INTERCULTURAL CONFLICTS

In our 13th class of intercultural management, Heiko, explained to us the importance of finding a common ground in negotiation and in multicultural teams, due to the benefits that this can bring to the final result of any negotiation. Characteristics like leadership, authority and communication are fundamental in the multicultural teams, because those are the ones that will lead the whole team to a successful result.
According to Heiko, a person that does not know their group will be afraid because the uncertainty of how the group will perform the task, and from my point of view this can be directly related with the Hofstede dimension because on team works people might feel that there is a lack of security.

We also saw that there are two different dimensions that are related with the two components of conflict and this is named ''The intercultural conflict style model''

• Discussion: People with this characteristic will have a more direct communication but hiding their emotions. 
• Engagement: People with this characteristic will have a more direct communication and expressing their emotions.
• Accommodation: People with this characteristic will have an indirect communication and also will hide their emotions.
• Dynamic: People with this characteristic will implement an indirect communication but will express their emotions.

 EXAMPLES

Other theory developed by Bruce Tuckman related with the performance, behavior and success of the team work is call ''Developmental Sequence in Small Groups''.
Where four stages will define the good or the bad development of the work team, the four stages are Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning

The forming stage is the first one, where all the people in the group are getting to know each other and finally defining the roles.
The storming is the second one where all members begin to express their opinions not just according to the work but also the disagreements that they have in team rules.
The third one is the norming, where people start to crate tools to solve the differences giving a feedback.
Performing is the fourth stage when people start to develop the project and work on their roles and when new members are integrated easily.
The last stage is the adjourning one when is the time to celebrate the success of the team.

From my point of view it was the most interesting topic because with just five statements we can define the success or the failure of a team work.

QUESTION!!!

What does conflict mean into intercultural management?

It can be seen that conflict is the most common problem when talking about cross cultural relations, every country is trying to protect its sovereignty at any cost.

On the other hand into intercultural management when talking about teams, it can be seen that people have always different opinions and feelings making the communication and arrive to a common desision much harder.

• Wooten, L. (n.d.). CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR GRANTMAKERS. Retrieved May 14, 2015, from https://www.michiganfoundations.org/sites/default/files/resources/Conflict Management Strategies for Grantmakers.pdf
• Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, May 5) Finding Common Ground - Multicultural Teams. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT Universty, Medellin.

DIVERSIFICATION IN CROSS CULTURAL TEAMS

In my 14th class of intercultural management, we saw a very particular topic that from my point of view is the most interesting one of all topics that we have seen during the semester.

Is fascinating how a good understanding not just about the topic that teams are researching but also the connection that members of the group have to create in order to have a successful result.

Saying this now we ask ourselves way teams some time fail in their objectives or the result is not the expected, this is because there are some facts that teams have to study first to avoid those failures. As we saw in the last class there is a theory call “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups” which say that there are some steps to follow and this will be the success or fail of a team work.

Now getting deeper on the subject, talking about teams with people that share same language, same costumes might be easier to work, but when the team is formed by people with different characteristics the job gets harder, but why? because there is a lack of leadership where nobody wants to take the responsibility to delegate, and nobody wants to follow others. Also because there is a deference to authority where people are afraid to express their feelings and emotions, as well as sometimes there are members who block the other people's work.

Trust and the lack thereof

According to Lencioni ''Trust is a characteristic of all efficient teams, lack of trust one of the most common or important causes for a dysfunctional team''

According to '' The Five Dysfunctions of a Team'' written by Patrick Lencioni, the following are the description of the dysfunction.

Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust

The fear of being vulnerable with team members prevents the building of trust within the team.

• Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict
• The desire to preserve artificial harmony stifles the occurrence of productive ideological conflict.
• Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment
• The lack of clarity or buy-in prevents team members from making decisions they will stick to.
Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability
• The need to avoid interpersonal discomfort prevents team members from holding one another accountable.
Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results
• The pursuit of individual goals and personal status erodes the focus on collective success.
''Negative trust-destroying events are more noticeable and more heavily weighted in impression formation which subsequently propagates or solidifies further distrust'' (Slovic, 1993)

On the other hand what is it needed to build a good team?

