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Two roles which each member of a team must perform:
1. show his professional aptitudes as a specialist in his area (personnel manager or sales manager)
2. demonstrate personal characteristics: play interpersonal role within the team
According to Senge et al. (1995) also need for a trained facilitator:– helps to clarify how decisions are taken and by whom– can improve the team’s whole performance
• The Belbin model is an instrument used by many organizations to measure the influence of team member diversity regarding the different roles played in a team at work
• The model shows– the different stages of development of the
team: identifying needs, finding ideas, formulating plans, executing ideas, establishing team organization, following through
– the different team roles which should each dominate in a particular stage of development
• The differences between team members, particularly in global teams, can be seen at several levels: profession culture, personality, style and role, as well as organization.
• These differences can help increase the performance of the team, but can also be the source of conflicts depending on the way the team deals with these differences.
• Davison & Ekelund (2004) have compiled a table which gives an overview of the ways in which differences can have an impact on global teams.
Expectations and values around interaction and team behaviour
Forces awareness of differences, assumptions, the tensions that they bring and the need to acknowledge and work with them
Levels of participation, mis-understanding
Missed timing, anger at inappropriate reciprocity. Feeling misunderstood. Things not happening
Expectations and values around interaction and team behaviour
Cultural pre-conceptions
Increased awareness of these. Approaching them with humour, not acting on them. A learning opportunity that there are many different ways of seeing the world
Preconceived perceptions of more or less relevant experience, education
Stereotypical comments or implicit behaviour toward "disadvantaged" people or about those "in charge"
Cultural preconceptions
Table 16.3 The impact of differences in global teams (source: Davison & Ekelund, 2004, pp. 232- 234, Table 12.1, adapted)
Can bring empathy, flexib-ility, humbleness, self-reflection. People with internat’l exp-erience can act as bridges between core & local sites
Ability to -understand implicit rules & working norms -speak different languages. -empathize with other team members
Bias that inter-national experience & linguistic skills are more essential for "other" nationalities than for those whose mother tongue is firm’s working language
Insist on international experience as part of international career path and selection criteria for international team leaders
Different geographical locations
Allows global efficiencies, local responsiveness, and knowledge transfer and learning across the organisation
Who meets face to face and who does not. Co-ordination, timing understanding of importance of required actions
Impenetrable in groups in certain locations. Lack of loyalty, invisible agendas
Stress integrated team model spread across world, not hub and spoke; visibility is local and global
Table 16.3 The impact of differences in global teams (source: Davison & Ekelund, 2004, pp. 232- 234, Table 12.1, adapted)
• Some managers will appeal to the professional culture of its members to bring an international team together
• Other managers will stress on the communication between the actors, such as making the unspoken explicit, rules explicit
• Those multicultural groups which appear to have the most harmonious relations are those where its members:– have the same status– do not have contradictory interests – do not feel that their identity is threatened
• In their study on Afro-Occidental teams, Mutabazi and Deer (2003) show that the problems come from pre-existing attitudes about relation between Africa and the West.
• The dominant partner is the west, with its ideals and concepts of the world: perfect integration between western expatriates and local executives, also appears to be impossible.
• However, a high degree of integration can be achieved resulting in a mutual commitment which allows for talent within the teams to be developed the importance of time.
• Time the key factor: needed for a group to develop a real team spirit, otherwise the team manager loses credibility and ability to mobilize all team members
• The members of a cross-cultural team must be given enough time to gain a clear perception of the project they are undertaking
• Time needed for every individual to grasp exactly the purpose of their work, the exact goal and period of time. These elements can then be incorporated into their own reference system