Part 1:
I have had a negative experience on a team project a few years ago. As I was born and raised in India, I had thought that expressing disagreement in a group is very rude. There were many situations were I couldn't accept what one of my team member was suggesting. But since that cultural element was still in me, I hesitated to express my dissent to avoid any sort of problem. Even though my other team members had the knowledge about other cultural backgrounds and they were flexible, this experience occurred as a result of my team member's failure of recognizing cultural differences. There can be differences in interactions that we never even imagined. Even the way we address someone can be different. For instance, in certain cultures such as Indian culture, it is absolutely impolite to call anyone older than us by their name. Recognizing cultural differences can play an important role in the success of every team work. Once these differences are noticed, it will allow every team members to be fully engaged and it will impact the discussion of ideas positively. Active listening can aid in breaking the differences . In order to improve the team effectiveness across cultural differences, we should communicate with others and create a self awareness to understand how cultural backgrounds will influence our team.
Part 2:
Anderson has provided several guidelines for managing clients and effectively communicating with them that we can use for the project. Initially, it is important to establish a detailed understanding all all the important aspects of the project by learning the client's goals and preferences. To achieve that, we should learn more about the client's organization prior to meeting with them, identify who the target audience and stakeholders will be. It is also important to communicate with the client during the project. We have to communicate constructively and be specific about the progress we have made in the project or about the problems we have encountered while working on it. All the guidelines provided focuses on the strategies for managing both the project and our relations with the client.
Yes, cultural differences are something that should be kept in mind. I suppose the biggest issue regarding them may be that many people whose experience is restricted to their native land may not be primed to consider these sorts of things. In other words, unfortunately awareness may be fairly low, so good communication and openness is definitely a good idea with this consideration.
ReplyDeleteOpen communication is definitely critical to success on any kind of team. I actually have trouble with expressing disagreement as well. I think it's important to create a distinction between criticizing an idea and criticizing a person. It doesn't matter if someone suggests the best solution or the worst, because discussing all possible solutions to a problem is the only way to determine which one is the best.
ReplyDelete- Nicolette Fink