Multicultural Teams : creating and sustaining an environment for learning from perspective diversity that maximizes team effectiveness

Book excerpt: Multicultural Teams outperform other teams when you need creativity, commitment and buy in - but only if they are designed and managed well. This book will explain how to design and manage your multicultural team well, and how to create and sustain a learn-from-differences environment. Dr. Robin gives practical suggestions from research on how to design your team and then explains how you can leverage diverse perspectives within the team to maximize creative problem solving. These include: A clear, motivating focus that requires team members to engage in a conversation about why the mission is important strategically to the organization and personally to them; An understanding of how important designing the team well is, while knowing how to make the right intervention into the group process at the right time; Metrics that measure output, learning and satisfaction; The right degree of empowerment and the right type of team given your task and members; And the use of interlocking skills that maximize learning within the team. Every team leader's skills toolbox should include transformational listening, using names with ideas, and motivating others. The multicultural team management skills toolbox must also include the ability to give culturally-appropriate feedback, minority influence strategies, and attention to both process and output solutions to balance direct and indirect cultural styles.