Organizations with cultural differences have higher satisfaction and loyalty scores with employees.

Understanding and appreciating intercultural differences leads to better communication, more effective decision making, less misunderstandings, better focus and therefore better results.

Why it is attractive and useful to work with intercultural differences in an organization?

First and foremost, it cannot be denied that working within an intercultural organization can be quite difficult. You are dealing with different habits, expectations, perspectives and values. The way we work and what we expect from colleagues and management is different and that is precisely why it is often confusing and sometimes even frustrating.

But did you also know that organizations with cultural differences:

• often have a higher turnover and better chances of survival;
• are more innovative, more creative and better at problem-solving because employees have different points of view; 
• make more use of the labor market because they recruit more talent;
• respond faster to market developments, because they know what is going on in different customer groups. 
• have a favourable image precisely because of the cultural differences;

How to Become a Successful Multicultural Team.

If multicultural teams want to be successful, they will have to break through the misunderstandings about the different worldviews. 

There are two big assumptions that threaten international cooperation, namely:

A: that others have the same worldview as us and,

B: that our course of action is the right one.

That is why it is important to create an organizational culture in which people are aware that they do live in different worlds. As a result of this awareness, they invest more in the other, are genuinely curious, open and willing to keep looking for coordination/mutual understanding and agreement.

It also helps that we keep asking ourselves how much we really know about those other cultures. In fact, the more you know about other cultures, the easier it is to detect sensitive situations and the faster you can tell the difference between a cultural problem and conflicting personalities.

 The “through and with diversity” approach

For the past three years we have been working within a number of internationally oriented organizations on more openness within multicultural teams. We do this with a group of international womenwhose DNA and lifestyle more or less embody intercultural diversity. This approach has now become a proven concept in several European countries.

Within an open setting we address the intercultural differences by means of various techniques. We recognise the sensitive issues earlier and thus create a basic, necessary attitude of openness towards inquiry and validation at an individual level.

We are currently working on a number of short videos in which we highlight our insights with regard to a number of intercultural differences.

Would you like to receive these videos or other insights? Do you work for an international organization in Germany, France or England and want to know how you can improve communication between these countries? 

Please feel free to contact me for our insights on Intercultural Awareness.

If you want to read more about divers teams check this research from Harvard Business Review:  https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter