With the international competition context, African companies are increasingly facing new and increasingly complex challenges in strategy. As a corollary, their employees also often need to acquire new knowledge and skills that very often, being part of a multicultural team can facilitate through the exchange of skills among others. For an employee, working in a multicultural team means learning to raise productivity at work, if this is obviously well managed. A multicultural team is a significant competitive advantage for a company: it is able to be more efficient and productive than a homogeneous “classic” team by favoring the success of projects. Thus, multicultural teams are less likely to experience failure than “monocultural” teams, which have nevertheless shown their limits over time. For an employee, as for a work team, multiculturalism has many more advantages than expected. How to define the qualities of a multicultural team? What contributions can it make to each of its members, from a personal point of view?
An acquisition of quality to control, however
Working in a multicultural team has unexpected advantages. But is the thinker Frederic Lecloux not right in defending that “the traveler is the one who gives himself the time of meeting and exchange?”. Indeed, it has nothing but the fact of having met, even professionally, individuals of several linguistic, cultural and geographical horizons, who are the first strength of the members of a multicultural team. Above all, it affects the thinking of each other by allowing them to develop a variety of ideas and make the team more creative. In addition, members of this type of teams have a high degree of openness, as well as a greater adaptability than “homogeneous” teams. With the time and personality of each other, but also with the group experiences, all the members of the team also develop other skills and attitudes in each and every one of them, Hui to create talents, often of quality, but endowed with certain qualities rare in Africa. Very often, the first of these quality remains the autonomy, but often appear in the top 3, the proactivity and the sense of the contact. All these qualities are, however, to be controlled so that all members work effectively, overcoming cultural differences. The “intercultural management” is important to be able to reframe the social life in company and to avoid certain spillovers, especially in a framework where the cultural influence in professional environment is still strongly underestimated. Managed well, cultural cohabitation allows to have a different perception of time, depending on the delays and duration of events, the perception of authority, attitude towards risk, the importance of relationships … So many considerations that differ between cultures and that both adapt to their personality in order to optimize their performances. Managed culturally, cultural coexistence can create tensions and frictions within a company, and therefore to question all the benefits of such a method. In this context, the first attitude against which members or future members of a multicultural team must fight is prejudice. They greatly hamper the establishment of positive long-term professional relations in this case.
What can we expect?
A cultural team is a competitive advantage for a company whose members have succeeded in understanding the impact of culture on interprofessional relationships. This is why intercultural management training can help professionals to acquire these skills in order to improve their understanding of intercultural differences and thus to ensure the success of multicultural teams by making good use of the differences in Within the team. It is therefore not surprising to find that multicultural enterprises have a wide range of talents in that employees from multiple cultural backgrounds offer different perspectives and experiences that allow organizations to extend their perspective And scope of action. Cultural diversity is also a way for companies to better understand their international clients and to enter new markets through the cultural expertise of their employees. Some companies are more effective than others in recognizing, valuing and exploiting this cultural diversity. What is expected of the members of such teams is, above all, their acceptance of the various working methods of each other and of adopting those which are most closely related to the culture of the company. It is also important to encourage each other to recognize the cultural behaviors of their teammates so that they can rethink whether certain attitudes of their own cultures are well founded. Taking into account the cultural affinities of its employees reduces this risk, although it is nevertheless necessary to ensure that the ideas and methods of work of each one are not to be disparaged. This also makes it possible to modify the working approaches by managing the organization of its teams according to the preferences and working methods of each other. In Africa, the impact of cultural shock on expatriates and the need to provide them with tailor-made support should not be underestimated if you want both foreigners and Aboriginals to be able to work effectively time. Most of the time, in addition to being more creative, multicultural teams are more productive in terms of managing the diversity of the team, as well as its investment and respect for the objectives and priorities of the company . It therefore seems essential to create a climate conducive to exchanges so that employees can express their ideas and thus stimulate exchanges and innovations.