Psychological safety is not just a new fashionable term for “feeling good” at work

Posted on 11. November 202211. December 2023 by Tania Pellegrini

Psychological safety is not just a new fashionable term for “feeling good” at work. Creating psychological safety in your team is really the bottom line for any leader or team member wishing to create a high performing team.

Along with motivational drive and cognitive diversity, it is one of the 3 invisible forces that help a team strive. It creates bonding, enjoyment and accomplishment.

For pyschological saftey to flourish, team members need to feel that they are learning from one another

Psychological safety flourishes when individuals learn from one another.

For psychological safety to flourish, team members need to feel that they are learning from one another and can ask for help from each other. If individuals have a crazy idea that they wish to splurt out, they need to feel that they will not be laughed at. In addition, it is the knowledge and gut feeling that they can speak up and be the best version of themselves because they feel valued.

You can feel when a team has psychological safety. You walk into a meeting room and there is murmuring, laughter and ideas bouncing off the walls.

How do we create psychological safety in teams where each individual has a different mindset and different perspective of the world?

We need to learn what the cultural values of our individual team members are and learn how to motivate them accordingly. It’s about understanding who needs more support, who prefers to work independently, who is comfortable speaking up, who is afraid they might make you angry when they speak up, who loves and needs the limelight and show shies away from it.

Ensure psychological safety at every step of team formation

Step 1 – Forming

When the team is at its initial stages, start your meetings discussing individual values, not team objectives. Each team member should have a chance to describe their preferred communication techniques and values before judgments are formed. Judgements will be formed quickly, they are hard to avoid. Once they are formed they are hard to break. Therefore, ideally use this technique early on.

Step 2 – Storming

When the team is storming, let the storm play out. You will feel that something has changed in the team. They might be a bit quieter. Their foreheads may look sterner. They might even start sounding aggressive with one another. Storming is a natural part of team formation. During this phase individuals learn what their role is and what the individual strengths are of others.

If the storm continues, go back to step 1. Figure out which values are not given the space to flourish. This is a sign that individuals cannot really be themselves.

Step 3- Norming

During the norming phase psychological safety begins to take form. Individuals learn to appreciate the differences and strengths of the others. They will start to offer help to one another and exchange ideas. This might just be tentative initially, however eventually it will become the norm.

Step 4 – Performing

This is where the magic happens. During the performing phase, psychological safety is at its height. Individuals walk into the office smiling, singing, and ready for a day of bouncing ideas off each other. They acknowledge the occasional unsuccessful plan or an idea that truly is impossible to accomplish. However, psychological safety is also the sweet satisfaction of projects and ideas that play out and prosper exactly as foreseen and discussed.

Individuals respect one another for their strengths and for their diversity comprehending that it is real cognitive diversity that makes a team prosper.

How to change blame to accountability on your team

Posted on 26. June 202227. June 2022 by Tania Pellegrini

A few years ago I was working on a team with four other women. I thought we all got along beautifully; we laughed and joked constantly and seemed to have a thriving team culture.

However, often when something didn’t go well, my teammates tended to blame others rather than accept accountability for not achieving set tasks. At times they also blamed me. “Sorry,” they’d say, “we couldn’t finish this document on time because John from Finance didn’t send us the information.” Or, “This presentation isn’t ready because you haven’t yet given us approval for the photos we would like to use.”

Blame is a common factor when psychological safety is missing

Blame rather than accountability, is a common factor when psychological safety is missing from the team. Psychological safety is one the most important factors in creating thriving teams. In her book, the “Fearless Organization”, Amy Edmondson, explains that when there is psychological safety, there is a shared belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk, including accepting accountability.

We fear laughter and ridicule, therefore we blame others for our unaccomplished tasks.

Trust and respect generate psychological safety

For a team to feel that there is psychological safety, individuals need to trust and respect one another. Trust and respect allow for productive disagreements or giving feedback without feeling ashamed or disrespected.

In culture-diverse teams, building this level of trust and respect can be challenging. We see the world according to our different cultural influences. These cultural factors could be related to our gender, where we were brought up, our education or our profession. This in turn influences what we feel is the correct way to build trust with our colleagues. The same goes for how we feel about disagreeing with colleagues, how much information we wish to share with others, give feedback and even what motivates us to spend a few extra hours in the office or not.

We build trust through understanding the underlying values of our colleagues

To create psychological safety in a culture-diverse team, we need to be able to see and understand the perspective of our teammates. Do they believe in maintaining a very harmonious environment without any conflict? Do they therefore need time to get to know a person well before giving feedback? Or on the contrary, are they comfortable in a meeting saying exactly what is on their mind, irrespective of how long they’ve known the other person?

Even if we finally do not agree with their perspective we need to at least try to comprehend it. By demonstrating to our colleagues that we are open to seeing the world through their eyes, we start to create a level of trust and respect that is the first step to creating a psychologically safe environment.

How to change blame to accountability

Once we have trust and respect on the team, our colleagues will be more inclined to open up and be accountable for their tasks.

