High Performing Global Teams Thrive on Trust

Posted on 21. April 20203. December 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Three steps to building trust remotely

High performing global teams thrive on trust.

If trust is the glue that connects and creates a High Performing Team, and if trust is created through spontaneous “coffee-corner chit-chat” or sharing a beer or coke after work, it’s no wonder we often struggle to feel connected to our team members when working remotely.

Consequently, our virtual communication techniques should replicate what we do (often without much effort) in a conventional team. If you’d like to lead a high performing global team, try these three small gestures below to create the bond which builds trust. In addition, it should in turn build team spirit and accountability, which finally helps increases team performance.

1. Replicate the office-corner virtually

Invite a colleague for a morning coffee just to say, “Hi”. The invitation is literally for 5 minutes. It doesn’t involve talking about work, it is purely to say, “How are things?” Don’t forget to switch on the camera.

This might seem unnatural initially, but just think about what happens naturally at the coffee corner in the office. While preparing your preferred drink you see colleagues from other departments and business units and you have that quick, 3-minute chat about the weekend, about your kids, about movies or perhaps about a new running route you’ve just discovered.

Create a bond

What is so important about these quick exchanges? These short dialogues show who you are as a person other than just as a business colleague and they create a bond. Consequently, by opening up like this, we show, and see in return, a human side to the person that we find difficult to imagine through email exchanges. Most importantly, we discover what we have in common and these commonalities are what help us build a relationship, build trust and therefore accountability. It is trust and accountability between individuals that help high performing global teams thrive.

2. Virtual after-work drinks

Before Coronavirus this seemed like a far-fetched thought. However, this seems to have changed since we have been locked up for weeks and craving conversation. As a result, it seems more natural and it’s been great to see how many people have picked up on it.

Invite your colleagues for a drink after work. You grab a beer, they grab a coke, an ice -tea, a prosecco, maybe a cappuccino depending on what time zone you are all in. Whatever the refreshment, it’s time for relaxing and talking about whatever comes to your mind and exchanging on a more personal note. This is not the 3-minute chat from above. Allow some time to give people the opportunity to open up.

If you’re not a natural talker, or you have introverts on the team who might struggle to open up, think of easy subjects to talk about that. For example, travel ideas, food, national celebrations and traditions in your colleagues’ countries that you might be curious about.

3. Include ice-breakers into your weekly virtual ops meetings

In a conventional face-to-face meeting, usually one or two people arrive a few minutes earlier than the crowd and a short discussion starts. As each person slips into the meeting room the discussion opens up with more people adding what they have to say and each new added sentence gives us insight into the person sitting in front of us.

Often, these spontaneous discussions lead to creative ideas. This is a an element that is often missing in team conference calls. Namely, when we join conference calls where one person is sitting in Kuala Lumpur, one in Sydney and a third in Stockholm, we don’t take the time to break the ice this way. We log-into the meeting one minute before it starts, the host welcomes everyone and the meeting begins.

Here are some ice-breaker ideas

If you’re running a virtual team meeting find some 3-4 minute icebreakers you can use. Make them short and fun. They can be as personal or impersonal as you feel is appropriate for the team. For example, ask each team member to send a photo of themselves when they were 5 years old. The others have to guess who it is.

Likewise, ask everyone to upload their favourite film /book/football player/pair of shoes and you need to guess which object belongs to which team member. Remember, high performing global teams thrive on trust and trust means letting the other person see how competent you are, how reliable you are, or what you have in common.

Switch on the camera to build trust

Always remember to switch on your camera in these sessions and find a way to convince the others to do so too. It is extraordinary how a smile can help interpret emotions that are usually very dfficult to read over the phone or through email. The visual aid helps us read between the lines when communicating with people who don’t normally say exactly what they think.

These easy to apply communication techniques help us create a connection with our colleagues, which allows us to bond and thereby create trust. Without trust and without accountability team spirit crumbles and when it does, your goals slowly become unattainable.

If you’re interested in our “Global Remote Teams” Course please see here.

Inclusion: It’s as simple as “listening” & learning cultural patterns

Posted on 2. March 202025. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

A few years ago, the company I was working for sent me off to Brazil to lead a small team of 4 Brazilian women, all with different work and life experiences. The manager, who was about 35 years old, was the most experienced and the least experienced was an assistant who was about 24. I was excited to be heading there and to learn a whole new set of cultural patterns.

After a few months with the team, I thought it was time to analyse how things were moving forward and if I had considered all the cultural inclusion skills I had learnt. Had I built trust with my team? Had they built trust with one another? Was our communication clear? I asked myself all these questions, and more, and I was fairly content with my answers and gave myself a pat on the back. Boy was I wrong! About a week later, I realised how badly I had been reading Brazilian cultural patterns when one of my team members, (let’s call her Lia), told me how incompetent I was at dealing with Brazilians. Let me tell you what happened.

The meeting in Sao Paulo

Lia and I headed to Sao Paulo for an important meeting. I had 90 minutes to convince a university professor to allow about 100 of his students to do a paid internship with our company. Seems simple right? Well, I thought it was going to be simple. I’d had several similar meetings before, in different countries, and until then I had been successful with my request. I knew the subject matter very well, and I thought I knew what the outcome was going to be. Consequently, I entered the meeting on “Autopilot”. Mistake #1. I didn’t pick up on little signals and body language (the cultural patterns) that the professor was sharing throughout the discussion to show his disinterest. Therefore, I wasn’t flexible enough to change my mode of communication or my persuasion techniques.

“I entered the meeting on Autopilot: Mistake n. 01”

At the end of the 90 minutes, Lia and I walked out of the meeting, our heads down, unsuccessful. The professor was not going to allow his students to join our project. Lia and I stepped into the taxi that took us back to the airport. I was speechless and in shock at how badly the meeting had just gone.

