Effective Management Communication in Multicultural Teams Report

This report examines the complexities of managing multicultural virtual teams, focusing on the case of Jane Wilson, the Marketing Director of Sunshine 100. The report addresses the challenges of diverse communication styles, worldviews, customs, and roles within a global team spanning multiple time zones and cultures. It explores strategies for effective communication, including establishing norms, promoting cross-cultural understanding, and leveraging emotional intelligence. The report highlights key task and process issues such as communication failures, information distribution, and conflict resolution, emphasizing the importance of team development, trust-building, and transformational leadership. Drawing on academic sources, the report provides recommendations for minimizing future problems and fostering team cohesion, ultimately emphasizing the need for leadership and conflict management skills to ensure the success of virtual teams.

Running head: MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Management Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Introduction
Managing virtual teams comes with its preset challenges. The very idea of virtual
team is to assimilate talents from across the globe. This increases the organizational
efficiency and reduces costing and environmental impact of the company (Hunsaker and
Hunsaker 2008). While working with a multicultural virtual team, the marketing director,
Jane must take several measures to ensure that it does not become a failure. This essay
analyzes the challenges of multicultural team management, communication and solutions that
can help Jane.
Discussion
How best can Jane manage all the differences in communication styles, world
views, customs, rules and roles that each team member will bring to the table?
Managing a multicultural virtual team needs good communication, emotional
intelligence and cultural competency. Establishing communication requires language
competency and body language (Matveev and Nelson 2004). In order to manage the different
communication styles, world views and customs that each of the different members bring into
the team, Jane can approach each member to present their culture and customs as they see it.
This will provide each of them a chance to communicate with each other. An open session
where the members are free to ask questions about each other’s culture and likes and dislikes
through the use of an international language. The best way that Jane can manage the
situations that is presented to her is through cross cultural communication and relationship
building (Mach and Baruch 2015).

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The most important part is the initial meetings which establish the relationships
among the team members. It is the responsibility of the team manager to introduce each
member and inform everybody about their cultural backgrounds and customs. Another
effective way is to establish certain norms within the teams in order to ensure that the
communication remains constant (Hunsaker and Hunsaker 2008). For example, redefining
what nodding would imply and what silences might mean would ensure that everybody is
clear about each gesture. Taking the input of the team members for establishing these
standards will also ensure that all the members share their point of view and do not feel left
out.
Discuss the challenges of managing multicultural communication in virtual
teams.
According to Cramton (2001), there are five kinds of problem that arise in virtual
teams. These are, communication failure, uneven distribution of information, communication
difficulty and barrier, understanding the meaning that the silences intended and speed in
access to information. These could become the reason why virtual teams might fail. Horwitz,
Bravington and Silvis (2006), on the other focuses on the issues like team development,
cross-cultural variables, leadership, communication and social cohesion as the most
challenging issues related to virtual team management.
There are several factors that affect communication in multicultural teams and they
are verbal and non-verbal communication, production strategies and skills and attitudes
(Bhardwaj and Sharma 2017). The roles of leaders are important in managing virtual teams. It
is necessary to understand that gestures and other non-verbal forms of communication are far
more effective in delivering messages. For example, rather than only using language, using
nods and specific predefined gestures are easily understandable. The approach to solving

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communication problem should be with empathy and understanding as well as a desire to
cooperate.
Evaluate the key task and process issues to be addressed in the new virtual team
to minimize future problems and conflict.
Conflicts are natural in any multicultural teams. In the team that Jane is handling,
people are coming from different countries and have different methods of communication and
doing their jobs. There are also differences in how they differentiate pleasure and business. In
order to minimize the future problems and conflict, it is necessary to follow a specific team
development process. Team development, which is necessary part of virtual teams involves
four stages, forming, storming, norming and performing (Mach and Baruch 2015). Conflicts
might arise in the second stage and leaders can use communication techniques in order to
reach a resolution.
For virtual team communications, a win-win situation is necessary so that none of the
members feel that they are being ignored by the other members. Conflicts naturally reduces
team performance and for that reason building trust and bonding is necessary. Leadership
could also be another important machinery that might solve the conflict (Maduka et al. 2018).
Transformational leadership style helps in procrastination and innovation at every step. These
leaders are able to come up with effective solutions and thus Jane must use transformational
leadership styles in order to manage the team.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it is evident that virtual team management requires
leadership and conflict management skills. Team development and conflict resolution should

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occur regularly so that team members are able to concentrate on their performance. Cross
border teams require cooperation and empathy from each team members for it to become
successful. Establishing open communication channel and fair treatment instills trust among
the team members which promotes good team cohesion.

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References
Bhardwaj, S. and Sharma, V., 2017. A Study on Managerial Communication in Multicultural
Workplace. BVIMSR’s Journal of Management Research, 9(1), p.60.
Cramton, C.D., 2001. The mutual knowledge problem and its consequences for dispersed
collaboration. Organization science, 12(3), pp.346-371.
Horwitz, F.M., Bravington, D. and Silvis, U., 2006. The promise of virtual teams: identifying
key factors in effectiveness and failure. Journal of European Industrial Training, 30(6),
pp.472-494.
Hunsaker, P.L. and Hunsaker, J.S., 2008. Virtual teams: a leader's guide. Team Performance
Management: An International Journal, 14(1/2), pp.86-101.
Mach, M. and Baruch, Y., 2015. Team performance in cross cultural project teams: The
moderated mediation role of consensus, heterogeneity, faultlines and trust. Cross Cultural
Management, 22(3), pp.464-486.
Maduka, N.S., Edwards, H., Greenwood, D., Osborne, A. and Babatunde, S.O., 2018.
Analysis of competencies for effective virtual team leadership in building successful
organisations. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 25(2), pp.696-712.
Matveev, A.V. and Nelson, P.E., 2004. Cross cultural communication competence and
multicultural team performance: Perceptions of American and Russian
managers. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 4(2), pp.253-270.