Working with multicultural teams is what we typically do in our organizations every day. Day after day we observe that people from different cultures act differently from each other.
However, being aware of differences isn’t the same as understanding the differences and flexing your behavior to make your interactions effective. Despite the fact that we’re aware of cultural differences, we still aren’t fully able to adjust our behaviors to maximize the contributions on our team.
A good leader wants to enable the members of their team to be great performers, and to do so, you need to build the intercultural skills that take you from awareness to action. You need to Manage Across Cultures.
Why Cultural Awareness Is Not Enough in Global Leadership
At CultureWizard, we have identified eight dimensions that encompass workplace behaviors. Think of these dimensions as a practical map for decoding the “invisible rules” that shape how people communicate, make decisions, build trust, manage time, respond to change, and define what good work looks like. As we’ve stated many times, behavior is the visible manifestation of deeply held values and beliefs. It’s what you can observe on the surface that will allow you to act more effectively.
We often hear team leaders lamenting the fact that certain high performers only infrequently contribute to team meetings. We often hear how much time people “waste” in small talk and “idle” conversations with seemingly irrelevant information. And we also hear concerns about how easily people are resistant to well-intentioned feedback.
Leaders may be generally aware that challenges stem from cultural differences and can articulate the differences, but they don’t know how to effectively modify their behavior and the behavior of their team members to collaborate most effectively across cultures. We will discuss how three dimensions will make you a better intercultural leader and colleague and serve you well in your everyday work life.
Three Cultural Dimensions That Shape Global Team Performance
Group Orientation and Decision-Making Across Cultures
One of the quickest ways to misunderstand a colleague from a different culture is to assume everyone defines initiative the same way. In more individual-oriented cultures, people are often rewarded for taking initiative, speaking up, and owning a piece of work end-to-end. In more group-oriented cultures, people may be more focused on maintaining the group’s cohesion, protecting relationships, and ensuring the team or stakeholder network is brought along before action is taken.
Neither approach is better. A person who is aware of these differences will manage the discussions and help the team look for and encourage contributions from members who are quieter while enabling individuals to express their preferred ways of working.
When you manage group orientation well, you reduce the two classic global team frustrations: the “Why is this taking so long?” frustration and the “Why are we moving without alignment?” frustration. You replace both with clarity.
Relationship-Based vs. Transactional Trust
People from certain cultures need some time to establish a relationship before getting into business, while others are much more transactional and may even find it frustrating when there is small talk and personal sharing. In some workplace cultures, trust is built primarily through reliability: show competence, deliver results, and trust follows. In other cultures, trust is built through relationships: spending time, demonstrating respect, understanding the person, and trust becomes the foundation for performance.
Virtual and global work can make this tricky because relationship-building doesn’t happen accidentally anymore. When leaders don’t make space for it, teams often pay the price later through misinterpretation and resistance.
Understanding how important it is for some individuals to have a few minutes to ask, “How are things going in your region?” or “What are you working on this week?” is not filler. It’s trust-building. This is especially important before big decisions, sensitive feedback, or changes that impact people.
Leaders who manage culture well will invest in relationship building when they recognize its importance; they’ll take time to have short, private conversations to help prevent misunderstandings and increase commitment. Indeed, strong relationships don’t replace performance; they enhance it. When people feel trust, they share early warnings, raise concerns sooner, and coordinate more smoothly.
Direct vs. Indirect Communication Styles
Communication differences are often the most visible and the most misread. Some people communicate directly and value clarity and brevity above all. Others communicate more indirectly, using context, tone, and relationship cues to carry meaning. In an intercultural team, direct communicators may feel others are vague, while indirect communicators may feel others are blunt or even disrespectful.
The solution is to create ways to collaborate across different communication styles. For example, if someone is very direct, focus on the content before judging the delivery. If someone is indirect, look for the message underneath the softening language.
Individuals who know about cultural differences ask questions instead of making assumptions. For instance: “Can you say more about what concerns you?” “What would success look like from your perspective?” “If we go forward, what risks should we plan for?”
