Why Knowing How to Manage Intercultural Teams Is a Must-Have Skill In 2022, And Beyond

Digitalisation has forced humanity into a global workplace with more interactions between people with various cultural backgrounds than ever before. Leaders and co-workers often collaborate in multi-nation teams in remote and internal environments, making intercultural management skills mandatory for optimal growth. But, why is knowing how to manage an intercultural team such a significant skill to obtain in the future? Here’s what you need to know:

1. Diversity  

As mentioned above, an abundance of different cultures from around the globe commonly finds themselves communicating with each other for business. Whether this is an internal or external business setting, it’s infrequent you don’t encounter diversity within a workplace. Unquestionably, this will progressively become more prominent because of the following reasons:

  • Salary – Many overseas workers offer a substantial amount less for jobs carried out by natives. For example, hiring United States residents to complete data-entry tasks will cost a considerable amount more than an individual living in Egypt, Venezuela, or Albania because they have lower living costs.  
  • Expertise – Additionally, globally, there’s a ton of unique individuals that obtain very skilful traits which are hard to come by. Therefore, diversifying a company with people from different cultures could help the business grow.  
  • Culture – Many companies have globalised, and to ensure optimal performance, native-livers must help the organisation perform well in that market. After all, there isn’t a better person who knows a particular country than someone who lives there themselves.  

Communicating, hiring, and working with other cultures without living in your country has never been easier in today’s digital world. Therefore, negotiating and speaking with non-native individuals will require a skill set.

2. Globalisation

That brings us onto this next section perfectly, globalisation. During the pandemic, many local businesses lost profits, resulting in many filing for bankruptcy. Those who are serviced need to revive the inadequate profits that they experienced. Therefore, more companies will expand their market and invest heavily in overseas business.  

To make globalisation successful for a business, they must employ strategies and execute accurate practices to guarantee optimal effectiveness. Of course, they’ll be language barriers, but intercultural management skills will be required to reduce this and ensure smooth business.

3. Growth

The above states various reasons why these management skills will be essential, but it all comes down to growth. When you consider a global workplace, it’s much easier to access premium talent, new markets, and better profits. However, interacting, negotiating, planning, strategising, and implementing will be difficult because of cultural differences. However, it can offer a much smoother journey with pristine intercultural management skills.  

After reading this post, you should understand the significances of adapting to the future and enhancing your intercultural management skills. Undoubtedly, this is how the future is heading and something everyone will have to become knowledgeable about. Failing this could restrict many businesses massively as they’ll need to stick with employees, suppliers, and markets within their own native countries, which is considerably smaller than a worldwide perspective.  

About Timeo-Performance

We were founded with a vision to improve the world of work for everyone

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We are in the Skills Business!

Through recruitment, training and consulting, Timeo-Performance provides solutions for increased performance of companies, teams, and individuals. As our clients are in the center of global business and often serve the APAC region, our solutions need to be sustainable in a multicultural and remote context.

Our joint venture with Akteos, the European leader in intercultural training, and partnership with digital learning solutions provider CrossKnowledge have therefore been organic and logical additions to our service. Timeo-Performance has been helping companies in APAC increase business performance since 2008 with offices in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.

We love what we do, feel the Timeo-Performance experience!

THE AUTHOR

Isabelle Larche

Managing Director, Recruitment & Executive Search at Timeo-Performance

Isabelle is a Human Performance expert, with over 10 years of professional recruitment experience, and 15 years of Business Management Consulting experience. Isabelle is the Vice President of the French Chamber of Commerce and Trade Counsellor (Singapore Chapter) to the French Embassy.

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