A huge part of successful diver­sity manage­ment is being able to unite a cultur­ally rich team, with all of their different ideas, iden­ti­ties and processes. As a global leader, this will really test your manage­ment skill as you seek to unite all of your employees under one banner.

Whilst it all sounds very romantic, the reality can be quite different as you get to grips with managing a team that can be divided not only by culture but by prox­imity, time zones and other similar chal­lenges.

So how do you go about choosing a common goal that will unite a diverse team? What steps can you take to be able to pull people together?

The process is essen­tially two-fold.

View Diver­sity As An Advan­tage, Not a Burden

“Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.”

Thomas Berry

Have you ever heard the phrase “Too many cooks spoil the broth”?

What image does the idea of having multiple streams of input bring to your mind? If it’s a nega­tive image you see then it’s likely to be more diffi­cult for you to see unity in a team where your employees have so many diverse view­points to offer. Hoping to spare your­self the perceived aggra­va­tion, you may fall into the trap of shying away from an approach that seeks to actively facil­i­tate people’s unique cultural qual­i­ties coming to the fore.

But re-read the above quote — diver­sity is the ‘secret sauce’ that gives you a compet­i­tive advan­tage. No other company has the same mix of people that you do. You’re drawing from a pool of talent that nobody else has. So, assuming you’ve invested a huge amount of time, energy and money in talent acqui­si­tion, don’t be afraid to utilise it; many hands make light work.

So Get Your Mind Right.

Global leaders need to thrive in as many aspects of diver­sity manage­ment as possible and the way to do this is to think about it posi­tively in the first place. You can either think that your project will drown under the weight of lots of different opin­ions or you can focus your mind on the rich­ness at your disposal. Opin­ions become unpro­duc­tive when the common goal does not have the depth or the strength to keep your team focused on achieving it.

Which leads very nicely onto the second part.

Choose Your ‘Why’ and then Choose the Goal

“People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

Simon Sinek has spoken at length about the power of ‘Why’. The basic prin­ciple is that nobody is really inter­ested in what you’re doing. They’re inter­ested in why you’re doing it. In order to unite your team and inspire them to action, the reason for them doing what they do needs to be powerful enough to keep them focused on finding the best solu­tion to achieve the goal. When the reason for doing provides enough of a pull, the idea that too many opin­ions will cause prob­lems becomes a distant memory.

If you need the ulti­mate example, look to foot­ball and the excite­ment that capti­vates the whole world as each nation puts forward their team to repre­sent them in the World Cup. The game can be played regard­less of any barriers presented. Language ceases to matter. Creed ceases to matter. Race ceases to matter. Yet, opin­ions abound. What’s the best strategy? How should the players assemble them­selves? Is a defence focused strategy better or worse?

Instead of all these ques­tions and opin­ions being destruc­tive, they become construc­tive. All discus­sions are now targeted to achieving the following; the pride of a nation, the building of a legacy and the achieve­ment of sporting glory that gets discussed for gener­a­tions.

These reasons go beyond the indi­vid­u­al­istic char­ac­ter­is­tics of a partic­ular culture and that’s what makes them so powerful. Diver­sity manage­ment is all about getting people to unite behind a common purpose, and focus less on the things that divide them.

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Achieving Cultural Tran­scen­dence

See the table below. Included are some exam­ples of what it looks like to pick a cultur­ally tran­scen­dent theme, and then trans­late that into busi­ness objec­tives. The theme is the ‘why’ and the busi­ness objec­tive is the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ is where your cultur­ally diverse team come in to steal the show.

So when you are choosing a company goal, have it fall in line with some of these major cate­gories that 99% of people will have respect for. By doing this you’ll be able to get the team to graciously accept cultural differ­ences and different ways of doing things as expres­sions of human creativity. Each way has its own value and a healthy discus­sion ensues as your team figures out the best way forward.

As a side note for all global leaders out there….

Allow room for different methods that pursue the common goal

The CIPD describe inter­na­tional diver­sity manage­ment the following way:

“Diversity management promotes valuing employees as individuals and using their unique strengths and capabilities to support business performance.”

Every employ­ee’s mind works slightly differ­ently. So you can imagine that even when people share cultures, the conclu­sions they draw and the way they choose to solve the same problem will differ. Now magnify that idea across a team which is cultur­ally diverse. For any goal you present as a global leader, your team could hold an infi­nite number of ways to achieve it.

A recent study has shown that diverse teams make better deci­sions. The study related to gender diver­sity but invari­ably those teams would have contained different cultures within them.

So don’t squash the different creative expres­sions that come from your global team. You’ve got an excel­lent chance that the most stream­lined, most effi­cient way of achieving the company goal will rise to the surface.

As a leader, your job is to focus on the goal and trust your team to deliver the high quality work that will achieve it. If you get down in the nitty-gritty trying to micro­manage your way into reaching the goal, you’ll burn out and the different inputs will become a burden to you.

So have a balance, oversee what’s happening, have regular check­points to discuss progress, but empower your team to master­mind the solu­tions that will move the company forward. In this way, diver­sity becomes a resource to be harnessed and not a factor that needs to be suppressed and managed.

So in summary, choosing a common goal that will unite your team boils down to two things:

1. getting your mind in a head­space to accom­mo­date different points of view, and
2. having a purpose to underpin the goal that unifies your team.

Remember that you can only go as far as your mind is willing to go. If your outlook on collab­o­ra­tion needs a tweak, get some inspi­ra­tion from compa­nies who have seen massive returns from following this method. Secondly, figure out your reason, your purpose, your ‘why’. It will be the anchor that keeps your cultur­ally diverse team centred and focused on using their differ­ences to create some­thing amazing for the company.

“In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.”

Audre Lorde

We hope this article was able to give you new ideas on how to unite your cultur­ally diverse team. As a global leader, it’s up to you to lead the way towards a common goal — while letting every member on your team add their own unique value to the journey.

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