Does your team have psychological safety?

If you’re wondering whether there is pychological safety on your team, ask yourself these two simple questions:

If you make a mistake on this team, is it held against you?
Is it difficult to ask other members on the team for help?

If you answered yes to both questions, you’re probably on a team where individuals feel trusted and respected. If you answered no, think about why not.

A thriving team discusses culture to reach high performance

Posted on 27. April 202226. June 2022 by Tania Pellegrini

Thriving teams discuss culture… twice.

A few years ago, I was working in Brazil, leading a small team of Brazilian women. After a few months of working together on our project, I had the bitter surprise that one of my team members was spiralling…downward. She was losing motivation, losing trust in me and believed that I did not trust her. At that stage, I was concerned that our team was not only going to fail in reaching its set objectives, but that I personally was ruining what could have been an exciting and rewarding experience for this young woman.

In order for a team to thrive it needs to discuss culture… twice.

The first discussion needs to revolve around the personal cultural influences of each individual.

The second discussion should be an exploration of what kind of culture the team wishes to create.

A team’s various cultural influences create cognitive diversity

With the team in Brazil, I had made the mistake of starting off our project talking about the team’s objectives rather than talking about our cultural influences. A team’s various cultural influences create cognitive diversity. Teams that have high cognitive diversity are usually the most high-performing because they are able to view perspectives from very different angles and they have different means of processing information.

I should have been more inquisitive about the team’s cultural influences. By understanding my teammates’ values, I would learn what was important to them and in particular, what motivated them.

When we talk about cultural influences we are looking at all experiences in our life that have shaped the way we perceive the world. These influences affect our behaviour and the way we do business.

Thriving teams discuss culture to eliminate assumptions

When we talk about cultural influences we are not just discussing the values of the country we were brought up in. Our cultural influences have a far wider reach. Amongst other things, our cultural influences are related to:

where we were brought up in the world
education, (formal and informal)
profession
our religion
different abilities
our gender and our age, to name a few

cultural influences that influence our values and therefore the way we behave in the work environment

As each team member discusses their personal values and what influences them the most, it allows their colleagues to become aware of why that particular person behaves the way they do. This in turn helps eliminate forms of judgment and prejudice that can exist in a team.

“My manager is pretentious.”

Let’s look at the anecdote at the beginning of this article. For the sake of anonymity, I shall call my colleague Isabela. What had been happening when I finally noticed that Isabela was losing motivation and that she felt I did not respect her?

For weeks preceding this moment, Isabela had been giving me some important feedback on how to best reach my objectives when dealing with Brazilian stakeholders. I had not understood her feedback and therefore didn’t react to it. I had not understood her because I had not adapted my listening skills to her communication style. Isabela had been giving me feedback in a way that I was not accustomed to. When she noticed that I was not making any changes to my behaviour, she likely started to think the following:

“My manager is not interested in what I say to her. She probably thinks I am not experienced enough. She’s a bit pretentious and thinks she is the only one with any experience. I’m not going to give her any more suggestions, she doesn’t care anyway.”

Trust is the glue that helps a team reach high-performance

By then, Isabela was likely thinking that I didn’t trust her. Trust and therefore psychological safety is an important attribute of thriving teams. Individuals feel they can open up and discuss important matters without being laughed at or ignored, when there is trust. Trust gives them the feeling that it’s “safe” to be themselves. This is what leads to inclusion and to a positive team culture.

If I had taken the time to discuss Isabela’s values before starting off on our project, I would have discovered that she was very relationship-oriented and that she needed time and trust to open up and give feedback to her work colleagues.

Thriving team discuss culture twice

Step two of creating a thriving team is for the team to discuss culture… again. At this point though, the team needs to discuss what kind of culture the individuals would like to work in. When we talk about “team culture”, we are asking team members to acknowledge what behaviour is reinforced and rewarded by the team members. It therefore also indicates what behaviour is not acceptable.

It is the individuals of the team that should create the culture they wish be a part of. These team members know what motivates them to spend the extra hours dwelling over a problem. They also know (at this stage) how to deal with disagreement, and how to contradict one another in a way that will not offend other team members. They also know how to give one another constructive feedback.

Further topics of the team culture discussion can include items such as:

problem solving: for example what do you do when 2 out of 5 team members are not comfortable with brainstorming?
how does the team debate a topic when 3 out of 5 colleagues usually avoid conflict
how should the team make decisions when some of the members are not comfortable voicing their opinion

The discussion is the most important part of creating a positive high-performing team culture

The information shared and exchanged during such a discussion is the beginning of creating a safe environment. This discussion avoids making assumptions about your team members. Incorrect assumptions can lead to negative judgments that are often wrong.

If you feel your team might be lacking in communication or starting to mistrust one another, consider running through the above two activities to help create a thriving team culture.

Thriving Teams discuss culture

Posted on 7. February 20227. February 2022 by Tania Pellegrini

Thriving teams discuss culture

What is team culture? Culture is a set of norms (ways of behaving and communicating) that all members of the team consider acceptable. In a high-performing team, these norms are rewarded by all team members, consequently each individual feels they can be themselves. This motivates individuals and keeps the creative mind flowing. For that reason, team culture discussions also need to include what is shunned or not acceptable behaviour.