According to the proffesor Heiko, first team members have to identify the issues and then set specific goals, and obviously trust in each other.

QUESTION!!!

Should people eliminate fear for a more effective teamwork?

According to the article published by the magazine inc.com ''fear can be the enemy of innovation and effective teamwork, because effective teamwork works best when workplace teams are not afraid to fail or even worse, lose their employment (talking about team works within companies). So, instead of being fearful, team leadership should incent its workplace teams to look at things from a long-term perspective''

From my point of view it is very important to do so, because fear would not let team members to adapt and do what they are suppose to do withing the team.

• Lencioni, P. (2003). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (p. 240). John Wiley & Sons.
• Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, May 5) Finding Common Ground - Multicultural Teams. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT Universty, Medellin.  
• 3 Ways to Ensure Your Team Is at Peak Performance. (n.d.). Retrieved May 15, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/quora/3-ways-to-ensure-your-team-is-at-peak-performance.html?cid=sf01001  

VIRTUAL TEAMS

The topic of our last class of intercultural management was the virtual teams and how them get formed and what they need to do to exist and develop their task during the time that the group exist.

First we have to clarify what a virtual team is, according to Academic Journal of Management perspectives, the authors say the virtual teams are those who ''members are geographically distributed, requiring them to work together through electronic means with minimal face-to-face interactions''

From my point of view this type of team is the most difficult one, because it is essential the communication and the non-verbal communication as well as the importance to be close to the other members and with this the final task is going to be easier to achieve.

On the other hand for some people is better this type of team because it increase the productivity at the time to develop the work of each role of each team member, also reduce costs in other operations.

The other topic that I liked a lot were the steps to have a successful virtual team development which according to Heiko are set goals and have a clearly understanding of them, create trust (as we saw in previous sesions, is the most important fact that a team work must has), According to Sirkka Jarvenpaa and Dorothy Leidner ''Only trust can prevent the geographical and organizational distances of global team members from becoming psychological distances'' but on the other hand they say ''trust allows people to take part in risky activities that they can not control or monitor and yet where they may be disappointed by the actions of others'' this means that trust is an essential part of the human being that can help or harm us if is used in a wrong way.

Other step is the information that the virtual teams should share (this is the most complicated part, because in virtual teams communication is always done through an electronic device with out the face-to-face item which make it harder) and the last step is the preparation and planning, not just of the topic and job that the team must do but also the preparation to be working not just with people with different costumes in some cases with different language and costumes but also with a very restricted communication.

 

This led me to the QUESTION???

Can people trust when they are working into virtual teams?

Giving my opinion I would say that yes, people can trust into virtual teams but not as much as with teams where people can gather together to explode all their abilities and where people can have a personal communication with all the items that this has such as non verbal communication and verbal communication.

According to Cummings and Bromiley ''maintaining that a person trust a gropu when that person believes that the group ''makes a good-faith effort to behave in accordance with any commitments both explicit or implicit; is honest in whatever negotiations preceded such commitments and; does not take excessive advantage of another even when the opportunity is available''

This means that can exist trust but with certain restrictions.

• Malhotra, A., Majchrzak, A., & Rosen, B. (2007). Leading Virtual Teams. Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 21(No. 1), Pp. 60-70. Retrieved May 15, 2015, from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.eafit.edu.co/stable/4166287?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=virtual&searchText=teams&searchUri=/action/doBasicSearch?Query=virtual+teams&acc=on&wc=on&fc=off&group=no  

• Cummings, L., & Bromiley, P. (1995). The Organizational Trust Inventory (OTI). In Trust in Organizations (p. 440). SAGE Publications.  
• Schmidt, H. (Director) (2015, May 12). Virtual Teams. Lecture PowerPoint. Lecture conducted from EAFIT University, Medellin.