Week 10 - Synergy and the Cross Cultural Workspace

This week, we ventured away from personal development, and into working in teams. To start off, we had a session on synergy.

Synergy is when multiple people/teams/organizations come together to try and produce a greater impact than individually. 

When people collaborate, there are two possible outcomes:

• Negative synergy: When the people do not take the time to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses, the team is bound to divide and take on work suboptimally. This is not much better, if not worse, than each person in the group working alone.
• Positive synergy: On the other hand, when the group members are aware of their strengths and shortcomings, work can be assigned accordingly. Each person spends more effort working on their areas of specialty, and collaborating with people with different viewpoints can help the team work more creatively.

Targeting Positive Synergy

As mentioned before, to build a team that positively synergizes, it is important for team members to understand each other. For people to enthusiastically contribute to the project, it is important that they are given work that plays to their strength, and allows them to express their individuality. When each team is convinced that they can add special value to the work they are assigned, they will be motivated to put their best work forward.

For a team to stay motivated, it is important that team members have a clear sense of direction, and they trust their coworkers are also contributing effectively. To ensure this, every individual must be given utmost clarity about the goal they are working towards (but with the freedom to choose how they want to reach this goal), and must be kept accountable in reasonable intervals.

To effectively collaborate, every group member must feel their opinions and idea are valued when making decisions. This is where the 'leaders speak last' mantra comes into effect.

Personalities in a Team

There are 4 typical personalities one can find in most teams:

• Bulldog - This person is overly aggressive and dominates others. Such a person has a lot of opinions and ideas that they hold with high value, but they must also be conscious of what others can bring to the table and have an open mind.
• Chameleon - Such a person is very flexible in their work but is too quick to give up their identity. Some flexibility is required and appreciated when working in a group, but it is important to occasionally put oneself forward and bring unique value.
• Rabbit - Such a person finds ways and excuses to avoid work. It is important to ensure they are given work that plays to their strength and to keep them motivated and accountable.
• Ant - A tireless worker. While such people are greatly appreciated in the team, after a point, it is important to know how to delegate work as well. After all, if you have decided to do all the work, then you don't need a team, thus defeating the idea of positive synergy.

When working in a team, it is important to balance one's individuality and the team's attributes. The Thomas-Kilmann book on conflict management says when the importance given to:

• self and team is low: indifference
• self is high and team is low: aggressive
• self is low and team is high: submissive
• self and team is high: healthy balance

When there are such different personalities on a team, there are bound to be some conflicts over ideas, work distribution, etc. In such situations, it is important to communicate effectively, understand each person's point of view, and try to find an equally acceptable middle ground.

Cross Cultural Workplace

In continuation of this theme, we had a session on effectively working in a cross cultural workplace.

As early as a few decades back, most work was done by small, localized teams. Most innovations were borne out of the work of a single person or a few close knit people in artisanal shops.

However, with the massive technological advancements in technology and communication, sharing of information and distribution of work has never been easier. As a result, most projects today are undertaken by larger teams, often from unrelated backgrounds and geographies. Hence, it is crucial that we revamp our working styles to be able to work on projects far bigger than ourselves.

One of the most fundamental challenges with working in teams spread across the globe is the differing time zones. The western workplace typically has been following a monochronic work culture, where an orderly nature and fixed time slots (such as the "9 to 5") are given high importance. This ensured everyone was available to work and collaborate at a fixed times of the day.

However, with teams now being spread around the globe, this paradigm must change. All members cannot be working at the same time; rather, work is frequently handed over from people working in one time zone to another. In essence, progress is being made 24x7. To accommodate for this, we must adapt a polychronic work culture, that is flexible and more suitable for collaboration. 

Another major challenge when working in a cross cultural team is to prevent a perception of difference in importance between different subgroups. Members working from remote locations may feel an inferiority complex when comparing themselves to members working from company headquarters. Or, in an interdepartmental project, members from one department may feel they are more important than members from another department.

Such a negative perception can lead to trust issues, and thus hamper overall collaboration and productivity. Team leads must take conscious efforts to bridge the divide and build trust and a sense of importance among every member of their team.

Another potential pitfall that may aggravate this issue is information asymmetry; that is, when some members of the team withhold information from others, feeling it is unnecessary for their work. Transparency in the workplace is crucial to ensure every individual feels valued and has the full idea of how and what they are contributing to.

We then talked about potential methods to smoothly run cross cultural teams. Some suggested breaking up the team into smaller sub groups with people from different locations/departments, so they get to know each other better.

It is also important for a manager to be able to anticipate potential points of conflict. They must take measures to prevent such conflicts, and also resolve any such conflicts, in an empathetic manner suitable to all parties involved.

Finally, it is important that any communication has the utmost clarity, as miscommunication can easily lead to conflict. It is also important for the team leads to be open to team members and show them they care for all members of the team. A great deal of trust issues can be avoided if team leads can convince members from different backgrounds that their work and opinions is greatly valued.