After a few minutes, I turned to Lia and asked, “What just happened in there?” She looked at me and suddenly burst into tears. She was crying and yelling through her sobs, “Tania, you haven’t been listening to me!!!” I’ve been telling you for months that you cannot do things here your way, you have to do it the Brazilian way!” “What? What do you mean you’ve been telling me for months?” “Well, to start with, about one month ago in our team meeting, I said A, B and C. Three weeks ago, I said, X,Y and Z and last week I repeated A, B and C, but you just ignore what I say!”

I hadn’t heard because I didn’t know how to listen

Ooooooh…What a disaster. Lia had been giving me feedback about how to read the cultural patterns to be more efficient with my Brazilian counterparts, but I hadn’t “heard” her feedback. I hadn’t heard it because I didn’t know how to adapt my listening techniques to her communication methods. For Lia, hierarchy was important and I was her Manager. Therefore, she found it difficult to speak to me directly, she didn’t want to seem disrespectful, which means her feedback was very indirect, so indirect that I didn’t understand it. It just went straight over my head.

Lia believed that I didn’t trust her because I didn’t modify my communication according to her suggestions. In her eyes, I was not interested in her opinion or in her ideas. This was all mistaken of course, but that was her perspective. What’s more, I realised that I was probably about to lose the respect and trust from the rest of my team unless I made some changes quickly.

“I had only been listening with my ears”

I hadn’t understood Lia because I had only been listening with my ears and because I was convinced that my method of getting things done was the right one. Lia was putting far more than just words into the message she was delivering. In fact, the words she used were of little significance. Most of the significance came from her body language and the subtle hints she was giving me while smiling.

Did I think that because she smiled while giving me the hints that they were not so important or not serious? For me a smile typically means agreement. Did I not go out to lunch with her often enough and share in personal chatter enough? Maybe that would have created a level of trust with her that could have helped her open up to me differently, or in a way that I would have understood. If I had done more personal sharing, maybe I would have learnt more about her communication techniques and learnt what was feedback and what wasn’t.

Each one of us has a different mindset and therefore a different way of communicating

When we work in culturally diverse teams, each one of us has a very different mindset and a different way of seeing the world and therefore of behaving and communicating. What is a pattern of showing respect in one culture can seem a pattern of disrespect in another.

If we want to be inclusive and bring out the best of each one of our colleagues, irrespective of their background, we need to learn their cultural patterns and the perspective of each one of our teammates is. We cannot assume that just because our company’s corporate culture says, “This is the way we do things around here,” that each individual is going to be comfortable following that path. Inclusion means taking the time, making time, to get to know who you’re working with even though you think that lunch time chit chat or coffee machine chit chat takes you away from reaching your deadlines.

TING

Take a look at the Chinese character below, Ting, (which means to listen). We can learn a lot about listening from our Chinese colleagues. “Ting”, is made up of 4 smaller characters, each one a component of what we should use to listen; our ears, our eyes, undivided attention and an open heart.

How to create engagement in your global team using inclusive feedback

Posted on 25. February 20201. December 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

How often are you asked by your colleagues, “Could you take a look at my presentation and tell me what you think?” This seems like a harmless task. So you take a look and say, “It looks good, maybe just change the blue border around the graph to green.”

Hmmm. What do you think has just been understood by Lila, the colleague who asked for your opinion? Inclusion is not about treating everybody equally, it is about treating each and every individual according to what gives them a feeling of belonging.

a) She thinks she´s done a great job and will just change the blue border to green, or

b) She thinks you hate the whole presentation and she will be up all night to rewrite it all.

Feedback is hard enough when we are dealing with people who have a similar mindset to ours. We´re usually a little uncomfortable telling somebody that the work they have done is not quite what was expected. When we give feedback to people who were brought up in a similar environment to ours, we are usually aware of the best way to do it. We pick up on small patterns of behaviour that are are part of the culture we grow up in. As we grow up, we see, listen and copy how people act and react to what we say and how we say it; be it at school from friends and teachers and then when we join the work-force our colleagues and managers use patterns that we recognise and we copy knowing it works.

However, it is all too easy to make unknown errors working in culturally diverse teams and assuming that just because we work for the same company and are aware of the corporate culture, that we are comfortable using the same communication techniques.

If you´ve been brought up in north-western Europe where one of the most important values is often honesty and equality, then feedback can be to the point and direct. You know that the person you´re talking to will likely appreciate your honesty and not take any offence in what you say. Therefore, with our above sample, Lila will literally only go and change the blue line to a green line and then feel her presentation is complete.

However, if Lila happened to grow up in, let´s say, Far East Asia or Latin America, where generally society values relationship-building and saving Face more that telling the “absolute truth”, then she might have understood that her presentation was indeed not good at all and needed to be redone, completely. In these societies generally feedback is given in a far more indirect manner, using techniques such as not mentioning what was not done well. So the fact that the person above only mentioned the colour of the line around the graph and nothing else, could be interpreted to mean that everything that was not mentioned was not to be re-worked.

Let´s look at the above example again and see how the feedback can be treated if Lila really is from a culture where trust is created through relationship-building and face-saving is important. Ideally you create an environment where a discussion can take place rather than just give your opinion:

Firstly, always give feedback one-on-one, never in public

2. Rather than give your opinion, ask the other person what they think about the work they have just done; “So Lila, how do you feel the presentation looks?

3. If Lila says she likes it, (and yet you think there are still some adjustments to be made) then perhaps ask, “If you had to give it a score from 1-10, what score would you give it?” Lila replies, “I´d give it an 8”. “So,” you reply, “how can we bring it from 8 to 9?” and that is where the feedback discussion begins.