In project-based teams, team performance is often calculated according to whether or not the team finally achieved its task-related goal. Did they reach the deadline? Did the client say they were satisfied? Was the new product launched according to norms?

What constitutes team performance?

However, achieving the task-related goal is only one factor (1) of a high-performing team. According to the study below there are three factors that should be calculated each time:

The team achieves measurable output of the task it has been assigned
Team members ability to work together again in the future
Satisfaction of team members’ individual needs and goals

If individuals leave the project feeling they have not achieved personal goals or that they were not motivated to be the best possible version of themselves, they will eventually leave the team or even the company and search for something else; maybe even head to the competitor.

HR then needs to invest in recruiting and training new personnel and the team members then need to learn to work together from scratch. This can be costly and time consuming for each new project, not to mention it can create a toxic team culture.

How does a thriving team discuss culture?

So how do you discuss team culture that allows for each individual to feel they are giving the most of themselves and also being respected, listened to and taken seriously?

Start with understanding the personal communication preferences of each individual. Here are just a few examples:

How do they deal with disagreement?
How much information or detail do they need before being able to make a decision?
How much trust and interaction do they need before being able to give honest feedback to one another?
How do they deal with change? Do they thrive on risk and run head-first into a project and look at details along the way or do they need to plan the details before starting and even have a plan B and C for security?

2. Discuss how each of the individuals on the team might perceive these preferences

Look at similarities and differences. Diversity creates strength on a team because you have less group-think.

3. Decide together on acceptable group conducts and norms to improve collaboration

4. Think about what to do when the team strays from that norm

Thriving teams discuss culture and create the team culture they want to be a part of.

What are your thoughts on what makes a high-performing team? What motivates you in teamwork?

1. Ursula Brinkmann and Oscar van Weerdenburg, Intercultural Readiness, Four competences for working across cultures, page 140

Why strive for Cultural Intelligence in today’s global world?

Posted on 25. November 202125. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

A colleague of mine was in Thailand a few years back on a business trip. On her last day, her final meeting ran a little longer than planned. She was panicking slightly that she would miss her flight home and as she finally slipped into the back seat of the taxi, she asked the driver, “How long until we reach the airport?” The driver timidly answered with his polite Thai smile, “Sorry Ma’am, do you need to wash your hands?”

I remember laughing very heartily when I first heard this story.

Cultural Intelligence is the skill of interpreting cultural patterns and then adapting our communication to be more effective.

How can such a simple sentence be interpreted so differently to what was really intended? My colleague was really nervous that she was going to miss her return flight to the Netherlands, but the Thai taxi driver thought she needed to use a restroom. In some countries the word “toilet” can seem vulgar and therefore it isn't used. Even restroom was obviously not a word this taxi driver was confident using. So he kindly asked her if she needed to wash her hands, when in fact my colleague just wanted to know how long it would take to reach the airport.

Leading in business with Cultural Intelligence

So what does this have to do with cultural intelligence? If cultural intelligence (CQ) is the skill of interpreting cultural patterns and learning to adapt our communication skills accordingly, then this is a perfect example.

If we were brought up in a society that expects good communication to be clear and transparent, in a business meeting when we ask a simple question such as, “Will the delivery arrive on Thursday?” we expect a simple answer. "Yes it will"or "No I don’t think it will because… " But that “yes/no” answer is a pattern used by societies where it is considered acceptable behaviour to speak directly and actually it is also acceptable to use negative terms without creating discomfort or creating loss of face.

However, if we are dealing with somebody brought up in a culture where a direct, "no" can be considered rude or aggressive that “no” might never come and we are expected to learn a different pattern of communication. Imagine being in Qatar, Japan or Brazil. If you ask that such a “yes / no” question questions to a business associate whom you don't know well, it is likely that you will often receive an answer that could appear (in your ears) to mean "yes". You would need to spend quite some time interpreting what that, "yes" really means. So the first cultural intelligence skill here is to recognise the communication pattern and the second skill is adapting our communication to find out what the real meaning of the sentence could be.

4 steps to developing CQ

Cultural Intelligence allows us to learn the communication and behavioural patterns of certain societies and then apply different communication techniques accordingly.

There are 4 steps to developing Cultural Intelligence

Step 1: Drive

How driven (or motivated) are you to modify and adapt your communication to reach your goals? This is a question that only you can answer. How important is it to you that that delivery arrive on Thursday and what are you willing to do to find out the true answer?

Step 2: Knowledge

What do I know about the other culture? What do you know about that person’s cultural upbringing that can help you determine what their communication pattern means?

Let's go back to that simple question, "Will the delivery arrive on Thursday?" Is the person you are speaking to from a face-saving, indirect speaking culture where the word, “no” is not often spoken? Or have they spent most of their careers working in multicultural environments and ,“I’m trying my hardest” actually could mean that the delivery might arrive?

