April 22, 2007
Under New Management
How Diversity Makes a Team Click
By KELLEY HOLLAND

WHEN consultants at Bain & Company are transferred to the Delhi office, they don’t pack just their BlackBerrys and toothbrushes. Each one also receives a copy of a manual written by consultants who are, or have been, posted there. It spells out in precise consultant-speak suggestions for nightclubs, gyms and Hindi teachers. But it goes beyond that, by discussing meeting protocols, dress codes and telephone etiquette.

New arrivals are advised that “with people who are more senior to you, don’t be offended if they are blunt,” that “it is acceptable for important clients to walk in and out of a meeting as it progresses” and that “there is a tendency for meetings not to start on time.”

The idea is to avoid any gaffes or missteps because of cultural differences, said Steven Tallman, a partner at Bain in charge of technology and training.

“We’re trying to build people who think globally and think like global managers,” Mr. Tallman said.

Multicultural teams have long been a presence in management consulting, where the big firms tend to be every bit as global as the clients they serve. Certainly, such teams have been a fact of life in places like the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations. But now multicultural teams are becoming increasingly common in a range of industries.

For one thing, companies now have more diverse work forces, so that even teams from a single office are more likely to include members with a range of cultural backgrounds. At the same time, companies are marketing, manufacturing and selling more products globally, and the teams in charge of those efforts are more likely to be multicultural.

A gorgeous mosaic? You bet. But multicultural teams can also be tricky to manage. Communication styles can differ from culture to culture, as can traditional views of hierarchy and decision-making processes — and, of course, there can be language barriers. The potential for misunderstanding, bungled efforts and ill will is enormous.

The key to success is understanding and accepting the differences on a multicultural team, and then using them to enhance the way the team analyzes situations and makes decisions.

Instead of simply assuming that all is well for, say, a joint Israeli-American effort because a team includes the same number of members from each country, managers on these teams need to be open to other ways of thinking, communicating and solving problems. American managers should not hesitate to use a typically Israeli decision-making process — and vice versa — if it leads to better results in a given situation..

“It’s not comfortable being on a multicultural team,” said Jeanne M. Brett, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “You have to be really tolerant, not take things personally, and then try to be really creative in finding out the best way to make things work.”

In an article she wrote with two colleagues from other universities last November in the Harvard Business Review, Ms. Brett described a manager on a team that was undertaking a technology project affecting the whole company: He and a colleague from Singapore were frustrated by some Japanese team members who seemed to agree with the direction of the project in meetings but failed to follow through adequately. They considered talking to the boss of the Japanese team members but decided instead on an indirect approach: they put together a presentation on the successes of European teams in this undertaking and took it on the road to show the Japanese. The Japanese team members decided that they would like to be the focus of a future presentation, and their work picked up.

In another situation, a team with members from the United States and Latin America had to negotiate with a South Korean supplier. In meetings, the Koreans would often discuss matters among themselves, speaking in Korean. The members from the United States and Latin America responded by having discussions of their own in Spanish, with even those who didn’t speak Spanish pretending to participate — and the Koreans got the message that their exclusionary caucuses were annoying.

At some level, the challenges for multicultural teams resemble those that surfaced when women first joined the ranks of management. The white men who were there first had to adjust to colleagues who had different life experiences, communication styles and perspectives.

“Multicultural teams today are like the multigender teams of yesterday,” said Ilene H. Lang, the president of Catalyst, a research and advisory organization that aims to expand opportunities for women at work.

Catalyst often observes an evolution in companies’ approaches to diversity, from simply hiring people of diverse backgrounds — which Ms. Lang describes as “really about counting noses” — to being truly inclusive.

The challenge for business. she said, is to embrace the differences among their employees and to use those differences to make better business decisions.

Every fall, for example, new consultants from all Bain offices are flown to Cape Cod, Mass., for 10 days of training, Mr. Tallman said. Most of the time is spent analyzing cases and solving problems, as the consultants learn to work with colleagues who have different experiences and approaches.

But sometimes, he said, the consultants are intentionally grouped with others who have displayed similar traits on a standardized personality test — and they quickly realize the pitfalls of having everyone on a team think alike.

“They can get dysfunctional really quickly,” Mr. Tallman said, and the consultants then realize how important it is to encompass different perspectives.


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