Being culturally savvy means learning to read communication patterns that are different to the ones you were brought up with and knowing when to change your communication techniques (verbal and non-verbal) according to the cultural background of the team member you are facing. If you work in a multicultural team, that could mean either changing your communication with every person on the team or deciding with the team openly and up front which communication techniques will be used to express such thoughts. That would be “creating the team culture” a method of behaviour and communication that everyone on the team is happy with.

3 actions that create an inclusive culture

Posted on 15. May 201925. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Being aware of our biases is the first of three actions that help us create an inclusive culture.

A few weeks ago I was staying in a hotel in central Amsterdam. I had just gone out for breakfast and strolled back into the hotel to go up to my room. I stepped into the elevator and a young woman followed me in. The trip up to my 5th-floor-room took around 10 seconds. Within less than 5 seconds, I had summed up the young woman. I started to panic thinking, oh no, she’s a drug addict, she’s going to steal my purse, I won’t make it to my business appointment this afternoon and I won’t be able to fly home tomorrow without my passport !!!!

Our unconscious bias is intuitive and leads us to false judgments

All of that in 5 seconds. Of course she did nothing of the sort. She was a 26-year-old (I think) Italian tourist who had just been out partying all night and forgot to take her key-card out with her. So why did I, in less than 10 seconds, judge her so harshly?

That was my unconscious bias talking. I was piecing together information that was missing and I pieced it together wrongly. I had 5 pieces of information.

She had droopy-looking eyes at 7.30am
She was very skinny
She had a bad complexion
She hadn’t pressed a floor button when she entered the elevator with me
She said in a strong-accented, broken English, while bringing two fingers up to her mouth, “I need cigarette.”

Assumption is the mother of all disaster...

I pieced together the very little information I had and all of a sudden, I thought I had a starving drug addict who needed a quick fix and was following me to my room to steal all my money.

I only realised my mistake when we finally reached the fifth floor and I insisted she exit the elevator before me. I almost pushed her out and she resisted, shaking her head. Finally she found the energy to lift 4 fingers and say in Italian, “Quattro”. So, I pressed the fourth-floor button and she then stepped out. I started laughing at myself, terribly embarrassed for making all of those assumptions about her in 5 seconds and vowed not to do it again.

Our conscious mind is slow and takes a lot of effort

Our conscious mind is slow and effortful, our unconscious mind is fast and intuitive.

It is our unconscious mind that makes assumptions very quickly when we see someone for the first time. Our mind sets judgments according to our past experiences. However we have so many past experiences that our mind needs to filter a lot and we cannot remember everything. We just remember bits and pieces and make our judgments accordingly. Therefor we usually fill in the gaps according to what makes sense to us. If I had an affinity towards this Italian tourist, I could have made her into an ‘Amy Winehouse-style-rockstar’ and would probably have asked her for an autograph. But I couldn’t “see” any affinities, (until she spoke Italian), so I invented the worst.

Three actions that create an inclusive culture

We make these false negative judgments often with our diverse colleagues at work. Here are three actions that can help us create an inclusive culture in the office:

be aware of our biases to avoid making assumptions
discover where our diversities can be complementary rather than a threat and
use small conscious actions to ensure everybody on the team feels valued

What is Diversity?

Diversity is everything that creates differences between us that can generate a different mindset. Age for example; Millennials have a different way of looking at productivity compared to baby-boomers. They believe more flexibility means being able to be more productive. Diversity can refer to our ethnicity, our national culture, our sexual orientation, gender, different physical abilities, the region we were brought up in, our socio-economic background, our education… the list goes on.

Have you ever interviewed a young engineering student and then directly afterwards interviewed a communication student? They seem to be planets apart in the way they describe their attributes and skills and how they demonstrate motivation for the job. So what would be an inclusive action here? Modify your listening skills to take in more than just the words those students are using otherwise you might miss out on hiring the best person for the job.

Diverse teams can take a little longer to become high performing than homogenous teams[1]

Once diverse teams get past the initial stages of prejudging, stereotyping and making assumptions, they can be more effective. We cannot assume though, that just because we hire the eight most creative diverse team members for our next project, that we are going to create an inclusive culture. Diversity without inclusion can lead to underperforming teams[2].

How can we create an inclusive culture?

Avoid exclusion. Not all differences are visible. The invisible differences are generally the ones that generate filling in the gaps with prejudgments. We then start labelling our colleagues as ‘unreliable, lazy, hasn't been with the company long enough, too long in the company, wants to be noticed, shy…’ . If I see that you have different skin colour to mine or if I hear that you have a different accent, I will put two and two together, ask you questions about yourself and eventually will know where our differences lie. This will help me understand how I may have to modify my communication with you or think twice about interpreting what you say. Maybe I will consider the best way to give you feedback in order to not offend you.

Invisible differences mean more questions and likely more effort

However, when the diversity is not so obvious, we don’t realise that we need to modify our behaviour because we don’t ask our colleagues the same questions that could enlighten us to their differences.

Imagine you have a team member who doesn’t hear very well. You don't see the tiny hearing aid she wears, so it is difficult for you to be aware of this disability. If you don’t know about her disability, you won’t make any changes to the way you communicate with her. She may end up feeling a little excluded from the team because she isn’t able to leap in and exchange ideas as freely at meetings, feeling she may not have understood all the details. You also note that she doesn’t offer many suggestions at meetings and you write her off as not very interested in the project and you end up hardly ever asking her for input. In the end, she will likely feel excluded and lose motivation.

Ask yourself which actions you can modify to create an inclusive culture

However, if you know she has a hearing disability, you start to consider how you can include her more in the team meetings. ‘Should I look at her when I speak so she can read my lips? Should I use Skype with camera rather than just the phone when we speak to help her get the message? Should I ensure the whole team knows about this so that when we have team meetings everybody is more careful?’ That is Inclusion. Making every team member feel valued.

