Rethink your employees’ cross-cultural training

Most managers make a mistake when it comes to cross-cultural training: They focus only on explaining what the cultural differences are. Understanding these differences is important, but you can’t stop there. Once people learn how behaviours and norms differ across cultures, the real challenge becomes learning to adapt and adjust their own behaviour to work with others. So help your employees take the next step in their cross-cultural training. Assess what skills they need to develop to better work across cultures, and then integrate training into their actual work. Cross-cultural training doesn’t happen with a manual, website or off-site. You have to give employees opportunities to practice and hone their skills in the actual contexts where they’ll need to use them. Bring people from different backgrounds together for long-term projects, encourage mentorships and initiate group discussions for people to voice what they’re learning and what they’re struggling with.

(Adapted from The Mistake Most Managers Make With Cross-Cultural Training, by Andy Molinsky)

A better way to welcome new team members

When you bring on new team members, it’s important to carefully and deliberately integrate them into the group. Otherwise, newcomers can feel isolated or become marginalised.

Make everyone feel more comfortable by:

• Preparing your group for new arrivals. Discuss in advance why it’s valuable to include people with different perspectives and skills. Make sure that the new members’ roles are clear to everyone.

• Matching newcomers with seasoned mentors. When new hires have an experienced person to turn to, it helps them acclimate to the team more quickly and better understand the workflow.

• Making meaningful introductions. Existing team members may already be familiar with one another’s skills, interests and styles, but making purposeful introductions and encouraging the sharing of that sort of information with new members can help everyone bond.

(Adapted from Innovative Teams, from the 20-Minute Manager series)

Make job interviews less stressful for candidates

People find job interviews stressful because of the many unknowns. What will my interviewer be like? What kinds of questions will he ask? What should I wear? People don’t perform as well when they’re stressed, so if you want to be able to assess potential quickly, you should take pre-emptive steps to lower their cortisol levels.

Tell the candidate in advance the topics you plan on discussing so he can prepare. Say who — and how many people — will be interviewing him, so he won’t be surprised. Be willing to meet at a time that’s convenient for him.

And explain your organisation’s dress code. You want to make the candidate comfortable so that you can have a productive, professional conversation.

Then you’ll have more time to evaluate whether he is the right person for the job — and to sell the role and company.

(Adapted from How to Conduct an Effective Job Interview, by Rebecca Knight)

Make office politics less personal

One of the reasons office politics makes so many of us uneasy is that complex situations are difficult to read and impossible to control. When personalities and motivations intertwine, anything can happen. One tactic for handling office politics is to make its challenges less personal. If you begin to look at politics like a game — you win some, you lose some — you’ll become more resilient and have smarter responses when something takes you by surprise.

If a situation starts to feel too personal, try to avoid looking your opponent in the eye. In many business situations eye contact is crucial, but in this case, averting your gaze can help you remain calm and avoid the fight-or-flight impulse that rises when you feel attacked.

Keeping an even keel enables you to react more thoughtfully, offer productive suggestions and regain control of the situation.

(Adapted from 4 Strategies for Women Navigating Office Politics, by Kathryn Heath)

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, April 27th, 2015

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