L




Working in a Multicultural World


Book Description

Measureable, data driven outcomes are not the only indicators of success in today’s multicultural and globalized workforce. How employees interact with their colleagues and customers is also a significant factor in their career development. Luciara Nardon draws on her extensive research and international experience to guide employees and managers through the ambiguous and uncertain waters of today’s multicultural workplace. Each intercultural encounter is unique, involving different people, contexts, dynamics, and actions which general cultural protocols are unable to address. In Working in a Multicultural World, Nardon offers a comprehensive framework for understanding intercultural interactions and developing skills for successful intercultural situations. Numerous examples and exercises, including how to reconcile personal beliefs of equality with a hierarchical workplace and how to respond to perceived aggressiveness in business negotiations, enable employees and managers to embark on reflective processes that will springboard their intercultural competence. Working in a Multicultural World is an accessibly written and valuable resource for all professionals in today’s workplace as well as students and travelers interested in intercultural relations.




Negotiating Globally


Book Description

When it was first published in 2001, Negotiating Globally quickly became the basic reference for managers who needed to learn how to negotiate successfully across boundaries of national culture. This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition preserves the structure of the acclaimed first edition and improves upon it, making it even easier to learn how to navigate national culture when negotiating deals, resolving disputes, and making decisions in teams. Rather than offering country-specific protocol and customs, Negotiating Globally provides a general framework to help negotiators anticipate and manage cultural differences. This new edition incorporates the lessons of the latest research with new emphasis on executing a negotiation strategy and negotiating conflict in multicultural teams. The well-received chapter on “Government At and Around the Table” has been expanded and updated with new examples that span the globe. In this comprehensive resource, Jeanne M. Brett describes how to develop a negotiation planning document and shows how to execute the plan. She provides a model that explains how the cultural environment affects negotiators’ interests, priorities, and strategies. She provides benchmarks for distinguishing good deals from poor ones and good negotiators from poor ones. The book explains how resolving disputes is different from making deals and how negotiation strategy can be used in multicultural teams. Negotiating Globally challenges negotiators to expand their repertoire of strategies so that they will be able to close deals, resolve disputes, and get teams to make decisions.




Multicultural Teams : creating and sustaining an environment for learning from perspective diversity that maximizes team effectiveness


Book Description

Multicultural Teams outperform other teams when you need creativity, commitment and buy in - but only if they are designed and managed well. This book will explain how to design and manage your multicultural team well, and how to create and sustain a learn-from-differences environment. Dr. Robin gives practical suggestions from research on how to design your team and then explains how you can leverage diverse perspectives within the team to maximize creative problem solving. These include: A clear, motivating focus that requires team members to engage in a conversation about why the mission is important strategically to the organization and personally to them; An understanding of how important designing the team well is, while knowing how to make the right intervention into the group process at the right time; Metrics that measure output, learning and satisfaction; The right degree of empowerment and the right type of team given your task and members; And the use of interlocking skills that maximize learning within the team. Every team leader's skills toolbox should include transformational listening, using names with ideas, and motivating others. The multicultural team management skills toolbox must also include the ability to give culturally-appropriate feedback, minority influence strategies, and attention to both process and output solutions to balance direct and indirect cultural styles.




Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions


Book Description

'Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions' provides managers of technical professionals with clear and tested strategies to improve communication and increase productivity among culturally diverse technical professionals, teams, and departments. Dr. Laroche outlines the differences in education and training, career expectations, communication styles, and management expectations in countries around the world. He explains cross-cultural concepts and presents his case for the importance of cross-cultural competence supported by hard data, including charts, tables, and readily accessible schematics. You'll benefit from the author's experience and expertise as a manager and consultant in this area, illustrated by numerous anecdotes, critical incidents, and mini case studies, centered around two central themes: * Most technical professionals do not recognize the impact of cultural differences in their work * Cross-cultural issues lead to a significant under-utilization of talent and affect productivity negatively 'Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions' offers proven tactics for improving your personal effectiveness and the efficiency of your multicultural teams, breaking the communication barrier in the multicultural workplace.




Organizational Collaboration


Book Description

Many organizations today operate across boundaries - both internal and external to the organization. Exploring concepts and theories about different organizational, inter-organizational and international contexts, this student reader aids understanding of the individual’s experience of working within and across such boundaries. The book adopts a critical approach to individual experience and highlights the complexities inherent in these different layers and levels of organizing. Comprising a collection of key articles and extracts presented in a readable accessible way, this book also features an introductory chapter which provides an overall critique of the book. Each part features a brief introduction before analyzing the following key themes: managing aims power and politics cultural diversity international management perspectives the darker side of collaborative arrangements Some of the readings will specifically address collaboration ‘head on’ whilst others will provide an important context or highlight significant theoretical and practical issues that are considered relevant and interesting within the framework of the themes presented. As such, this book differs from existing titles as it sits bestride collaboration and organizational behaviour / theory in order to inform learning of exchange relationships on inter-personal, intra-organizational, and inter-organizational levels. The articles included are selected as critical in approach, straddling and addressing the central contexts described above, and highlighting the experience-centred nature of learning that can be derived from the content presented. This comprehensive reference will be useful supplementary reading for organizational behaviour courses as well as core reading for those students undertaking research on collaboration.




Intercultural Competence in Organizations


Book Description

This book addresses one of the most critical issues facing global business leaders and the multicultural workforce – how to work and relate effectively in the intercultural contexts. The author presents business professionals, practitioners and academics with the Collaborative Intercultural Competence Model. Based on solid theoretical assumptions and real intercultural experiences, this model is to help professionals work more effectively across and within cultures. This book expands the traditional presentation of existing knowledge by providing a unified discussion of intercultural communication and its conceptual foundations. The book offers readers with a contemporary insight into the intercultural competence phenomenon and highlights the basis for its experience-based inquiry, assessment and development. A distinctive feature of Intercultural Competence in Organizations is its comprehensive coverage of the intercultural competence framework from both communication and organizational behavior perspectives. This book does not cover traditional areas of international business, international management, global management strategy and policy and cross-cultural comparative management, but focuses on theoretical foundations of intercultural competence and intercultural competence research and practice. The author describes the complex nature of intercultural competence in a straightforward format which helps professionals, practitioners and students to envision a variety of intercultural situations in which they may behave competently. Thus, the conceptual acumen of this title is to understand the premises of intercultural competence, embrace its theoretical assumptions, see its practical applicability, and advance individual intercultural competence. Featuring examples and skill development exercises, this book will be appealing to professionals, practitioners, students, academics and policy makers in the field of international business, management and communication. “Dr. Matveev challenges his readers to develop their intercultural competence so as to make themselves more effective, more humane and more socially skilled in a world that increasingly involves extensive contact across various groups of people.” --from the Foreword by Richard W. Brislin, University of Hawaii “Dr. Matveev creates an awareness of intercultural competence by exposing the reader to the theoretical concepts and practical tools. Business people and academics will use this book to recognize and leverage the benefits of cultural diversity.” --Berthold Mukuahima, Director of Human Capital, Ohlthaver & List Group, Namibia “Dr. Matveev reveals how intercultural competence of professional multicultural teams helps in achieving corporate competitive advantage and longevity in a challenging globalized world. This book is very useful for managers, scholars and students who want to elevate the efficacy of intercultural relationship in their professional and personal lives.” --Srečko Čebron, Management Board Member, Sava Reinsurance Company, Slovenia /div