Creating an inclusive culture means avoid making assumptions

Inclusion means to avoid making assumptions that we are all the same. We are all different and we need to be treated differently. We think differently, behave differently, react differently and therefore we need to communicate differently with each of the people on our team. Inclusion is about modifying small actions to make everyone on the team feel valued and feel as though they belong. This allows everyone to feel they can be themselves.

A person who feels they belong, will be more motivated to participate in reaching objectives of the team. They will feel that they have everything to gain in being creative and the team spirit will soar, meaning more retention and better collaboration[1]. Inclusive teams make better business decisions up to 87% of the time and take decisions two times faster with half of the meetings.[2]

Small conscious actions can create inclusiveness

What kind of small actions create inclusiveness? They are simpler than you think. Open up, be curious about your colleagues and think before you speak. Say good morning to everyone when you enter the office. Occasionally go and have a coffee with someone you normally wouldn’t share a coffee with. Ensure you give the opportunity to introverts to speak up in meetings. Be aware of your biases when interviewing job candidates or when considering who to promote.

As a test, write a list of the people you promoted last year. How similar were they? Were they all men, all women, all white, all engineers, same age, same nationality, same education background, same outgoing personality? If so, why?

Break bad habits...

Even when we have good intentions, our assumptions get in the way, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you occasionally say the wrong thing. Put the error into your bag of 'things to be aware of'. I was at a networking conference in Zurich a couple of years ago where I met an Australian woman who had just moved to Switzerland. She was wearing a wedding ring and carried a beautiful black, patent-leather Prada handbag over her wrist. While chatting to her I asked, “Did you move to Zurich with your husband?” “Actually”, she replied, ‘I moved here with my wife.”

Oops. There I was telling her I train D&I and I am the first to make assumptions. I made a mental note to myself to avoid using the word husband and wife in the future and just use, ‘spouse’ or ‘partner’. In English these words are genderless. But we forget our good intentions. Six months later I was talking to a young British man who had just moved to Central America. I saw he was wearing a wedding ring and I was curious how he and his family were integrating, so I asked, “Did you move here with your wife?” “Actually,” he replied, “I came over with my husband.’’ Grrrr….

[1] Diversity Matters, McKinsey, 2015 Inclusive Leadership: The View From Six Countries, Catalyst, 2014, Driving Retention and Performance Through Employee Engagement, Corporate Leadership Council, 2008 ;

[2] Diversity + Inclusion = Better Decision Making at Work, Erik Larson, Forbes Magazine, September 2017

When do culturally diverse teams become high performing?

Posted on 13. December 20163. December 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

When do culturally diverse teams become high performing teams? Usually not immediately. Sometimes we need to slow-down in order to move faster.

Gender is only one factor of diversity

Gender is one factors of culturally diverse global teams. Men and women do have different ways of viewing the world, of living life and of doing business in general, but it is just one of the factors. Focusing on gender difference alone when striving for diversity does not create high-performing teams.

A 26-year-old male Brazilian software engineer who grew up on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro has a fairly different perspective of the world compared to a 55-year-old female Swiss marketing manager who grew up in the centre of Zurich. But is it’s not their gender alone that creates the filter through which they view the world. In global, project-based teams where organisations bring culturally diverse people together (virtually) so that they can gain on creativity, capitalise on less travel expenses and spend less on expatriate assignments, this culturally diverse combination is very common.

Creating trust in culturally diverse teams differs

Try searching, ‘high performing teams’, and usually the results will come up with a list of attributes that includes trust, dealing with conflict, open communication, giving feedback and valuing diversity. The first item on that list needs to be valuing diversity. The way we deal with the previous listed factors differs widely whether we are in Mumbai, Frankfurt, Rio de Janeiro or Shanghai.

Building trust with a Chinese colleague requires a different skill-set to building trust with a colleague from Hamburg. Giving feedback to a Brazilian requires very different competencies to giving feedback to a Swiss colleague. Only once we understand what the different cultural values of our colleagues are can be begin to value them and only then can we begin to contemplate how to build trust with them or how to deal with conflict in the team.

Let’s look at an example. We’ll take our two colleagues above, the software engineer from Rio and the marketing manager from Zurich. What cultural values could these two team members have that might be causing them not to see eye-to-eye?

Destiny and Time

Firstly, let’s start with their relationship to destiny and time. We’ll insert the competency of giving feedback, just to give the example a bit more depth. These are components that every ‘high-performing’ team member in any project-based team is expected to deal with daily.

Generally, a German-speaking Swiss usually feels that they are the master of their own destiny. They will wake up in the morning and plan out their day hour-by-hour (well actually, let’s face it, if you’ve ever worked with the Swiss, you know it’s closer to nano-minute by nano-minute planning), and ensure that they do everything possible within that day to reach the objectives they have set themselves.

That is to say, they won’t have any qualms about telling you that they can only speak to you on the phone for 11 more minutes because in 12 minutes they need to make another phone call. This same person is also not reluctant to give her boss some feedback at her upcoming performance evaluation telling him that his delegation skills are not great and that’s why she’s had a difficult year.

Direct speech

Speaking directly and telling the truth, no matter how difficult it might be to hear, is what a German speaking Swiss generally feels is the best policy. Planning has always been an important attribute in Switzerland. Switzerland is a country of very little natural resources with only about ten percent of its land being arable due to all its lakes, mountains and rivers. Therefore, human capital is its prime resource and in the “pre-freezer age”, parent needed to plan well ahead to be able to feed their young.

‘Let’s make sure we harvest all the fruit by mid-October so that we can preserve it for the winter and continue to feed our children.’

That is what a Swiss person would usually call a healthy relationship to time.

