High-perfomance teaming in intercultural contexts, Part 2 of 2
Be honest. How does your intercultural team function together? Are you mapping out your objectives and accomplishing what you set out to do? Are you all satisfied with your individual and collective contributions? Are you seeing success? Do you enjoy collaborating? Do you thrive when working together?
You can. It is possible to survive, and even better, to thrive. High-performing intercultural teamwork is not only attainable, but it is also becoming increasingly relevant and needful if your organization is going to succeed in an increasingly competitive and multicultural world.
In Part 1, "The Team that Thrives Together", we emphasized four focus areas that are crucial for an intercultural team's pursuit of optimal performance and overall ability to achieve goals together. A high-performing intercultural team will quantify, act upon, and align clearly defined behaviors that eventually will comprise the behavioral code or behavioral charter for the team moving forward.
As we examine more closely what is entailed in developing a high-performing team, particularly within an intercultural context, it is helpful to consider the process in terms of a journey. And this is no accidental journey, but a thoughtful, designed, purposeful plan with a much-anticipated, non-negotiable destination.
For this journey, we need more than high aspirations and good intentions. We need knowledgeable, intelligent design — a map, as it were — informed by Inter-Cultural Intelligence.
Designing the journey
KnowledgeWorkx comes alongside organizations to coach them in creating and customizing a team-wide behavioral charter. For high-performance teaming, a Team Charter should mine out and capitalize upon all the potential strengths and advantages of functioning together in an intercultural context.
An intercultural team development journey typically can take 4–6 months. At the outset, the team's current state is assessed via several tools and confirming exercises. These assessments are then followed up with a workshop on Cultural Agility Development, which equips the team with the framework and skills necessary to develop a powerful intercultural team charter. Following that session, there are several more steps along the journey to prepare the charter to the point of launch.
An intercultural team development coach facilitates the key modules (notated below by a ☆) and continues coaching the team throughout each of the sessions, providing guidance and keeping the journey on track till the charter is ready and launched.
Team assessment ☆
Cultural agility ☆
Team charter development ☆
Internal sessions to fine-tune the team charter
Inter-cultural validation session ☆
Team charter launch
Ongoing anchoring of the team charter
If we are willing to embark on this journey, what are the most significant takeaways?
A structured method to develop high-performing intercultural teams, to replicate that process in the future of your organization
An energizing, vibrant team culture that produces clarity and focus, resulting in team members who know how to contribute confidently and who want to maximize their contributions for the benefit of the team culture
A rich and meaningful journey through which you get to know and appreciate your team at whole new levels
Crucial cultural agility competencies and skills
Expansion Modules
KnowledgeWorkx does offer more coaching that address particular focus areas specific to your organization's preferences and current needs:
Cultural Mapping Inventory (12 Dimensions of Culture; individual and team reports)
Intercultural Leadership Development
Cultural Agility Development with carefully predetermined priorities (such as client engagement, communication, contract negotiation, etc)
This series: Part 1 Part 2
For more information about cultivating high-performing teams in an intercultural context, and for a helpful PDF that summarizes the journey, contact us.
Quickly becoming the global preferred choice for Inter-Cultural Intelligence development, KnowledgeWorkx promotes mutual understanding of other cultures and perspectives in the workplace, and helps teams to develop the intercultural capacity necessary to thrive in a globalized world.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.