Across Europe, large corporations are adopting English as their operational language. For some, the shift is relatively easy. But for senior managers, starting to work in a different language from their own may prove tough. Yet language is only one barrier to collaboration for companies which are not only working across national borders but whose workforces are increasingly mobile and culturally diverse.
Certainly, language can be a stumbling block, says Paddy Miller, professor of managing people in organisations at Spain’s IESE Business School of the University of Navarra. “As European companies have stretched out into eastern Europe, the whole issue of English as opposed to German is a huge problem,” he says.
Prof Miller sees the decision to use English having its greatest impact at senior levels within organisations. “It starts to filter through your promotion policy, so what you see is organisations that will never have another general manger that isn’t fluent in English,” he says. “But that is very difficult for most mature managers – once you pass a certain age, if you haven’t cracked certain languages it is extremely difficult.”
With a new generation of multilingual executives moving up through the ranks of European companies, the language issue is a short-term one.
More often, it can be communication styles that create misunderstandings. Close physical contact during conversation, for example, could be acceptable in one culture but might be uncomfortable for someone from a country on the other side of the continent.
“In hotter countries, people gesticulate more, speak more quickly, put far more expression in their voices and tend to cut across people when they’re talking,” says Binna Kandola, co-founder of Pearn Kandola, the occupational psychologists. “While in London people are pretty restrained in terms of body language – and they tend to wait for people to finish speaking.”
Executives from different countries and cultural backgrounds may have very different interpretations of deadlines or of how to approach people that are more senior to them. Moreover, humour – something that allows teams to bond quickly – is notoriously difficult to translate. At best, a joke may need to be explained, robbing it of all wit and spontaneity. At worst, it can backfire and cause offence.
Prof Miller also points to differences in attitudes to problem-solving across the continent. “Eastern Europeans managers are absolutely going for it – they are hungry and excited, young and vital,” he says. “Western European managers say: ‘We’ve had these problems and they’re insurmountable.’ Whereas the eastern Europeans are saying: ‘We can find a solution,’ and are changing the models of business.”
One way to break through these differences is by establishing cross-cultural teams. Not only can they enhance institutional knowledge and help employees to exchange skills and experiences, but teams comprising individuals from different cultures also bring unique insights into an increasingly diverse customer base.
However, Mr Kandola stresses that companies must be prepared to allow enough time for these to be established. In research conducted by Pearn Kandola for Cisco Systems, the firm found it took an average of 17 weeks before cross-cultural teams could start out-performing culturally homogeneous ones.
“And if you’re working, as many European companies are, with dispersed or virtual teams, that adds another level of complexity to the whole thing,” says Mr Kandola.
The danger with virtual communications is that often, little time is spent on the informal social interactions that help build trust. And an over-reliance on e-mail can mean executives are simply exchanging information, which does nothing to establish close working relationships.
But even at a distance, teams can be encouraged to interact socially as well as professionally. Establishing chat rooms for informal communications, for example, is one way of achieving this.
“Make time for people to have one-to-ones for 10 minutes, rather than always having six people on a videoconference,” suggests Mr Kandola. “And team leaders should encourage people to be communicating as openly and freely as possible.”
Knowing how to communicate with colleagues working in distant locations has in some ways become more difficult due to the proliferation of communications tools and individuals’ preferences for one mode over another. While some executives may enjoy phone calls, others prefer to rely on e-mail, particularly if their first language is not English and they need the extra time e-mail affords to compose messages.
But technology can also help. At IBM, the company’s intranet, known as the “On Demand Workplace”, has a feature called BluePages through which staff can create a personal profile page similar to those on social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook.
As well as providing information on their reporting chains and areas of expertise, the BluePages system also allows employees to specify the time zone in which they are working and identify the most appropriate way to reach them. Presence-aware technology detects whether or not an individual is immediately available for a phone or online conversation.
But while language, culture and virtual communications are surmountable barriers to collaboration – if handled correctly – management consultants argue that if pan-European businesses are not considering the fundamental reasons for collaborating in the first place, teams will never be able to work together effectively.
“The most important thing to consider when you think about collaboration is why you want to collaborate,” says Alan Bird, a London-based partner in Bain & Company’s organisation practice. “Because it drives the kind of behaviours and cultures your want in the business.”
Some businesses, he argues, will be pan-European in their organisational structure while for others, the local approach works best. He cites the sportswear industry as an example of the former and the beer industry as an example of the latter since, with the exception of a few global brands, beer companies tend to be associated with a particular country.
“The collaboration for [beer companies] is in making consistent processes and developing people across borders – it is not necessarily driving brand values throughout a range of countries,” he says. By contrast, in sportswear, “the brand drives everything, so you need far more collaboration between the people who run the brands”.
Steve Cunningham, a partner at Hay Group Europe, also points to the need to take a close look at the type of collaboration needed for the business. “Often, organisations change their structure,” he explains, “but then don’t figure out what within teams generates a need for interdependence and, therefore, collaboration.”
The key to successful team working across borders, he says, is to pose the question: “Why should we work together and what can we do that cannot be done in another part of the organisation?”
For IBM, the answer to this question is always: “Improve the services delivered to the customer.” Unifying employees through a shared sense of purpose – a focus on the customer – is how the company is promoting its culture of collaboration.
“When you have a team of people working together, the glue is the issue of how to deliver the best value proposition to the customer,” says Bruno Di Leo, general manager for IBM’s north-east European division. “It is the customer focus that brings everyone together.”