Now let’s look at our Brazilian software engineer. Our engineer generally believes that fate will ensure whether or not the container of goods expected to be delivered on Thursday afternoon actually arrives then or not. Brazil is such a plentiful nation where twelve months a year you can go out and harvest fruit or find scurrying animals in the forest who can provide food.

The forest doesn’t freeze over so there isn’t that much need to plan far in advance. Life will work itself out. Plus let’s not forget the very unstable economy that the Brazilians have had to deal with this last century. In the 1990s they had inflation percentages of 3 to 4 digits.

‘Whatever I have in my pockets today won’t be worth anything tomorrow, so why save it, how can I possibly plan for tomorrow? I live for today and God willing, things will go well.’

That went very well, thanks be to God!

A couple of years ago around a dinner table following a tedious and arduous seminar, a Brazilian colleague of mine remarked with a big smile on her face, ‘That went well, thanks be to God.’ The non-Brazilian colleague sitting with us told her quite abruptly, ‘It had nothing to do with God, we planned well.’ That did not go down very well.

‘Leave it to Batman’

Filipinos tend to use the term ‘Bahala Na’, ‘What will be will be’, or more traditionally, ‘Leave it to God’. Recently a Filipino in one of my workshops told me that young Filipinos today have started to give the credit to Batman, ‘Bahala na si Batman’ (leave it up to Batman). ‘Sure, Mum, I’ll be home by midnight…, if Batman wills it’.

And when it comes to giving negative feedback, well, let’s say that the Brazilians are generally far more indirect than the German-speaking Swiss at expressing negative opinions. Brazilians tend to want to save face, theirs and the people they are speaking to. Speaking indirectly keeps the harmony, the good relationship and ensures nobody is offended. That doesn’t mean they don’t give feedback, but it means you need to learn to understand it when they give it.

When you ask for feedback in culturally diverse teams you need to know how to understand it

I recollect a number of times while working in Brazil, where I had asked my team members to read over some documents to let me know if any errors had been made. Over a two-year span and many long documents, my Brazilian colleagues had not mentioned a single word to change. My French colleagues having read the same documents later on made a million amendments… What I hadn’t understood was the Brazilian way of giving feedback.

Conclusion – ask questions

So what happens when a Swiss person is working on a project team with a Brazilian or a Filipino? How can they give feedback that will not be taken as face-losing criticism? How do they deal with conflict and build trust and accountability?

So, if you ask, “Is the delivery arriving on Thursday?” and the answer is related to fate, make sure you ask many open-ended questions to figure out what the real challenges are that the team might be facing.

A ‘Culturally Diverse High Performing Team’ needs to understand what the cultural values of its team members are and only then can each member start to see each situation through the perspective of the other team members. And only then can the team envisage creating its own ‘third culture’ or team charter to which it will function.

How to thrive in Brazil – build a relationship

Posted on 15. April 201622. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

If you want your business to thrive in Brazil, build a relationship of trust with your colleagues, clients and service providers that generates confidence.

Why do foreigners in Brazil have such alarming stories?

When we think of a long term work project in Rio de Janeiro, most of us picture ourselves playing (or rather watching) futvolei on the beach sipping at fresh coconut water. So why is it that so many foreigners working in Brazil call HQ once a week with alarming stories about unmet deadlines and Brazilian colleagues who don’t do what they say they would do?

“when we think of a project in Rio we picture ourselves playing futvolei”

The most common quips I’ve heard foreigners use when speaking of their Brazilian colleagues and suppliers is , ‘They’re fake,’ ‘They’re not committed to work,’ or the classic, ‘They never reach deadlines’. As a result, after a few weeks of making such remarks, many foreigners resign themselves to the fact that they’re going to have a hard time getting their project accomplished. What they don’t do, is take the time to look into why they are interpreting the Brazilian work methods in this manner. If they did, they could then create a strategy to change what is happening around them.

What is the most common adjective that Brazilian use about their foreign colleagues?

Have you ever asked yourself what impression your Brazilian counterparts have of you? Little do we know what negative adjectives they may be using to describe our behaviour. I recently asked a former Brazilian colleague of mine what the most common adjectives Brazilians usually utter about foreigners. She replied, ‘They’re inflexible, always stressed, and they usually feel that things should be done their way, (the foreign way). How can we avoid these negative depictions and enjoy the merge of cultures?

Avoid these criticisms by building a relationship of trust

These criticisms (on both sides) often come up in moments of frustration. When we’re relaxed and have time to consider why the people around us are behaving a certain way, we usually find an explanation. However, that doesn’t help us achieve our goals and reach our deadlines. We need to go one step further. That is to say, we need to consider what we can change to be more effective when working with culturally diverse people.

The three points I mention below are only an introduction. I shall not endeavour to write more in such a brief post.

Three steps to keeping harmony and creating a strong team

Brazil is incredibly vast and has a huge population of over 207 million, made up not only of natives but also a mixture of immigrants mainly from Japan, Germany, Spain, the Middle East, Italy and of course Portugal. It’s therefore hard to say that there is one common way of behaving, of managing teams and of communicating. For example, Paolistas in the south will tell you that they are different to the Cariocas from Rio, who in turn say they are different to the North Easterners. Consequently, I shall stick to a few characteristics that several regions have in common, with an emphasis on Carioca behaviour; we have to start somewhere.

1. Building a relationship is the most important factor to being successful in Brazil

Firstly, if you ask a group of Brazilian individuals what their number one cultural value is, it is likely to be, ‘smiling’. Consequently, to be successful in Brazil, the one most important word to remember is, relationship. Little is achieved unless you make an effort to get to know your colleagues or clients personally before making requests or explaining how something should be done.

