Global Competence: Components

Cross-Cultural Teamwork

While cross-cultural teamwork overlaps with teamwork in local cultures, there are several key differences in how a leader interacts on a cultural and virtual basis with GV team members. This components has four aspects that need to be understood.

1. Team Leadership: The leadership skills needed to guide an ethnically and culturally diverse team toward a common goal. The leader is able to understand each member's culture and values and use them as a strength on the team.
2. Conflict Resolution: The ability to identify team differences of opinion or conflicts arising from ethnic differences and implements culturally sensitive strategies to resolve the conflict. This enables the leader to facilitate a healthy discussion of team members differences in opinions to produce a better product and to help members overcome personality conflicts and differences.
3. Team Structuring: The leader has the ability to describe the influence of culture on: structuring team processes, developing team objectives, establishing team rules, building trust among team members, work values and practices. The leader is able to help the entire team function as a single unit instead of as multiple teams in different locations working in parallel on the same problem.
4. Cross-cultural Team Experience: The ability to collaborate effectively with cross-cultural team members to accomplish a common goal.