Leonardo, Muffat and Multicultural Teams

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Leonardo, Muffat and Multicultural Teams

• EVTA, Budapest, 25 February, 2005
• Mike van der Vijver, ITIM

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Lets establish some basic assumptions

• National cultures exist
• Cultures are based on shared values
• Essential values are taught implicitly at an
  early age
• Differences between national cultures imply
  different value preferences
• These differences impact the way people work
  together.

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Different work-related values

• Different values imply different expectations
  about behaviour in work situations.
• That is the influence of culture on international
  teamwork.

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Multicultural Teams (compared to homogeneous
teams)

• are more creative
• produce more and better alternative solutions
• generate more and better criteria for
  evaluation
• perform better at complex decision-making
  tasks.
• Provided they are managed well!

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Managing culturally diverse teams

• Requires finding solutions to issues about which
  people from different cultures have different
  expectations.

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Management Issues in Multicultural Teams

• choice of leader
• function of leader
• leadership style
• make-up of team
• create team spirit
• division of tasks among team members
• team meetings
• style and method of communication
• feed-back
• decision-making

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Management Issues in Multicultural Teams (2)

• degree of formality/informality
• information flow
• tolerance of deviating behaviour
• rituals
• internal rules
• importance of specialist expertise
• acceptance of risks
• time management
• celebration of outcomes
• team post mortem

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How to solve these issues?

• Use one reference cultures - e.g. that of the
  majority of team members.
• The Muffat Model find the largest common
  denominator.
• The Leonardo Model the hard way.

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The Leonardo Model

• Be scientific fact-based solutions, rooted in
  intercultural theory.
• Be Creative stimulate your creativity by
  allowing yourself to experience unexpected
  things.
• Be an inventor combine theory and creativity to
  come up with synthesis solutions.

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Outcome of the Leonardo Model

• Awareness
• Understanding
• Empathy
• Intercultural Competence
• This is a lifelong learning process!

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The world is full of people with ideas different
from ours

• Says an 86-year-old English lady to her husband
  after 62 years of marriage

John, everybody seems so strange these days.
Even you are strange sometimes...
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