Building Cultural Bridges to Build Teamwork
By Barry Frey, Senior Consultant, LMA Consulting Group, bfrey@lmaconsulting.cc

Unless your relatives were here to greet the Pilgrims, you probably have people in your family who stepped off a ship or plane onto American soil for the first time, wondering how they would be received in their new country.  We get to see a sort of instant replay of that scenario every time we meet a new coworker who may have a disability, or whose race, national origin, religion, gender or age is different from our own.

Through developing the skill of building cultural bridges, we help ourselves and our new coworkers become more comfortable and able to work together smoothly and productively.  The stronger the team, the better the results.  When results improve, everyone wins. Building cultural bridges is critical to developing strong teams in diverse workplaces.

What it Takes to Build Cultural Bridges

• It's more than diversity:  it means being proactive.  Diversity by itself can result in closed groups with little interaction between them.  Who do people sit with at breaks and meals?  Tensions can develop based on perceived and misunderstood differences.
• It's more than tolerance:  it's the active pursuit of understanding across perceived differences.  Tolerance is too shallow as a foundation for teamwork.  It does nothing to improve understanding or eliminate stereotypes.  Ignorance of others drags down the team and hurts everyone.
• You don't have to give up your individuality or abandon your heritage.  You can hold onto your own identity in relationship to someone else's individuality while acknowledging your differences as both legitimate and valid.
• It's based on dialogue, give and take, listening and talking.  It means seeking first to understand and then to be understood.  It doesn't mean that everyone in the room agrees, but that there is a commitment to being in the room and working together.

Tips for Developing Cultural Bridges

• Admit your own biases and stereotypes.
• Know how your culture is viewed by others.
• Learn about other cultures through reading, internet research, attending cultural events and festivals, watching movies and TV programs.
• Share knowledge and experiences with others.
• Be willing to extend yourself to others.  Recognize and learn to deal with the (dis)comfort level in different situations.
• Strive to become more comfortable in cross-cultural situations.
• Strike up conversations with people of different backgrounds.
• Learn verbal and nonverbal cues of other cultures.
• Assess what works and what doesn't.
• Overcome your own and others' fears, personal biases and stereotypes.
• Conduct an ongoing self-evaluation of your personal feelings, reactions and progress.

When you build cultural bridges, you win, your coworkers win and so does your organization.  It's the key to success in a diverse workplace.

Barry Frey, B.A., SPHR, is a Senior Consultant and Certified Talent Consultant at LMA Consulting Group.

Sources:
What is Pluralism?  The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, 10/14/08, www.pluralism.org
Cultural Competence, Nutrition and Well-Being A to Z, 10/14/08, http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Ca-De/Cultural-Competence.html