Imagine this scene: You’ve been sitting at your computer all morning. Your tummy starts to grumble and you realise it’s lunchtime. You mention to your colleagues sitting beside you that you’re going out to get a sandwich. As a result, you pick up your sandwich, take it back to your desk and nibble at it while working. My dear reader, that is mistake number 1 in Brazil. Relationships are a vital part to getting any job done. Therefore, having lunch with your colleagues and asking about their children, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cats and dogs is vital.

The work sphere and the private sphere are mingled into one. If you’re leading a group of Brazilian employees make sure you show interest in their private lives. Brazilians generally prefer to build a relationship of trust with the people they do business with. That is to say, once they trust you, it will be instinctive for them to want to help you reach your objectives.

Therefore, if your service provider offers you a cafezinho before getting down to work don’t even contemplate refusing, irrespective of how many coffees you may already have had that day. Sharing a coffee is a chance for them to get to know you. Consequently, if you’re working on a long-term project, take the time for the two-hour lunches and don’t talk business over lunch; pull out your phone and share your photos of your nephews, nieces and puppy dogs too.

2. Read between the lines to thrive in Brazil

Secondly, one difficult issue that foreigners in Brazil tend to deal with, is having to read between the lines. How do you make a decision when you cannot tell if your interlocutor is saying yes or no? How do you know what your subordinates are capable of if they don’t open up and debate your ideas?

It’s rare to hear a Brazilian say outrightly, ‘No’. That is to say, keeping the harmony and not wanting to offend anybody is important. Also, keep in mind their colonial history where big farmers were boss. Consequently, subordinates will not often openly give you feedback.

“She lied to me!” is a quote often heard by foreigners in Brazil

Imagine you’ve asked a government official in Brasilia for fifty work permits,”for Thursday”. That offical will unlikely tell you that your request is impossible. Even though they know that it’s highly unlikely you will receive these permits, they will rarely use the word, ‘No’.

Instead you’ll often hear ‘vamos ver’ (we’ll see), or, ‘Thursday could be possible’, when in fact Thursday is actually out of the question. So, on Thursday afternoon you’re looking at your watch every 20 minutes waiting to receive the fifty work permits. The 50 staff members are arriving in the country the next day. Therefore, you call the official angrily telling her she said they’d be there on Thursday. To sum up, your blood pressure starts to rise and then the frustrating negative comments start to pour out of our mouth.

Little do you realize that your Brazilian government official had actually said. ‘No’, you just didn’t hear it, or rather you didn’t pick up on it. Therefore, when making requests try to pick up on the gestures and facial expressions of the person opposite. Eventually, you will learn to read the ‘No’, and not end up waiting for something that was never intended to arrive.

3. ‘O jeitinho Brasileiro’

Finally, Brazilians are generally extremely optimistic. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’, or in Brazilian terms, ‘o jeitinho Brasileiro’. You’ve probably heard of it or even seen it done. There is so much admin and bureaucracy to get through in Brazil, that even the Brazilians complain about it. As a result, getting through all the red tape is difficult for anybody to accomplish their goals and reach deadlines promptly.

Therefore, Brazilians become very creative in finding solutions to get around the red tape and generally in terms of problem-solving. For example, they are adventurous when it comes to looking for new ideas. Often they will not even tell you that there is a problem to solve because they’re proud to be able to solve it for themselves using their flexibility.

Learning to bend rules helps Brazilian stay ahead

Often, a Brazilian won’t tell you there is a problem if they think you’re not the kind of person who accepts bending rules. Rules are not always followed to a T. However, you’ll be surprised that your event will start on time as per plan. In conclusion, the backstage may look a little untidy, but the stage will be as sparkling as the sea at Copacabana beach on a fresh midweek morning with the sunrise beaming over Sugarloaf.

Working Down Under with Cultural Intelligence

Posted on 10. February 201626. June 2022 by Tania Pellegrini

So you’ve finally got the chance to head Down Under on assignment for a couple of years or you have an Australian colleague or two who have joined your project team for the next fifteen months. Don’t be fooled by the laid-back reputation that Australians are renowned for; deadlines will be met and your Aussie colleagues will let you know if they don’t agree with your decisions.

The interview below is in German and it discusses some communication and behavioural challenges that you may face when working with Australians. The German grammar in the video has plenty of room for improvement although I hope the intention comes through – at least the accent is ‘dinky-di’ Aussie. For the non-German speaking readers, here are some helpful suggestions for creating an atmosphere of trust and making your team effective when working with Australians. There certainly are plenty of Aussies out there working in the sports event world, so don’t consider it to be too unlikely to have one or two on your team.

Equality -Australians strive for equality and will call the Prime Minister, their child’s teacher and their taxi driver by their first name, no titles, surnames or special considerations. In a business situation, treat everybody equally, i.e. if you’re leading a meeting be sure to ask your Aussie subordinates for their opinions, especially if they are the experts on the subject matter.
Be ‘unassuming‘ – play down your accomplishments. Unless somebody has asked you about your engineering discoveries and your technological feats, don’t offer the information. It’s not that your Australian colleagues won’t find your accomplishments interesting, but if someone asks you what you do for a living, there’s no need to start the explanation with where you did your MBA to achieve where you are today; you’ll put the table guests to sleep.
‘Mateship‘ – if you’re the boss, don’t behave in an authoritarian manner with your subordinates, take the time to get to know them and treat them as your ‘mates’. Before you go to the office on Monday morning be sure to read up on the weekend sports results as they’ll surely be discussed before the weekly update meeting. Enjoy an after-work drink together (it doesn’t have to be alcoholic) or invite them to your Sunday BBQ. Keep in mind that if you invite them to a game of golf, your Aussie subordinates are not going to lose the game to make you look better.
Don’t forget to use humour, especially when things aren’t going well. Australian humour is often ironic and self-deprecating. It’s a way to keep the atmosphere relaxed. Even if you have no idea what the joke’s punch line meant, at least give an appreciative smile. One of the worst criticisms you’ll hear from an Australian is, ‘He can’t take a joke.’
Don’t forget that although cities like Melbourne and Sydney are very multicultural, Australia has a lot of British heritage. So remember to always be polite and don’t criticise your colleagues too directly or you’ll create enemies amongst your co-workers and remember that Australians generally support the underdog in any competition, so if that’s not you, you won’t be making mates. Use humour in situations of conflict to lighten up the atmosphere.

