As many organizations expanding their business and operations globally, employees of
these corporations need a greater awareness of diversity than ever before. Despite the
proliferation of the technology that enables instant communication almost anywhere in the
world, the actual communication between the cross cultural people depends on
understanding the diversity in peoples cultural orientation and patterns of thinking. There
are many ways an effective manager can follow to implement the best processes to manage
the cross cultural teams effectively. The following are some of the things I will concentrate
on to effectively manage the diversified teams.
Prepare: First of all a manager who is dealing with a multicultural team needs to
understand the different cultural contexts, cultural preferences, expectations and style.
Cultures range from low to high contexts. In high context cultures much of the
communication is implicit, meaning people understand the implied meanings from
physical settings and relationships. On the other hand, in low context cultures much of the
communication is explicit, meaning people understand the things from the literal meaning
of spoken and written words. So, as a manager I will try to figure out which of the
members in my team fall in these two categories.
Effective communication: World cultures can be categorized on a sliding contextual scale
from high to low context. For example Japan, China, and Korea are the examples of
high-context cultures, and The United States, Canada, and Germany are considered to be
low-context cultures. So whenever Im communicating with any member of my team, I will
first try to categorize where that person falls along the scale and adjust my communication