Silence is another form of communication that sometimes can create misunderstandings. Silence can mean agreement, disagreement, or respectful contemplation. Build a habit of confirming: “Before we close, I want to check—any concerns we haven’t surfaced yet?” And follow up in writing so people can respond more comfortably.
If you manage a mix of direct and indirect communicators, don’t make meetings a free-for-all and assume the loudest voices are the best ideas. Instead:
- Send an agenda and questions in advance.
- When possible, provide a written summary after the meeting and be sure everyone has the same understanding.
- Allow time for people who are working in a language other than their native one and may be less spontaneous than they are in their first language.
- Always confirm important decisions.
When communication is handled well, global teams have the opportunity to be more successful. Leaders can help enable this by clarifying expectations and differences and handling misunderstandings in a culturally effective way.
Practical Strategies for Managing Virtual and Global Teams
Managing across cultures frequently means managing virtual teams, even when team members are located in the same country. Being virtual puts the risk of cultural miscommunication on steroids. So much of body language is lost, and even facial expressions lend themselves to misinterpretations. By its very nature, a virtual meeting limits time for relationship-building, exacerbates the impact of different perspectives on time, and inhibits the ability of people to interrupt to contribute to a spirited conversation.
In situations like this, smart, culturally astute leadership makes all the difference.
Here are three practical moves that work especially well in virtual settings:
- Follow up everything important in writing. This reduces misunderstanding across communication styles, across languages, and across time zones. It also protects people who may not feel comfortable challenging ideas and decisions in the moment.
- Remind people that culture is “learnable.” Even experienced professionals can get blindsided when the rules shift. The best teams treat cultural differences as something to notice, discuss, and manage.
- Use “write it down” as a team norm. Decisions, owners, dates, and next steps should live in writing. It reduces misunderstanding and prevents the same conversation from repeating.
- Create multiple channels for input. Some people think best in the moment; others reflect and respond later. Give both options: live discussion plus a written follow-up window.
- Create a team agreement around Group Orientation. In some teams, consensus is the way things get done. In others, speed comes from individual ownership. Best practice is to agree on a rule that respects consensus while having clarity and ownership.
- Give people a culturally comfortable way to disagree. If open debate is uncomfortable for some, invite concerns in writing after the meeting or through a quick 1:1 check-in. You’ll get better understanding without forcing anyone into a style that feels unsafe.
- Reward collaboration explicitly. If your corporate culture values teamwork, make that visible: recognize the person who brought others along, prevented surprises, or built buy-in—not only the person who moved the fastest.
- Respect silence. Learn to manage this cultural behavior that causes misunderstanding frequently. Learn what silence means in the cultures—and personalities—of the people you’re working with.
Turning Corporate Values into Observable Behaviors
Corporate culture is often described in inspiring words: integrity, collaboration, innovation, respect. The problem is that interculturally, those words can mean different things. Best practice is to turn those values into behaviors.
This is where strong corporate cultures stand out: they translate values into observable behaviors that can flex across cultural differences while still creating consistency.
For example, “collaboration” becomes concrete when a company defines behaviors like:
“We circulate agendas before key meetings.”
“We confirm decisions and owners in writing.”
“We give feedback respectfully.”
“We assume positive intent and ask clarifying questions before reacting.”
When corporate culture is taught and reinforced this way, it becomes a shared operating system. People don’t have to guess how to act, and the values are clearly defined.
That is also where the RW3 CultureWizard Intercultural Model™ becomes especially useful: it gives leaders a simple structure for recognizing differences and then choosing behaviors that keep trust high and execution strong.
If you’re looking for support in bringing this to life across regions through practical tools, training, and scalable learning, RW3 CultureWizard helps leaders and organizations turn cultural insight into everyday leadership behavior, so corporate culture remains strong even when teams span countries, time zones, and work styles.
What Does It Mean to Manage Across Cultures?
Managing across cultures means recognizing how differences in group orientation, relationship-building, and communication styles shape workplace behavior — and intentionally adjusting leadership behaviors to reduce friction, increase trust, and improve execution across global teams.
