Practices for Managing a Culturally Diverse Team

Best Practices for Managing a Culturally Diverse Team

Your culturally diverse team brings many strengths, innovative ideas, and points of view to the table as you work together toward common goals. However, the cultural diversity that brings strengths to your organization can also pose challenges in communication and cohesiveness.

The ability to manage a culturally diverse team is a prerequisite for success in the future workplace, including recruiting and hiring talent. Creating an environment where colleagues from different backgrounds can harness their unique skills and work together effectively is key to achieving diverse high-performance teams. Take a look at these best practices for managing a culturally diverse team.

Acknowledge Language Differences & Establish Policies

Speaking in a common language helps ease communication barriers. When you manage a team that speaks multiple native languages, establishing clear policies about language use can deflect potential tensions, misunderstandings, and embarrassment.

For starters, normalize the practice of asking people to repeat themselves or asking for an explanation of individual words. Disseminate procedures and safety rules in multiple languages if needed. You may also want to establish a policy that says that everyone in the room should switch to the default language if anyone enters a room who doesn’t understand the language.

Create a Psychologically Safe Space to Work In

Studies out of Northwestern and Stanford Universities have shown that teams function best when team members take turns speaking and exhibit social sensitivity to one another. Google’s Project Aristotle took this idea even further, discovering and demonstrating that the critical factor underlying successful teamwork is psychological safety, which incorporates elements such as conversational turn-taking. Encouraging emotional honesty within a team helps all sorts of diverse team members to work together better.

Hire a Diverse Workforce

You can’t foster diversity in the workplace if you’re not hiring diversely. This may involve overcoming some implicit bias surrounding talent assessment and changing some of your recruiting methods.

Choose your interviewing team for their diversity and expertise, and reach out beyond your tried-and-true recruiting sources to find candidates who might not otherwise apply. Post job listings and actively recruit with professional organizations that support women and people of color in your field to expand your hiring horizons.

Celebrate Inclusivity

It’s easy to fall back on what you’ve always done when you’re planning work-related events such as holiday parties. But following the traditions of the majority usually means that people whose cultures don’t incorporate those traditions feel left out. Don’t promote one holiday over others. Encourage diversity as well when you plan work-related lunches and dinners by exploring new ethnic cuisines and traditions.

Don’t Tolerate Mistreatment of Diverse Employees

Establishing a zero-tolerance policy regarding mistreatment of diverse employees is key to letting those employees see your commitment to diversity. Shut down any bullying, name-calling, or even jokes based on gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, or religion immediately, with clearly established and implemented policies. Take employee complaints seriously to create a safe place for the reporting of unwanted conduct.

In addition to these best practices, cross-cultural and sensitivity training can help open the minds of employees who have not been aware of diversity issues in the past. Managing a diverse team can be challenging, but it also provides you with untapped talent that can lead your organization into innovation and give you the competitive advantage you need in today’s crowded marketplace.