Australia is a country of immigrants who have endeavoured to make their children’s lives more prosperous than their own may have been. Each individual you meet will have a lot of different cultural influences that will dominate in certain situations, whether that be their gender, their profession, their generation, religion or their national heritage. Therefore the above five points may not ring true for each individual you meet, however it’s a starting point for building your team.

Generally, when doing business with other cultures the three steps to keep in mind are:

Learn what your values are and your preferred methods of communication. For example, are you offended if your boss doesn’t ask you for your expert opinion in meetings, or on the contrary are you offended and feel your boss is being aggressive if she does ask for your opinion in a group meeting?
Learn what the other person’s cultural values are (whether they be national, generational, gender based etc.) and their preferred methods of communication.
Find out where the largest gap between the two cultures is and learn what you can do to minimise the gap to create a relationship of trust. Or even better, learn what the similarities are and how you can use those similarities to become more effective with your team members.

If you would like to assess your intercultural competencies and see which areas may need development you can do the Intercultural Readiness Check (IRC). Contact Culturelink for more information.

Reach your goals in diverse teams with these three steps.

Posted on 14. January 201625. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

An Italian lawyer travelling back home to Rome after a business trip in Japan, (let’s call her Elisabetta), thinks about the meetings she just held in Tokyo. 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 the most competent of lawyers?

Adapting is easier if it’s surface culture

We often hear that when working with people of different cultural backgrounds we need to adapt. OK, great. That doesn’t sound too hard. I mean, how hard is it to learn how to use chopsticks in Japan, or to not use your left hand at the table in Qatar? We usually don’t mind adapting when the situation calls for changing a physical habit but if the adaptation calls for a change in behaviour that contradicts our deep down values and that is contrary to the way we were educated, contrary to how we have learnt to behave naturally, then it becomes almost agonising and sometimes comical.

Nobody had told Elisabetta that she needed to control her emotions during her business meetings in Japan. However, even if somebody had informed her, would she have felt comfortable behaving so unnaturally? 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, irrespective of whether they are in a business meeting or having lunch with the family. Japanese tend to say, “Only a dead fish has an open mouth,” and a true professional controls his/her feelings in a business meeting. Any loss of control is deemed unprofessional. So Elisabetta’s gut feeling was probably spot on, the meeting probably was not successful.

Being able to build trust with your clients, colleagues or service providers of different cultural backgrounds requires “code-switching” or adapting your communication and behaviour.

Intercultural Sensitivity is not natural

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]. Therefore in order to become interculturally competent we need to deliberately work at certain skills that are not innate such as giving direct negative feedback to one of our very direct German subordinates even though we are the type of person who usually speaks very indirectly. It’s the kind of thought that gives you a stomach-ache just imagining the scene. The evening before an evaluation meeting, you stand in front of the mirror at home practising all the negative things you need to say and then you get to the meeting the next morning and pofff… it just doesn’t come out as you wanted. You couldn’t help but camouflage the negative points with niceties and flattery even though you really needed to tell the person in front of you that her delegation techniques are not working. So she walks away from the meeting thinking she’s had an extremely good year and that her management skills are great. So much for directness.

Step 1: Know yourself

The first step to becoming interculturally competent is not to know how the other culture functions, but rather to know yourself. You need to take a good look at yourself and ask yourself, “What are my preferred ways of communicating, what are my most common ways of behaving in meetings and in situations of conflict and how do I problem solve?”

Let’s take a concrete example. You’re the head of your department and you were brought up in an egalitarian society. In meetings you always consider asking the opinion of your subordinates before making an important decision because you know that their advice is likely to be vital. Now, go and sit in a meeting with colleagues who were brought up in a culture that does not veneer a subordinate’s opinion and you’ll likely come out of that meeting pulling your hair out, wondering, “Why are they all just agreeing with me, why didn’t anybody question the upcoming deadlines?” If you are used to debating in meetings and receiving assorted input, this kind of behaviour will frustrate you and worse you’ll likely start labelling your colleagues as incompetent, unreliable and just plain lazy.

Step 2: Learn about the values of the ‘other’ culture

Working with people of different cultural backgrounds involves developing competencies that we do not necessarily have naturally, such as learning to ‘read the air’ in Japan. If you’re classified as Kuuki Yomenai in Japan, it probably means that you cannot ‘read the air’, or you cannot decipher social situations, such as not understanding body language. The Japanese are usually non-conflictual and your Japanese service provider would not embarrass you or make you lose face by replying to a last minute outrageous request of yours with an outright ‘No’. He will likely say, “It would be very difficult.” Reading his body language you will hopefully understand that he is actually saying, ‘Are you insane, your request is completely out of the question!’ If you had ’read the air’ then you would quickly move on and find a new service provider. If you aren’t capable of reading the air and you’re an eternal optimist, then you’re probably still sitting around waiting for the difficult situation in Tokyo to be made possible.

Step 3: Code switching – adapting your style

So, if step 1 is knowing how you behave and step 2 is understanding how the person in front of you behaves, then step 3 is to ‘code switch’ or adapt your behaviour and communication to be more comprehensible to the person opposite you.

Code-switching could be verbal or non-verbal. It could be the the way you write your emails or even which media format you use. For example switching on the webcam when speaking to a culture that needs to read body language is important to help them understand your message.