The pattern is just that; a pattern. It is not obvious (and certainly not a pattern) if only used once. The pattern becomes more obvious when several people of the same group use the same pattern. It can take several trials and discussions before you realise what the communication pattern is.

Step 3: Strategy

Once you have understood the communication pattern you are only half way there. You still have not worked out if the delivery is arriving on Thursday. This is where cultural self-awareness comes in. Ask yourself: "How do I usually communicate in such a situation? What do I need to do to figure out if the delivery is running late, lost somewhere, if the cargo truck has had an accident or if they are expecting me to pay off the customs officials to get the cargo into the country?"

In step three you create your strategy. This could sometimes be as simple as just asking an open question, for example, "What are the chances that the delivery arrive on time or what are the challenges that we are facing right now?" Or it could be a longer strategy. Do you need to leave the "group" meeting and invite your associate to drink a cup of tea maybe a beer in a trust-binding one-on-one discussion to be told what is really going on with the delivery?

Step 4: Put it into action

Whatever your strategy ends up being, step 4 is where you put it into action. This is where we sometimes have to come out of our comfort zone to learn what we are really capable of. If you are uncomfortable in this kind of "trust" creating one-on-one meeting, plan it out carefully.

Step 4 needs to be tried, analysed and tried again until it works and until you start to feel more comfortable. After each new action, ask yourself three questions:

How dit feel?
How did the other person react?
Would I do it again the same way or should I change something?

Only at this point do we really start to develop cultural intelligence.

How to reach full impact in your global calls

Posted on 14. November 20216. September 2024 by Tania Pellegrini

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

The first step to reaching full impact in your global calls in this age of less travel and more home-office, is to use cultural intelligence. Our business world seems to shrink day by day. When you look at your agenda in the morning it likely says:

07:30 am meeting with Japan
11:00 am with Switzerland
6:00 pm with the USA

We have conversations and discuss business strategies, on a daily basis, with people all over the globe. Yet, do we modify the way we describe our thoughts and strategies depending on whether we are speaking to a North American rather than a Korean? Have we learnt how to create a strong business relationship with a Finn, a Qatari and a Brazilian?

Today, more than ever before, our daily activities require us to be ever so alert about very different mindsets. If you want to reach full impact in your global calls, you need to switch off autopilot and consciously prepare your meetings in advance, according to the mindset of the people you are expecting to deal with. One way to do that is to use Cultura Intelligence.

What is Cultural Intelligence?

Cultural Intelligence is the skill of being able to interpret unspoken codes of culture and then switch our communication styles accordingly, so that we become more effective with the person with whom we’re dealing and therefore reach our goals

There are two parts to that statement above. Firstly, we need to learn to read the “unspoken codes”. That might entail understanding when a “yes” means a “no”; how to know whether the question being asked is used to display interest or displeasure, or perhaps knowing when a smile or a laugh is hiding loss of face or embarrassment.

The second part of the statement refers to modifying our communication. Without that adaptation, we often struggle in really reaching the impact we were hoping for. If you are successful in reading the unspoken code but persist on using the same communication and behaviour you started with, it becomes much harder to reach your goals.

Let’s look at an example of how to use cultural intelligence.

Asia-Pacific Conference call

Julie works for a multinational organisation in Western Europe where each colleague is responsible for a different world region. She has recently started a new role as Head of Asia Pacific. Once a month, Julie has a conference call with the managers and teams in her region, Australia, Vietnam, Japan, etc. It’s her responsibility during each call to learn what the best practices are from each team.

Julie prepares her meetings meticulously, practising the exact questions she will ask the group and then how she will distribute the information afterwards. What Julie hasn’t prepared, is how to understand the unspoken codes that the various cultural norms might influence.

Julie comes out of her first few meetings feeling as though she has not achieved what she wanted. Her goal is to supply her manager with the best practices from the region. The Australian team supplied her one and she may have received one or two other results. However, she is missing quite a few, namely, the Japanese best practices, and Japan is an important market for her.

Julie wonders to herself, why is it that she can rarely get the information she needs from the Japanese market?

Cultural intelligence can help you decipher the unspoken codes

Why is Julie not effective in communicating her request to the Japanese team? Let’s look at how Julie can use Cultural Intelligence (CQ) to figure our what she needs to do.

Step 1 of CQ is Drive. Is Julie driven? Yes, she is. She is motivated to modify her communication and behaviour to reach her goals.

Step 2 of CQ is Knowledge. This is a very important aspect. What does Julie know about the Japanese culture? Well, Julie has learnt through reading up on Japan, that Japanese people are usually collectivist, or group-oriented. This could mean that a colleague is not willing to show or share their personal opinion. They would usually rather express the opinion of the team. Therefore in Julie’s case, the Japanese team likely need to have a team meeting after each call to discuss what they have heard in the meeting and then be able to give their opinion on the subject as a team at a later date.

