Sustainable learning and change in international teams: from imperceptible behaviour to rigorous practice Claudia Heimer Ashridge Consulting Ltd, Freiburg, Germany Russ Vince Research Unit for Organizational Learning and Change, Bristol Business School, Bristol, UK This paper outlines the authors’ experience of working with international crosscultural teams, and is an attempt to address the question about how international organizations can give rise to a sustainable capability in which generations of teams build on each other’s experience. The paper outlines some of the behavioural dynamics, both constructive and destructive that seem to occur in international teams, and focuses on ways of working through the destructive dynamics. The paper suggests that sustainable learning can happen when organizations and teams engage with the “cultural whirlpool” that their internal diversity creates; when they maintain ongoing cross-cultural conversations which bring cultural differences and understandings alive; and where they engage with the strategic moments that are afforded by their emotional and relational dynamics. Leadership & Organization Development Journal 19/2 [1998] 83–88 © MCB University Press [ISSN 0143-7739] Introduction The well-travelled international manager, will claim that making international teams work is no longer an issue. Having worked in multinational companies for years, he or she will relate exciting experiences with colleagues all around the world, in teams that “jelled” seamlessly. Why is it then, that the interest in the topic seems to be increasing? In the early 1990s, understanding crosscultural teamwork was perceived as an interesting but secondary question. As we head towards the end of the millennium, there is growing concern to grapple with the issue at a deeper human and emotional level. Why is it that international teamwork is increasingly seen as a critical capability that might determine the success of international companies competing in the breathtaking speed of globalization? In this paper we have two aims. First, to reflect on and explore our experience of working with international, cross-cultural teams. We are attempting to make sense of what we have done, and map out some of the issues we feel are important for our future work. Second, we are struggling with a continuing tension in what we do. International teams generate intra and inter-personal dynamics that are challenging to work with, because they are imperceptible or difficult. Yet leaders and facilitators of international teams need, and frequently ask for very practical advice to organizations about behaviour in international teams, advice that helps them achieve their business objectives. Beyond the immediate need to perform well during the life of the team, how can international organizations create a sustainable capability in which generations of teams build on each others experience? What we will refer to here as an international team, is a group of about eight to ten people who have a degree of interdependence in what they do together. By an international team we mean a group of people who face the challenges of combining different cultures within the group as well as of geographic dispersion with all the implications of remoteness in distance and time. A question we are often asked is whether an international team is really any different from any other sort of team. We believe it is. The difference is not in kind, but in degree of complexity. This complexity is due precisely to the added dimensions of culture and dispersion. Culture influences expectations and behaviours in relation to communication, leadership and what constitutes effective teamwork (Snow et al., 1996). Dispersion makes regular contact difficult, and needs to be bridged through the use of a variety of communication methods, from face-to-face meetings, video conferences, teleconferences, e-mail, the Internet, intranets, and other IT-based groupworking tools. Many of the practices to develop high performing mono-cultural teams also apply in the case of international teams, as do practices for dispersed teams of a single culture. The difference we find is that international teams cannot do without these practices if they are to be successful. While some teams naturally develop a climate of appreciation for different cultures, and an ability to work well together across distances, some do not. We propose a way to understand what happens in these teams. Behavioural dynamics in international teams We see behaviour in international teams as a work of art. While a team is working on a specific task, many things occur that people do not see at first, because they have not allowed themselves to develop the conditions and the mental state for a deep appreciation, one that requires us to stand still for a while, take a step back, and allow a work of art to reach out to us. We have found it useful to make these behaviours visible, and to give groups both the opportunity to learn about what they are doing well, and the choice do something about what they are ignoring. Below we outline some of the most common patterns we have noticed. Constructive patterns The involvement of every team member Teams that have invested energy in ensuring the involvement of all its members without Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk [ 83 ] Claudia Heimer and Russ Vince Sustainable learning and change in international teams: from imperceptible behaviour to rigorous practice exerting pressure for each member to be equally extroverted usually develop varied processes and skills to cope with the complexities of communication and action that international teams demand. to avoid; and a tendency to avoid conflicts and settle for unwanted compromises. For example, when teams avoid talking about an issue because it is seen as “undermining of the way we work together”. Leadership & Organization Development Journal 19/2 [1998] 83–88 The team develops bridges that support