Advantages of multicultural teams
In a world that is getting smaller everyday and closer to everyone, thanks to technology and the new forms of communication, the reality of a multicultural environment has become a normal situation in both our personal and professionals lives.
As obvious as it is today that we have more international friends with different cultural backgrounds than our parents did, it is also evident that our offices are becoming more and more multicultural as well.
Migrating in search of new challenges and opportunities is now a worldwide flow. Expats travel to every corner of the world joining teams and projects everywhere, so in most of offices now we are welcoming new people that bring their experience and personal background to the work place. The more expats a company hires, the more likely it will be receiving new talent from abroad.
And that is good news for everyone, because these new multicultural teams are the teams of the future; the broader our team is on the map, the stronger it will be.
A multicultural team will bring many positive assets, but the strongest one is possibly the openness to different cultures and languages. An office where you can hear various languages is an office ready to do business in new countries, open to new clients, is ready to speak their languages, and understand their cultural backgrounds. That is the definition of the 21st century office.
Creativity is one of the assets that would be reinforced as well. In an office where people come from different cultures and backgrounds, everyone learns to be open to new ideas and new perspectives, so creativity would definitely be high in that multicultural environment. According to a Harvard study, this kind of team works in a more creative way to solve problems and be innovative.
Another great thing about being part of a multicultural team is that not only is there a high chance that you will be able to speak your own language with colleagues (which is not easy sometimes when you yourself are an expat), but that also helps to make the office space more comfortable and welcoming. Working in a multicultural team will also help us improve our level in new languages. We can learn from our coworkers, and help them too to get to know our language, a symbiotic relationship that would always help in the future. Even if we don’t fully learn one of our colleague’s languages, sometime knowing just a few words can help a lot in the work environment and in our personal life.
But all these positive reasons are not only towards the workers, because as we previously said, the relationship with the clients will also be highly improved. It seems obvious that if you can talk to a client in their own language, misunderstandings on terminology or just cultural boundaries are avoided; which can save the day (and the project) sometimes. It also shows the client that you care, and that you want to understand them and adapt to them as much as possible, which increases the trust of the client in the company.
All in all, a multicultural work team is a win-win situation both for the workers and for the company. Workers can learn new perspectives, new languages and new ways to approach problems, which are assets that will stay with them in the future. Besides, how fun are work parties when everyone brings food and drinks from their home countries? At the end of the day, yes, we do live in a small global world, so the best we can do is to make the most of it.