Lack of knowledge about cultural norms and values can lead us to false negative judgments

It is usually easier to read the unspoken codes if we have acquired an understanding of the different cultural values of the people we are dealing with. Without that knowledge we are often prone to rely on our biases and start judging our counterparts negatively. In this case, Julie might erringly think that the Japanese team members are not speaking up because they are not experienced enough or don’t understand her or that they are just plain shy.

Step 3 of CQ is Strategy. Once Julie feels she knows why the team is not speaking up, she then needs to create a strategy that will allow the Japanese team to display all their knowledge and talk about their best practices. There may be several different ways of doing this and each individual should determine what would work best for them.

Step 4 of CQ is Putting the strategy into Action. Once the strategy has been decided, put the thoughts into action and see what happens. The action can be verbal or non-verbal. It could be a different manner of asking questions or a distinct approach to writing emails. It might be as simple as transforming the method of building trust with the team.

I don’t have enough hours in the day to go through all of that

Well, yes, it can seem a little long-winded, but what happens if you don’t take the time to think through your strategy? Are you prepared to risk missing your desired goals and not reaching full impact in your global conference calls?

Realign your global remote teams to create a powerful team culture

Posted on 21. January 202129. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Are you ready for the next step? The start of a new year brings new-found energy with it. Now is an ideal moment to realign remote global teams to create a powerful and inclusive team culture. Bring your team communication to the next level in 2021 by building on what the team recently experienced. Although studies show that working from home can be beneficial for both the employee and the company, there are several challenges. "The main challenges that arise are communication, knowledge sharing, socialisation, performance evaluation and security."

Let's not get intimidated by the word "Culture". In our case, it means, "the way things are done around here". It is a set of accepted ways of behaving, communicating and getting things done that everybody on the team is comfortable with. When the team creates its own culture, each individual feels valued, included, engaged and is therefore more productive.

A strong team culture generates motivation, team-spirit, good communication and knowledge sharing. This in turn builds trust and helps the team deliver its goals. A thriving team culture is one that allows each team member to speak up and give their point of view on what their preferred communication style is.

The powerful team culture communication meeting

Bring the team together (officially) to discuss their team culture. Individuals have had the festive season to ponder over and informally discuss what they enjoyed and what they didn't enjoy about working from home. Use this as a catalyst.

Let's start with communication. An easy way to start the discussion right now it to ask about how productive or not the last six to eight months have been for each individual. Firstly, ask them to consider at what stage, and using which medium, they felt the communication flowed best? When you have good communication flow, creative ideas spill out.

Were they most productive over the phone, during a team zoom session, in one-on-ones, when the kids were in bed, or over a virtual coffee chat? Which communication means make them apprehensive and therefore less productive? Was it long-winded emails or short-handed WhatsApp messages? Individuals will talk plainly about what is best for them, as a result, you leverage on each individual's ideal situation. If you know that "John" is most creative spurting out quick WhatsApps then use it to help him shine and also share the best ideas.

remote team coffee breakSocialisation and trust create a strong team culture

When we socialise with our teammates, we learn more about them as people and not just as business colleagues. This creates trust, which in turn helps us and them to open up and share our ideas more freely. Socialisation is one of the areas that remote teams suffer the most in general and especially during lockdown moments. Socialising does not come naturally when individuals are sitting in front of their laptop feeling cut off from the world. Socialisation has to be consciously worked at on remote teams.

You could consider spending a few minutes at the beginning of team meetings running an ice breaker. Think about creating informal situations for colleagues to chat and meet even if it needs to be virtual. Virtual "aperos" work wonders. Socialisation and therefore trust create team spirit and allow each individual to feel valued.

Knowledge sharing and the dreaded 9pm conference call

If your multicultural team members sit in offices around the globe, it's vital to bring up the topic of time zones. Joining two-hour conference calls, three times a week at 9pm, after a long day of work is not sustainable and it is not very motivational. On top of that, if the participants are passive listeners rather than colleagues who need to actively speak, it becomes even worse.

the dreaded 9pm conference call

Therefore an important topic to discuss is always related to what time of the day these calls should be made. Ask the team at what time of the day they feel they are most productive. If the weekly facilitator is comfortable skipping dinner with the kids for a meeting, that doesn't mean everybody is. Too often, the accepted time zone for such meetings is where headquarters are based. For a motivation boost, consider rotating the meeting facilitator each week. This can be particularly engaging for the facilitator, and what's more, it allows individuals who are not very forthcoming to show a different side of themselves.

A team is made up of individuals

It's vital in such a "team culture creation session", to ensure everybody gets a chance to speak up. If you have a culturally diverse team, with members who perhaps come from hierarchical or collectivist cultures, you may have colleagues who are unwilling to speak up in such a public gathering. There are a number of ways to help them speak up. Tell them in advance what will be expected of them in such a meeting. Let them know that they will be expected to participate vocally. That will give them a chance to prepare something and not feel put on the spot when it occurs. Rotating the facilitator gives every team member a chance to speak up. As a result, it will also give the team a very different perspective each time on what is considered important and who prioritises what.