issues of language Under- or overplaying language difficulties Teams that make the effort to conduct their meetings in such a way that non-native speakers of the teams’ language can contribute, work slower yet seem to be more able to use increased opportunities for reflection and understanding created by this approach. The venues for team meetings are rotated When teams make the effort to alternate meeting venues between the different countries that represent the diverse nationalities of their members, a different level of knowledge and understanding can occur. There is a connection between finding out about each others’ “home” culture and the issues that are raised in working together. Cross-cultural curiosity Where there is persistent curiosity about what people of other cultures do, why they think the way they do, and what differences emerge between cultural patterns and behaviours, then the team can often more easily override problems such as interruptions to their speech, which can be forgiven when people feel that they have been heard. Diversity of ideas International teams function well when they prioritise the desire to explore ways of combining each others’ cultural strengths in order to develop new and better ideas. Destructive patterns Dependence on dominant individuals or cultural groups Some international teams become stuck in a dependence on individual team members or members of a single cultural group. Team members feel (but do not voice) that “the guy from head office is dominating the meeting”, or team members reflect (e.g.) “It was fun, but I never managed to say...”. Teams need to acknowledge that: individuals tend to dominate the way a team evolves; teams like to deny that individuals tend to dominate; and that individual national or cultural groupings are generally dominant. Avoidance of anxiety Working within and managing in a diverse environment, and in a dispersed mode can be anxiety creating. Some of the characteristics of this underlying anxiety that we have seen in international teams include: a fear of paralysis that promotes the effect it is trying [ 84 ] Operating in a language other than one’s own can be uncomfortable. It has been reported that “it makes me feel stripped of my personality” (Barham and Wills, 1992). When teams have a subgroup fluent in the team’s working language, and others that are not, we have observed that: groups can acknowledge, yet do little to effectively bridge language difficulties; individuals can hide their insecurities or lack of competence behind their lack of fluency in the team language; cultural subgroups can develop the habit of talking in their own language during team meetings, creating an atmosphere in which there is lack of trust, and lack of joint attention and involvement. Task focus rather than learning focus As with any team, managers can often have a greater desire to consume external knowledge, than they have to generate internal knowledge about the processes involved within an international team. Although it is useful for the team to have access to external models and approaches, to have ideas about best practice and a clear notion of the task at hand, there will inevitably be a point at which the team needs to reflect on its own process in order to deal with those blocks to development that have been created from the team’s own particular chemistry. Teams do often focus overly on the task, in preference to establishing a good basis for co-operation, even beyond the life of the team. Team learning arises from an ability to comprehend the language of the team “processes” as well as the team tasks. The use and misuse of communications technology Communications technology can be underutilised, or used thoughtlessly. There is a big difference between team managers who use technology to stay remote from team members and those who use it to stay connected to them. E-mail, groupware and voice mail are important tools for communication, but it is also important to be aware of the effects of these different forms of communication on the recipients of it. Teams can overemphasise the need for face-to-face contact, and loose momentum between meetings if they don’t make use of technology. Individuals can use communication technology to exercise control at a distance, while espousing values of involvement. Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk Claudia Heimer and Russ Vince Sustainable learning and change in international teams: from imperceptible behaviour to rigorous practice Leadership & Organization Development Journal 19/2 [1998] 83–88 Sustainable learning and change In order to sustain learning and change in international teams we feel it is important to work with and develop two general areas of insight and experience. First, we have developed a particular understanding of the nature of international team cultures, what we are calling “the cultural whirlpool” (Barham and Heimer, forthcoming) that international organizations inevitably create. Second, we believe in the strategic importance of emotional and relational perspectives in the development of international teams. International team cultures At the initial stages of their formation, international teams seem to move in one of two directions; towards the setting up of a “safe hybrid culture” for highly heterogeneous teams; or towards a “dominant culture” in more moderately heterogeneous contexts. Sustainable learning and change within international teams, is created out of a further stage of development, the “challenging hybrid culture” (see Figure 1). In both highly and moderately heterogeneous teams, some acknowledgement of cultural differences are an integral aspect of initial group formation. The safe hybrid culture occurs as the team attempts to settle for a common denominator, emphasising either explicitly or implicitly the similarities between team members despite cultural differences. A safe hybrid culture is therefore one where the team denies or stops seeing