So rather than just read the financial pages of the Sydney Morning Herald before you start your merger in Australia, consider if it might be more impactful to learn how to talk about Aussie Rules football while sipping at a caffé latte at Monday morning meetings with your colleagues.

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

How to create an effective multicultural team

Posted on 3. September 201525. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Ever wondered why you get that bitter-sweet taste in your mouth at the completion of a successful mega project that went well?

You worked hard, in fact the whole team worked hard and reached its objectives, but you don’t think any of the team members really want to work together again and certainly not with you as their leader.

I recently spoke to a German who had just relocated to Zug, Switzerland from northern Germany. His intention had been to have a one-day workshop to learn more about Swiss communication techniques and working methods. During our pre-workshop phone conversation, we quickly realized that as often occurs to expats moving to Zug, he was not really going to be working with many Swiss people at all; his boss would be a woman from the USA, his assistant a young Malaysian and the rest of the team would be made up of a Greek, an Italian, a Norwegian and an Indian.

Well, so much for learning about Swiss communication techniques, I guess we could throw that idea out the window.

Zug’s population has close to doubled over the last 40 years. Today it has a population of around 110,000 made up of around 120 nationalities.[1] Zug has become such an international hub that more and more HR departments are requesting training for their employees that is no longer specific to working just in Switzerland, but rather how to make their multicultural teams more effective.

So what’s all the fuss about you might say. Why do multicultural teams need any particular training at all, surely the people who are selected to work abroad or to manage an international team are there because they are interculturally competent, right? Not always.

What does it take to make a multicultural team highly effective?

In their book, Intercultural Readiness, Ursula Brinkmann and Oscar van Weerdenburg[2], state that compared to a monocultural team, a multicultural team can be either highly effective or highly ineffective. Although most of us imagine that multicultural teams outperform monocultural teams consistently because we assume they have more creative ideas and different perspectives to add to the table, these teams often have quite a few hindrances that don’t consistently get in the way of monocultural teams. Although these teams do sometimes reach their task-related objective, they usually do not wish to work together a second time round[3]. So the benefits of their success is lived short term.

If we agree that a strong team needs good communication, trust and an understanding of how to resolve conflict, then we see how multicultural teams may underperform.

Leading directors pull together these project-based teams from all parts of the globe eager to bring together multiple creative ideas. However what they fail to question is how the group of such diverse cultures will actually collaborate, communicate and reach personal objectives, three themes that are rarely discussed openly before the project kicks off. These ‘dream-teams’ are usually shaped by people who have differences in age, gender, national culture, religion and professional background and each of these individuals has varying needs in terms of personal satisfaction and development.

Let’s look at the question of communication. Individuals of diverse cultures would generally have varying methods of communication. For example, one would ask herself, “Is it appropriate to speak up in a team meeting if I disagree with my boss even though I am the expert in the matter or shall I keep quiet (because of my respect for hierarchy)?” “Will I speak up if a deadline cannot be met, or do I not want to take ownership and responsibility for that?” “As a manager should I give feedback publicly to each individual including somebody who may be older than I am?” “Should I use brainstorming techniques for finding ideas or will that place some individuals ill at ease because in their culture it is not the accepted thing?”

When we work in monocultural teams we take our communication methods almost for granted expecting all colleagues to be comfortable communicating in a similar fashion. For example, a person who is brought up in a culture that likes brainstorming sessions, in an environment where people speak their mind and throw out ideas at such sessions, (irrespective of whether they are an Associate Director or an Assistant) would tend to lead a group believing these kind of sessions are the best way forward. Does that person take into consideration the team member who may have joined from perhaps a Japanese background and environment where often communication is only vertical (usually only downward and seldom would somebody speak their mind in such an environment)? The manager of a truly multicultural team would rarely get much input from each member in such a brainstorming session and would therefore need to devise another method of communication for this team in order to make the fortnightly meetings effective. He/she would need to create a method of communication that is comfortable and appropriate for all concerned – not my way, not your way; our way – cultural collaboration.

Let’s look at trust; How do we create trust in monocultural teams? I guess Monday morning in the office is the typical one that most of us can relate to. Discussing sports results at the coffee machine or discussing the latest film that we went to see on Saturday evening or even our child’s failed math test. As we get to know our colleagues we learn to confide in them and accept their ideas as worthwhile. Multicultural teams often do not get the opportunity to get to know their colleagues very well. Sometimes because they are based on different continents and only communicate virtually and then usually in written format where personal thoughts and feelings are usually left out or difficult to interpret. Sometimes it is just that we do not always take the necessary steps to get to know somebody who seems so different to us; what would a female generation X HR manager from Zurich have in common with a generation Y IT expert from Mumbai? Lack of trust and cohesion is often a cause for multicultural teams not wanting to work together on a second project[4].

So if these are just a couple of examples of what may make a multicultural team ineffective, how do we actually make such a team effective so that we can really get the most out of these culturally diverse teams and at the same time give each individual the chance to develop and want to work with her or his colleagues again?

The strength of highly effective multicultural teams is that they create a third culture, one that each member can adhere to as the culture of that specific project team. A culture where items such as how to deal with conflict are discussed or, “I as the manager of this team will not be offended if the team members question my ideas in a team meeting”.

Multicultural teams are effective when all team members are interculturally competent, i.e. they are culturally aware of differences and they know how to switch communication and work techniques to build trust across the different cultures within their team.

So at your kick-off meeting for that dream-team being created in Zug to work on a project in Tokyo, consider the theme of reaching cultural collaboration – create a third culture.

References

[1] www.zg.ch/portraet/leute (15 August 2015)

[2, 3 and 4] U. Brinkmann and O. Van Weerdenburg (2014), ‘Intercultural Readiness, four competences for working across cultures’, chapter 6, pp. 135-175