Keep the powerful team culture alive - write a team charter

Whatever the team decides as the best way to proceed, write it somewhere so you can look back at it occasionally. Choose four or five topics that are the most consequential during the discussion. These should be topics in which the team finds consensus. Use these topics to write the team charter. Most importantly, keep the discussion alive as time passes and as pressure increases. It's easy to stick to "good intentions" when we are not under pressure. However, when tension increases, we tend to fall back on what is the "normal" way of behaving for us. What is normal for one individual, may not be what was discussed as the best way for the team to move forward.

Remember, if culture is, "the way things are done around here," then it needs to be accepted by the whole team to allow each individual to feel included, valued and engaged.

Five Tips to Persuading Culturally Diverse Audiences

Posted on 23. September 20201. December 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

I used to work in a conventional office where from my desk I had vision of the much-loved coffee-corner. One afternoon, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a colleague sitting over his “latte” with a frown on his forehead. It was time for a break, so I walked over and asked how his day was coming along. He scrunched up his face in disappointment.“I’ve just presented to a new Chinese organisation that wanted to hear about our upcoming event. I don’t feel I persuaded them how exciting and worthwhile this new project is”. He continued his distressed explanation;

Hmmm, difficult one….

I didn’t have the knowledge then that I do now on the topic of persuading culturally diverse audiences. Although it may be too late for his project, I’d like to share some kind of remedy for this dilemma that many of us face when working in a global environment. How should we modify our presentations and persuasion techniques according to the cultural background of our audience?

Our cultural mindset influences how we filter what is said

Our cultural mindset influences how we think, problem-solve and how we find solutions to our challenges. As a result, it impacts what kind of information we need to motivate us and help us make decisions. It’s not just about how we understand language or how competent we are with the language being presented to us. Culture influences how we see the world and how the words we hear are filtered into thoughts. Those thoughts in turn are put together to create a picture or an idea. Let’s take a brief look at two studies done on the topic.

In short and in general the studies show that Americans are more analytical in the way they see the world and therefore problem-solve, whilst East Asians, or Japanese specifically in the first study, are more holistic.

How to adapt your presentation for persuading culturally diverse audiences

Firstly, avoid using the same set of slides for different groups. If you have the time, rearrange your slides between presentations. It’s almost a necessity for persuading culturally diverse groups. The subject you present remains the same but the way you present it differs. For example, multinational companies who wish to standardise their global processes according to regions or countries, should be able to do so. However, the way they convince a Korean, a Ghanaian or a Finn of why the process is standardised should differ. Each group will need a different set of inputs to convince them of the necessity of standardising.

Presenting to Holistic audiences

To persuade an audience that is more holistic, avoid going straight to the point with your opening slide. Ensure you give the big picture before talking about details. Holistic listeners usually look at objects as a whole. They find it difficult to remove an object from its surroundings or only focus on one small area. If you remove the context the object loses its significance.

Let's look at an example; if you’re talking about a product launch, it’s best if you relate it to a previous product, a previous launch, history of the products etc. Look at past examples and discuss past experiences. Discuss how the subject you’re presenting today is connected to a different one on the other side of the globe. Anything that could be related to your topic can be of interest to a holistic audience before zooming into your topic. Remember you are trying to motivate them to continue listening.

Presenting to analytical audiences

On the other hand, if you are presenting to an analytical audience, consider using bullet points and diving straight into the topic at hand to ensure your listeners do not start to yawn with boredom. You do not need to give the big picture to motivate the group or to help them follow your thread.

Thirdly, when persuading culturally diverse audiences, consider whether the group needs to hear, “how” to move forward or “why” to move forward. It is likely that they would like to hear both. However, the order you start with will either capture their interest or have them pick up their phones and start messaging. Generally, US American cultures tend to be more "how" oriented. French listeners usually prefer to know "why" they are doing something in order to be motivated.

When the presentation language is not the mother tongue of the listeners

Although the next point is not connected to holistic/analytical differences, it may be helpful when trying to persuade culturally diverse groups.

If the audience's mother tongue is not the one being used for the presentation, consider sending your presentation to them ahead of time. This allows the listeners to read through it beforehand. As a result, they become familiar with the vocabulary and can prepare any questions they may have.

If you don’t give your audience this opportunity you may find that an audience from a very hierarchical, face-saving culture may not react or ask questions, leaving you wondering whether they have understood at all.

Lastly, if presenting to a collective audience for which face-saving and hierarchy may be important values, make sure you insert several coffee breaks in the presentation. This allows the group to gather away from the speaker’s view to discuss issues and prepare their questions for the next session.

Financial Times or Caffè Latte? Conference-call with Japanese.

Posted on 8. September 202025. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

An Italian sports-event manager, Elisabetta, has just finished a conference call with Japanese clients. She switches off her webcam and thinks about the meeting she just held. Her gut feeling is that she wasn’t very successful but she can’t really place her finger on what went wrong. Why did she have the feeling that her Japanese business associates didn’t really consider her to be competent and reliable?

