Initially, team members from another culture often feel isolated in a workplace outside their country of origin. Engaging in a new workplace, often thousands of miles away, not only highlights the marked differences between cultures, but also creates a sense of disconnection.
Language differences are hard enough, but when news, events, popular shows, and various other matters team members talk about are both unknown and bewildering, new team members feel lost.
To make matters worse, what is funny in one culture is often not a point of amusement in another culture. So even funny anecdotes and expressions can’t be easily exchanged or shared. The less engaged new team members become in everyday conversations, the more isolated they feel.
Aside from work tasks, new team members need something to talk about as a way of connecting to others. When they can’t understand or identify with the everyday building blocks of conversation, they become withdrawn and uninvolved with anything but the work. Over time, this is a recipe for lower productivity and dissatisfaction.
Good leaders understand that what makes the new workplace so isolating is the inability for new team members to connect with the flow of everyday conversation shared by peers. So, they go out of their way to create conversational touchpoints.
Social events where team members and the new colleague can experience things together help to create a foundation for future conversations. So does inviting the new colleague to share in some of the content being watched, read, and listened to. Common content creates a context for sharing and improves conversational ease.
Being successful in leading those from other cultures may also require many other strategies, including an understanding of how these colleagues prefer to share their views, receive recognition, and be given feedback, as these actions often differ from culture to culture.
But the most important first step is to get them involved with the team conversation about everyday matters as quickly as possible.
Once a new colleague from another culture feels they can understand and engage in the current team commentary, their feelings of isolation begin to melt away. The best leaders know that it is always the quality of the conversation that matters most in producing acceptance and comfort in teams. Helping those from other cultures to enter the team conversation makes all the difference.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
