I work directly and personally with multinational teams. Here is how that came about.
In 2000 I was at Siemens in Munich, helping to integrate Westinghouse. I began by running intercultural training for German and American colleagues. Ten foundational topics. Communication, decision making, leadership, and the rest.
The training went well. Then line management came to me with a different request. “We are hearing good things. Can you help our teams directly? They are struggling to integrate and to collaborate.”
So I built a second offering, which I called a Policy Workshop. It began with background interviews. Then I did the analysis, designed the agenda, and ran the workshop itself, off-site, holding the group to the work. These were real problems, and the colleagues worked them out.
Then line management came back. “These are going well. Can you do the same on the German side, or the American side, where there is no intercultural issue at all? Just a plain collaboration problem.” So I did. The same method, pointed at their problem. It worked there, too.
That taught me what I have relied on ever since. The method is not really about culture. Culture is one of the things that makes teams misread each other, an important one, but only one. The method helps a team see where they differ in how they think and work, what those differences are doing to their collaboration, and how to get them to help them rather than hurt collaboration.
Today I do that work with multinational teams. It takes whatever form the situation needs. Training for a team about to begin a long cross-border collaboration. A workshop for management working through a post-merger integration. Coaching for a senior leader. A focused analysis when a collaboration has stalled and no one can say why.
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