We often hear that we need to adapt when working with people of different cultural backgrounds. Is that still important with the current pandemic? Travel is close to impossible so we don’t need to learn to use chopsticks in Japan or avoid using our left hand at the table in Qatar. Do we still need to worry about whether we should “bow, kiss or shake hands”?

It is just as important to adapt your style in virtual communication. Actually, it’s perhaps even more important. It is easy to misinterpret a message through email. There is usually little context to help you grasp the real message being sent.

Building Trust

If trust is the key to creating high-performing multicultural teams or earning new clients, then we need to learn to build trust through our virtual communication, be it a conference call with Japanese or an email to a Swiss person. The way we build trust with an Indian is different to how we build trust with a Finn or a Filipino.

Let’s go back to Elisabetta. Nobody had ever told her that firstly she needs to control her emotions in Japanese business meeting and secondly that silence is common. Silence can mean many different things in Japan and should not be interrupted, especially not in virtual meetings.

However, knowing something is not necessarily automatically going to help. Milton Bennet says that intercultural sensitivity is not natural and that ‘Adaptation means we need to consciously shift our perspective and intentionally alter our behaviour[1].

Japanese tend to say,”Only a dead fish has an open mouth”.

Italians tend to wear their heart on their sleeves. If they’re happy they’ll smile and laugh with joy, if they’re angry they’ll grimace with frustration. If they’re confused, their forehead will wrinkle in a puzzled frown. Japanese tend to say, “Only a dead fish has an open mouth”. This means, a true professional controls his/her feelings in business meetings. Loss of control is deemed unprofessional. Therefore, Elisabetta’s gut feeling was probably spot on. Her meeting was likely unsuccessful due to her constant large gestures and the fact that she kept interrupting the silence that she was “hearing” from the Japanese side.

Silence to Elisabetta means there is a lack of communication or misunderstanding and she feels she needs to break the silence. Elisabetta adds more and more information into the silence meanwhile her constant chatter doesn’t allow the Japanese clients to digest what she is saying.

Building trust with your clients, colleagues or service providers of different cultural backgrounds requires “code-switching”. This means adapting your communication and behaviour. Whether we’re writing an email, leading a conference call or meeting face-to-face, we need to deliberately work at certain skills that are not innate. This could be for example, not using too many facial gestures (in Japan) or learning the cultural values of your multicultural team to know what motivates them. It could also require learning to give feedback indirectly to an Indian service provider.

Step 1: An effective conference call with Japanese, Indians or Finns – Know yourself

The first step to becoming interculturally competent is to know yourself. Take a good look at yourself and ask, “What are my preferred ways of communicating? How do I usually behave in meetings and in situations of conflict and how do I problem solve?”

Let’s take a concrete example. You are the project lead of your team. Your preferred way of communicating is through email and you tend to be very task-oriented. You write short messages and get straight to the point in all your messages. In most cases you don’t even add a greeting or a salutation because you find it unnecessary.

The software company you have outsourced in India is not meeting your timeline needs. This frustrates you because you cannot accept any more delays in your project. You need to consider the best way to tell the Indian service provider that you are not happy with their service. Typically you would do that in a short email with bullet points that specify what you are not happy with, expecting this to get them moving faster. (Stop…. don’t click on send…yet).

Step 2: Effective conference-calls: Learn the values of the ‘other’ culture

The second step is to learn the values of the other person. What is the cultural background of this person? How might they perceive me and my communication style according to their values?

Let’s go back to our scene. Indians are generally relationship-based. As a result, they like to exchange personal information with the person they are dealing with. Secondly, they are usually high-context communicators, that is to say, they read into the body language that is being used to interpret the message rather than just listen to the words. Words that are negative, like, “no”, can create disharmony and loss of face. Moreover, they are quite hierarchical, therefore they usually wait for the manager to give them instructions on what needs to be done.

Therefore your short, negative bullet-point message, straight to the operator is unlikely going to get the response you are expecting.

What should you do?

Step 3: Code-switching – adapting your style

The third step is to ‘code-switch’. That is to say, adapt your behaviour and communication to motivate the person you’re dealing with and still get the point across.

Code-switching can be verbal or non-verbal. It’s the way you adapt your emails or even which communication medium you decide to use. It means saving face by giving indirect negative feedback. It also means that your once a fortnight task-related mails may not be the most efficient way of reaching timelines.

Is email the correct medium to use in our above case? Switching on the webcam in a conference call with Japanese or Indians could be more effective as visual aid helps read body language. Consider what words can be used that are not negative (see previous article on building trust remotely.) Especially consider whether your conversation needs to be addressed to the manager of the company or to the operator.

So how do you think Elisabetta needs to code-switch with her Japanese clients? Should she read and cite the Financial Times to improve their perspective of her competency or should she rather sip on a caffè latte in a weekly non work-related virtual, “webcam-ed” exchange with them?

[1] Milton Bennett, “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity”, Intercultural Press, 1993. 21-71.

“Team Culture – Europe Is Getting Back Into Motion – Now Is The Time To Realign and Create a thriving Team Culture.”

