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Team performance is a crucial aspect of any collective work and can be a difference between success and failure. Team-building is, therefore, an important component of organizational work that requires sufficient attention on the leaderships part. In the globalized contemporary world, with the personnel often coming from different cultural backgrounds, organizing such diverse teams can become a challenge in its own right. Therefore, the research question for this study is what the factors that contribute to effective team-building across cultures are.
The first avenue of approach to this topic is identifying the factors that provide for effective team-building in general, mainly on an organizational level. Research suggests that the nature of leadership employed in a given organization is crucial in this regard. According to Zander (2020), team-oriented leadership, which largely amounts to the ability to set common goals in terms understandable for each team member, has a positive impact on the efficiency of team-building. On the other hand, considerable power distance in a given organization is found to be inversely proportional to team-building efficiency (Zander, 2020). Another study suggests the importance of learning culture within the organization as a factor that can influence team-building positively. According to Potnuru et al. (2019), higher levels of learning culture correlate strongly with more efficient team-building. This finding is important for team-building across cultures in particular because learning is the essential component of intercultural interaction. Thus, the research suggests that team-building efficiency per se depends on the leadership, which needs to foster the organizational culture of learning and establish clear communication with every team member.
Another aspect of the topic is what factors have so far been identified as essential for intercultural team-building specifically. In this regard, the research stresses the same theme of communication that was identified in the previous paragraph as crucial for team-building in general. For instance, Froese et al. (2016) note that the team members proficiency in each others languages contributes positively to the performance of a culturally diverse team. It is important to note that the issue here is not a mere ability to understand each other, as one shared language would be enough for that. Rather, the ability to articulate thoughts in the interlocutors native language and using the concepts inherent in it is what the authors identify as the crucial factors for building intercultural teams.
Finally, yet another part of the research question is what individual qualities in team members are conducive to better team-building. In this respect, the research identifies motivational cultural intelligence as an essential factor. Bogilovi and `kerlavaj (2016) emphasize that the willingness to learn about other cultures and the ability to change ones concept of them is a strong predictor of effective team participation in diverse environments. Similarly, Gooden et al. (2017) show how motivational cultural intelligence that is, the willingness to interact with people of other cultures transits to behavioral cultural intelligence that is, the ability to successfully interact in practice.
To synthesize, all three aspects of the topic identified above converge on the themes of communication and learning. Studies of team-building per se stress the leaders responsibility for communicating the tasks to each member to create shared understanding, and studies of team-building across cultures emphasize linguistic competency. In a similar vein, research conducted through an organizational lens emphasizes a given organizations learning culture, and studies on an individual level focus on the team members motivational cultural intelligence. As of now, analyzing these two themes seems to be the most promising approach to answer the research question posed.
References
Bogilovi, S., & `kerlavaj, M. (2016). Metacognitive and motivational cultural intelligence: Superpowers for creativity in a culturally diverse environment. Economic and Business Review, 18(1), 55-76. Web.
Froese, F. J., Kim, K., & Ang, A. (2016). Language, cultural intelligence, and inpatriate turnover intentions: Leveraging values in multinational corporations through inpatriates. MIR: Management International Review, 56(2), 283-301.
Gooden, D. J., Creque, C. A., & Chin-Loy, C. (2017). The impact of metacognitive, cognitive, and motivational cultural intelligence on behavioral cultural intelligence. International Business and Economics Research Journal, 16(3), 223-230.
Potnuru, R. K. G., Sohoo, G. K., & Sharma, R. (2019). Team building, employee empowerment, and employee competencies: Moderating role of organizational learning culture. European Journal of Training and Development, 43(1/2), 39-60.
Zander, L. (2002). Interpersonal leadership across cultures: A historical exposé and a research agenda. International Studies of Management & Organization, 50(4), 357-380.
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