cultural differences as important. “We are all engineers, so we understand each other, it doesn’t matter that we are from Finland or Figure 1 International team cultures highly heterogeneous safe hybrid culture initial group formation challenging hybrid culture moderately heterogeneous dominant subculture change continuity change Belgium” is the type of comment one can often hear when these team cultures develop. In teams with a dominant subculture, one cultural group persistently sets the agenda and the frame within which problems are defined and solved. This often reflects the national origins of the company, and the spoken or unspoken wish of company members who are from this nationality to keep a single cultural identity alive. A dominant subculture is therefore one where the team accepts and sees cultural differences between members, but where such differences are used to reinforce the power of a single national grouping. This is often not at all an overt process, and these dominant subgroups behave rather more like a wolf in sheep’s clothes. We recall the example of a Scandinavian-based multinational that tried to create a logic of egalitarian and “empowered” teamworking in one of its subsidiaries in Asia. The Asian people, used to a more directive leadership style, felt very demotivated because they interpreted the behaviour of the Scandinavians as signs of lack of committment to the local organization and the future development of their country. Yet they were stuck: the Scandinavians with the power had inadvertantly made it difficult for the Asian people to ask for direction. In both cases the teams are creating processes that support the continuation of either safety or dominance rather than creating processes that encourage learning and change. We believe that in order to create sustainable learning and change, international teams need to adopt a challenging hybrid culture where the cultural differences within the team are themselves seen as the material which inspires learning and change. An important aspect of sustainable learning is therefore based on the team’s ability to question and challenge its own evolving and established norms, to be able to see and to reflect on its own group processes as they emerge. This “process awareness” emerges over time as a team gets to grips with the emotional and relational dynamics it creates, and as it learns how to sustain the uncertainty that is created through the interaction of different cultures. For example, from the first day of the merger between ASEA of Sweden and Brown Boveri of Switzerland, Percy Barnevik, exCEO of ABB, insisted that from the top of the organization and reaching deep down and across ABB managers should work in international teams, relocate from time to time and hold their regular meetings in different parts of the world. He suggested that this experience is a fundamentally important part of creating a truly transnational company. Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk [ 85 ] Claudia Heimer and Russ Vince Sustainable learning and change in international teams: from imperceptible behaviour to rigorous practice Leadership & Organization Development Journal 19/2 [1998] 83–88 What the success of ABB has shown both financially and in achieving a largely multicultural way of operating is that these conditions are hard for all individuals involved, yet produce a constant state of alert within which individuals and teams learn. It remains to be seen if ABB will sustain this rhythm over time. What this example illustrates though, is that international teamworking capability cannot be acquired and kept. Unless individuals learn through their team experiences, and organizations maintain the conditions under which this learning can occur, it might not be sustained. In order to achieve ongoing leaning at the behavioural level, the structural level might play a fundamental role: it is the constant mix of people creating cross-cultural conversations about how tasks should be achieved that are crucial here. The “cultural whirlpool” that is important to sustaining learning and change in international teams is created from the uncertainty that mixed nationality teams inevitably generate; from the willingness to shift the venues for team meetings around different parts of the world; and from an alertness to the ongoing cross-cultural conversations that are created within an international company. The relationship between strategy and emotion The second aspect of sustainable learning and change in international teams involves their willingness to address at least some of the emotional dynamics that they create. Because international teams are full of unresolvable differences of language, perception, behaviour and custom they are environments where anxieties can be intense. All learning and change creates anxieties (Menzies-Lyth, 1990; Schein, 1993), but anxiety is amplified in such culturally diverse settings as international teams. In any team there are moments of anxiety emerging from its own chosen way of working and from the organizational politics surrounding it. For the individual, this anxiety may be provoked by having to say something difficult or challenging, by the effects of unwanted decisions, by the pressures of an unfamiliar task. For the team as a whole, anxiety may be provoked by external deadlines or demands, the shifts of decision making that occur in other parts of the organization, or through interactions across team boundaries. In all of these examples the individual or the team is often faced with a “strategic moment”, where the anxiety can either be held and worked through, towards some form of insight, or it can be ignored and avoided, creating a “willing ignorance” (Vince and Martin, 1993). [ 86 ] In Figure 2, we identify the two directions that it is possible to travel from the starting point of anxiety in teams. In the top cycle, the one that promotes learning, the uncertainty created by anxiety can be held long enough