Posted on 27. April 202025. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Europe is slowly opening up after the COVID-19 lockdown. After weeks of isolation people are finally allowed to go out for a walk, factories are re-starting their production machines and office employees will soon be starting back. Now is the time create a thriving team culture.

Each team member has had their own difficult situations to overcome; some have had to share home office with kids who have been doing home-schooling, others who usually love being active are feeling claustrophobic at not being able to exert themselves in the gym or on a long outdoor bike ride. Maybe over the last few weeks work has not always been foremost on their minds. Now is the ideal time to “re-align” and create or revise your team culture. Many of us have been obliged recently to contemplate what matters to us most. What are our values, whether at home or at work.

What is Culture?

Culture is often overlooked by leaders because it can seem too abstract. Actually, it’s quite concrete once we sit down and discuss it with our team. A thriving team culture creates cohesion, pride, team spirit, accountability, open communication, inclusion, productivity and therefore a high-performing team. Creating a team culture is the way to bring that cohesion and team spirit back to the forefront if it is has slipped a bit during lockdown.

What are we referring to when we say culture? Culture is a set of norms accepted and encouraged by the group; acceptable ways of behaving, communicating and getting things done, for example:

Giving Feedback: What is the acceptable way that our group gives feedback to one another?
Risk-taking: Do we plan and wait until we are more “certain” or jump and “fail fast”.
Disagreeing: Is it acceptable to disagree openly with another teammate in a group meeting and encourage constructive conflict or is that rather frowned upon?
Decision-making: What is a productive way for us as a team to make decisions?
Problem-solving: How do we problem-solve when we have little time on our hands, etc.

The team creates it own culture

There are different methods of creating your thriving team culture. What is essential is that it be created by the team, not a few individuals or leaders. Below is a 4-step activity you can start with, there are obviously other methods. This exercise can be done face-to-face or virtually. If you plan to do it virtually then consider planning 4 short sessions rather than one long session.

If you do the below 4-step activity you need to invest time in the discussion part of the activity (step 2). Give every team member the opportunity to express themselves and allow for possible introverts to have their say about how they also envision the team functioning well.

The important message here is that it is the team that creates the culture it believes in. You’ll need to discuss common values and therefore have every member speak up. This could be difficult on a virtual culturally diverse team, so prepare well for that moderation hurdle.

Step 1 to a thriving team culture: Plot a Culture Map

Each team member plots themselves on a Culture Map along 4 scales related to behaviour or communication. Each scale shows each team member’s preference (see sample culture map below). The four scales can be varied, but those that create strong discussions often are:

Building trust and managing conflict
Problem Solving techniques
Decision making – do you feel the need to be involved or not
Dealing with uncertainty / risk-taking,

Similarities and differences between team members are more obvious once everyone is plotted on the map. Remember, differences can be complementary and can enhance creativity and problem solving solutions, therefore don’t play them down.

Step two: Discussion

This is the most essential part of the exercise. Do not skip it. This is the time for discussion. Let’s zoom in on scale 1 above and use it as an example.

Ask each person to discuss their preferences according to what they plotted. In the above example, which looks at communication and how we give feedback or disagree, Elena might come across to Emmanuel as being domineering or aggressive. She may not realise it. You could probably discuss here what the benefits are of having somebody always play devil’s advocate and on the other hand discuss how important it might be with clients to have colleagues who steer away from conflict, such as Emmanuel.

Expect Disagreements

Consider how team behaviour might differ according to what Elena’s role is. If she is the leader of the team it might come across differently compared to if she is not. You might discuss what conflict actually means to the individuals. For some it could mean saying, “I think your plan is really inefficient and our client will hate it.” This could come across as quite aggressive for some Asian cultures. For others, conflict could be as simple as a gentle disagreement. Another topic to discuss here is when (if ever) do the individuals feel comfortable disagreeing; do they need a relationship of trust before being able to disagree?

Discussing preferences creates inclusion

This discussion is the heart of the workshop and to creating a thriving team culture. Each person openly speaks about what their preference is. Discuss each scale and only then move onto step 3. If you do this as a virtual workshop you may prefer to do one complete scale from step 1 to step 4 during each virtual session.

Step three: Write a Strategy for a thriving team culture

Discuss a strategy to be more efficient (if necessary) thereby creating your ideal team culture. For the above scale, your discussion might start with:

How can we come up with good ideas and exchanges in the future and get everyone involved, including those who don’t like conflict?
Let’s create more open/transparent discussions within the team?
Ensure everyone on the team is listened to, both the risk-takers and the risk-averse even though some of them have stated they don’t like to enter conflict?
Can this knowledge help us run more productive meetings?

Step four: Team Charter

Write your Team Charter. The team follows the “behaviour and norms” of the charter. It is important to write them somewhere the whole team has access to and each member can occasionally go back to them and review them.

The Team Charter should be “Our Culture”: Not yours, not mine, but ours. It is a culture in which each team member thinks: “I feel comfortable working here because my values are appreciated. I feel I can be myself and therefore it brings out the best of me.”