for risks to be taken. Risk, and the struggles that it makes possible, often lead towards new knowledge or insight. In the bottom cycle, the one that discourages learning, uncertainty cannot be held and anxiety promotes the denial or avoidance of emotions that seem too difficult to deal with. In this cycle, resistance towards anxiety leads towards a willing ignorance of the potential for learning and change. For both individual team members and for the team as a whole, in that moment of feeling anxious it is possible to move in either direction, towards learning or away from it. Anxiety therefore can be seen to have a strategic dimension, to be a feeling that may equally promote or discourage learning and change, depending on how a team responds to it. Emotions, such as anxiety, that underpin the experience of working together create both the possibility for making the most of these strategic moments and the capacity for ignoring them. Individuals, teams and organizations are all faced with strategic moments created from emotional responses to experience. This emotional arena of organizational life is often something that individuals, teams and organizations find difficult both to acknowledge and work with. However, the recognition of the emotional aspects of organizational life and their links to strategy and decision making are fundamental to the ability of individuals, teams and organizations to learn and change (Vince, 1996). Having outlined the two general areas of our thinking about what can give rise to Figure 2 Anxiety as a strategic moment 4. Struggle 3. Risk 5. Insight or Authority 2. Uncertainty 1. Anxiety 5. Willing Ignorance 2. Fight or Flight 4. Defensiveness or Resistance 3. Denial or Avoidance Source: Vince and Martin, 1993 Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk Claudia Heimer and Russ Vince Sustainable learning and change in international teams: from imperceptible behaviour to rigorous practice Leadership & Organization Development Journal 19/2 [1998] 83–88 sustainable learning in international teams we now move, in the next section of the paper, towards more specific suggestions for working through the destructive dynamics that we see as an inevitable part of international teams. Working through the destructive dynamics Although some teams seem to develop constructive ways of working almost naturally, and are great to work within, we have never seen a single one without some destructive patterns. We believe that these dynamics are unavoidable. An international team develops maturity because it learns to make them visible and work through them continually. In our experience, high performance can come from confronting and working through destructive dynamics. Below, we make some suggestions about what can happen in international teams to help alleviate or minimise destructive patterns. Dependence on dominant individuals or cultural groups • Acknowledge the ways in which individuals dominate the team, and understand how this affects the team. • Become more aware of the basic cultural preferences with which national or cultural subgroups in the team will have influenced the way the team works. • Find ways of involving everyone, particularly in the way the team runs itself, and in key decisions. • Allow everyone to explore and state their fundamental preferences, and find ways of letting go of what is not absolutely essential for each individual (this allows the team to evolve its own unique way of working). Avoidance of anxiety • Accept that effective international teams need to move slowly in the early stages of their lives. Holding the fear of paralysis and doing the work that needs to be done to form the team will provide benefits later. • Transform the anxiety instead of stopping and getting stuck, by continuing through the learning circle until deep insight and emotional connectedness is developed. • Accept that it is natural that teams avoid conflicts, but see more clearly that in avoiding conflicts it inevitably avoids opportunities. • Find ways to connect emotionally with each other’s aspirations and desire for the organization or the team to work well, produce and succeed; this is not about exchanging opinions, but about creating an underdeveloped way of communicating which allows a group to both reach the bottom of disagreements, or the emergence of new possibilities through true dialogue, the very essence of teams that “jell” seemlessly. Under- or overplaying language difficulties • Develop effective ways of bridging language difficulties; the key here is discipline and rigour, even if the team feels that this discipline slows the working process down (e.g. frequent summaries of what is being discussed, keeping visual records of what is being said). • Ban mono-cultural conversations completely while there is a single person that does not understand the language, in order to generate involvement and trust. Task focus rather than learning focus • Create the impetus for exploration of the “double-loop” aspects of team behaviour. • Use frequent and short reviews of the working process (better than long and rare ones) to help team members to develop process literacy and manage the dynamics of the team better. • Rotate the role of “process observer” or “process coach” in the team to give everyone the chance to develop these skills. Give the team enough time to discuss and work with the reflections of the “process observer”. • Agree a basic “team grammar”, or groundrules that give the team a language to talk about its process. Suboptimal use of communicational technology • Find out what team members need to do face-to-face, and what they need to do at a distance. • Explore communication preferences, and the best modes of communication. • Develop a routine and disciplined communication pattern while the team is apart, with clear accountabilities for who will do what (to develop team identity and functioning communication). The “Ceutico” case[1] One of the teams we have worked with operated in the R&D part of a leading international pharmaceutical company. Responsible for harmonising procedures across the globe for submissions of developed drugs to regulatory bodies, the team worked together for a few months when signs of discomfort emerged. For a global company, building on the combined knowledge base of this team to reduce time for submissions to be processed by the appropriate authorities is a critical competitive capability. A team review was scheduled to identify issues and to move forward. Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk [ 87 ] Claudia Heimer and Russ Vince Sustainable learning and change in international teams: from imperceptible behaviour to rigorous practice Leadership & Organization Development Journal 19/2 [1998] 83–88 [ 88 ] During this meeting, a member had an emotional outburst while the team reviewed its preferences for how to work effectively across its dispersed locations with its diverse backgrounds. The team member powerfully declared her discomfort at the pressure each of the two dominant national subgroups was putting on each other to perform in a certain way. What had happened? In the case of the Ceutico team, one of the key obstacles was a strong orientation of the two largest sub-cultures to believe in a culturally-based “one right way” which had worked in their relationship with the regulators. An enormous amount of energy went into trying to push other team members to the “other side”. This dynamic became most apparent in the struggle between two team members of each sub-culture. How did the team deal with the tears? After a moment of awkward silence, the ice was broken when expressions of understanding and appreciation came forth. One of the members who had been doubtful of the the value of team review sessions later called the disclosure of his colleague the single most important factor in moving the team towards a common understanding and fuller emotional contact. And yet there was an easily underestimated, almost invisible moment in which the group chose to accept the opportunity to engage more fully with what was happening. Before it was disbanded as part of a restructuring effort, the team evaluated its effectiveness through a performance appraisal. It had not only achieved its task of harmonising procedures in one of the designated areas of drug development. It had also managed to streamline procedures in another area (although they were not fully operational in all countries by the time the team ceased to exist). What lives on for team members is the joint experience of harmony in the group. Team members learned about the importance of generating involvement, and using videoconferences as a way of staying connected across large distances. Giving people space and listening to each other were key learning points which gained an additional meaning and vitality once people realised how they had created unintended yet real pain on one another. Not all teams chose to work through such moments in this constructive way. Perhaps even more significantly though, Ceutico, after building up rich learning experiences over time, might be losing the memory and capability to build on the learning from previous teams. The issues faced by the Ceutico team, and the learning about how to resolve them, even the intentional development of effective international team dynamics from the start was nothing new for the organization. And yet a series of reorganizations almost wiped out its ability to work effectively in international project teams. Managers who were experienced internationally, but never left their home country to live elsewhere, took a long time to discover the weight of frequent international travel, and of cultural differences such as a varying sense of urgency and pace on the overall effectiveness of their teams. After a significant period without support and sponsorship, the capability remains with very few dispersed individuals who do not constitute a critical mass as before. A global real-time training and development effort is planned to rebuild the learning across the organisation. In this paper we have discussed our experience of working with international crosscultural teams, and we have begun to answer the question about how international organizations can give rise to a sustainable capability in which generations of teams build on each other’s experience. Our work suggests that sustainable learning can happen when organizations and teams engage with the cultural whirlpool that their internal diversity creates; when they maintain ongoing cross-cultural conversations which bring cultural differences and understandings alive; and where they engage with the strategic moments that are afforded by their emotional and relational dynamics. Note 1 The name of the company has been changed in this paper. References Barham, K. and Heimer, C. (forthcoming), The Dancing Giant: Lessons from Europe’s Most Admired Company, Pitman, London. Barham, K. and Wills, S. (1992), Managing across Frontiers, Ashridge Management Research Group, Berkhamsted. Menzies-Lyth, I. (1990), “Social systems as a defense against anxiety (revised)”, in Trist, E. and Murray, H. (Eds), The Social Engagement of Social Science: Volume 1, Free Associations Books, London. Schein, E.H. (1993), “How can organizations learn faster?: the challenge of entering the green room”, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 85-92. Snow, C.C., Snell, S.A., Canney Davison, S. and Hambrick, D.C. (1996), “How to use transnational teams to globalize your company”, Organizational Dynamics, Spring, pp. 50-67. Vince, R. (1996), Managing Change: Reflections on Equality and Management Learning, The Policy Press, Bristol. Vince, R. and Martin, L. (1993), “Inside action learning: the psychology and politics of the action learning model”, Management Education and Development, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 205-15. Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk