Module 2: Working in a team
2.1 Themes & learning outcomes
Themes
How to build intercultural entrepreneurial teams
Intended learning outcomes
After completing this module you will be able to:
Understand what constitutes an entrepreneurial team, including the different roles of team members, and the advantages of team vs individual entrepreneurship.
Evaluate how diversity contributes to team performance.
Assess your strengths and weaknesses in team situations as well as your competences in relation to your Global Challenge.
Demonstrate an awareness of how cultural background influences communication style, identify your own cultural biases, and be comfortable with the ambiguity brought by that new perspective.
Connect two or more cultures, demonstrating effective interaction with varied cultures and worldviews.
Time required: 3-5 hours.
2.2 Introduction
You can't expect a new team to perform well when it first comes together. Forming a team takes time, and members often go through recognisable stages as they change from being a collection of strangers to a united group with common goals. Bruce Tuckman's ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing’ model describes these stages. When you understand it, you can help your new team become effective more quickly.
Examine the team formation process to understand typical stages of development. Review material at the following link:
Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing - MindTools
Team formation requires some effort, and this is especially true on your NICE journey! Here you will not only work in a newly formed team, but in a team that performs in a virtual context, has a diverse and intercultural set of members and goes through an entrepreneurial process. What this can entail is what this module is all about. It will provide you with some useful knowledge and reflection opportunities, and thus, help you and your team perform well on the journey ahead.
Entrepreneurial teams
Entrepreneurship is a problem-solving process. You can look at it as a journey where you encounter many situations full of surprises and novelty. This leaves little room for routine actions and requires a flexible approach in a dynamic environment. Often, entrepreneurs do not take this journey on their own, instead they undertake the steps of the entrepreneurial process together with other entrepreneurs. Here, the focus is on the individual differences in knowledge, alertness, and creativity - as those strongly influence the discovery and exploitation of opportunities. This set of people then collectively discovers, structures or identifies a problem and combines their forces to solve it. For this, they share ideas, knowledge, expertise, and opportunities.
Now what makes this group of entrepreneurs an entrepreneurial team? Research showed that firstly they should share a common interest and a common goal. Secondly, it is crucial how they perceive their decision situation: They need to feel that they can not realise this by themselves and instead need to depend on one another. When the entrepreneurs perceive strong interdependence, they will most likely be primed to identify themselves as team members and to adopt a 'we-frame' in entrepreneurial problem-solving. This includes the feeling of having 'co-power' which is the perception of each person that together - through an appropriate combination of actions - they can achieve their goal.
To get to this point, it is of utmost importance to communicate and interact with one another as frequently, extensively and openly as possible. While doing so, special care should be taken to be mutually responsive and to provide mutual practical support to one another.
To learn more, you can read "Towards a theory of entrepreneurial teams" by David Harper.
The impact of culture on virtual teams
As we live in an increasingly globalised world, entrepreneurs often have to work together with people from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds - who might even be located all over the world. Furthermore, entrepreneurs purposefully choose to form intercultural teams because such teams possess rich resources in terms of human, social, financial, and intellectual capital, which can enhance outcomes at all the stages of the entrepreneurial process. That's of highest value in order to develop an innovative and viable idea for a service or a product, especially when solving an aspect of a Global Challenge.
But however valuable this cultural diversity is, it can also lead to challenges in terms of communication as well as different expectations and ways of working. For example, people who speak the same language but have different interpretations can have different perceptions of time management, etc. Challenges like these get compounded when working remotely or in a virtual environment.
To get an insight into some interesting challenges and how to cope with them, watch this TED Talk by Ricardo Fernandez who has over the last 10 years been working remotely with several teams from many different countries:
As you continue working with your group it is crucial to continue building trust. This is even more important given the virtual nature of this course as participants are not asked to share the same space or even the same time zone. Be mindful of the communication style used by others in order to experience how different cultures communicate and adjust your own communication accordingly. This is an important life skill that will be valuable in both your career and personal relationships.
Considering the specific challenges to effective teamwork that arise from collaborating in a virtual environment, how can you and your team members get to know each other better and improve your team's virtual collaboration? Write down your thoughts.
2.3 Warm-up
As the examples from Ricardo Fernandez showed, cultural differences can create substantial obstacles to effective teamwork. But they may be difficult to recognise until significant damage has been done. It is easy to assume that the challenges in intercultural teams are just due to differing communication styles. But as you have seen, different attitudes towards hierarchy and authority and conflicting norms for decision making can also create barriers to an intercultural team's ultimate success.
Becoming aware of your own communication style and cultural context is the first crucial step to enhance the overall effectiveness of your team. Thus, now it's time to learn more about your own cultural context. The following self-assessment exercise is based upon the eight cultural dimensions of The Culture Map, a book by Erin Meyer.
Follow the link and assess yourself: Self Assessment Questionnaire by Erin Meyer– HBR
After submission you will get your results. You can see your score "x out of 15" on each of the eight dimensions by moving your mouse cursor over the blue dot.
As you will need your scores later on to create your team's cultural profile, please save your scores:
My scores:
Communicating:
Evaluating:
Persuading:
Leading:
Deciding:
Trusting:
Disagreeing:
Scheduling:
Mapping out cultural differences and considering where you and your team members fall on this map, can improve relationships within your team. To learn more about this topic, watch the video of Erin Meyer, the creator of the Culture Map, explaining three dimensions in detail.
Watch the video below:
With your scores in mind, consider:
How can you contribute to intercultural understanding in your team?
Share your thoughts with your team.
2.4 Advice & “know-how”
So far, you've looked at the formation and qualifications of entrepreneurial teams as well as the challenges that working in an intercultural and virtual environment can bring. Now let's learn more about means and diversity in teams.
Explore your means
Do you still remember the entrepreneurial mindset of effectuation and its five principles? If you follow effectuation in your entrepreneurial process, you should start with your means and then explore yourself and your team members ('bird-in-hand'). To explore your means, ask yourself, 'in relation to our Global Challenge/problem, who am I, what do I know, who do I know?'. When you answer these questions, also consider the notion of differences or diversity. Diversity can be looked at from different perspectives, for example
demographically: e.g. gender, age, nationality
behaviourally: e.g. team roles, (culturally influenced) working styles
informationally: e.g. knowledge, expertise, competences, network
Think about it: What do you bring to your entrepreneurial team? Write down your thoughts.
Embrace diversity
There is growing research on the value of diversity and how it can enhance outcomes and team performance. For example, Rocio Lorenz found in her research on the leadership of big companies that gender diversity and innovation seem to drive each other.
To learn more on the topic, watch the following video of her presenting her findings:
"Diverse teams require a little bit more effort in the beginning, but then they bring fresher, more creative ideas", says Rocio Lorenzo.
Embracing (any kind of) diversity in your team introduces both challenges to manage and advantages to celebrate. Remember at every step to nurture the creativity that comes with it and experience how this can be used as an asset as you work towards your final project together.
Consider the ways in which diversity might influence performance in your NICE team. Write down your thoughts.
Belbin team roles
Other research showed that the most successful teams were made up of a diverse mix of behaviours. For example, Dr Meredith Belbin and his team discovered that there are nine clusters of behaviour - these were called 'Team Roles'.
Review the material at the following link to explore the different team roles: The Nine Belbin Team Roles
Every role is related to certain strengths and brings certain allowable weaknesses. Below you will find the different Belbin profiles, each with its associated strengths and weaknesses. See if you can identify which is which:
Think about a team situation you have experienced and the roles you and others assumed. Reflect on who took on the different roles and why, and consider how these roles influenced team performance/outcomes.
What team roles are you most comfortable with? Why? Write down your thoughts.
2.5 Resources
Bouncken, A. (2004). "Cultural diversity in entrepreneurial teams: Findings of new ventures in Germany." Creativity and Innovation Management 13(4): 240-253.
Cooney, T. (2005). Ed. "Special issue on Entrepreneurial Teams." International Small Business Journal, 23(3).
Gibson, C. and J. Manuel. (2003), "Building Trust: Effective Multi-Cultural Communication Process in Virtual Teams". In: C. Gibson and S. Cohen (eds.), Virtual Teams That Work: Creating Conditions For Virtual Team Effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Harper, D. (2008). "Towards a theory of entrepreneurial teams." Journal of Business Venturing, 23: 613-626.
Kramer, J. (2009). Managing cultural dynamics. Amsterdam: Business Contact Publishers.
Kramer, J. (2014). Wow! What a difference. Zaltbommel: Thema Uitgeverij
Meyer, E. (2015). The Culture Map. New York: Public Affairs.
Schjoedt, L. and S. Kraus. (2009). "Entrepreneurial teams: Definition and performance factors." Management Research News, 32(6): 513-524,
2.6 Challenge
In this challenge, you are asked to bring all your reflections together and form closer connections with your team members by creating a short video of yourself. This task won't be easy or comfortable for many of you, but do stick with it! Our verbal communication is often different from how we come across in writing, and this is your chance to try it out in the safe environment of your NICE team.
Film yourself with your smartphone giving a short self-introduction.
Then share your video with your teammates.
Start you introduction by sharing something that will tell a story about who you are or how you work. This can be anything, e.g. the shoes you are wearing, the view out your window or your desk. Then share the story behind it.
Next, talk about yourself in relation to your team's Global Challenge and your chosen subtheme/problem: Who are you? What do you know? Who do you know? Here, you can touch on your family, home, education, work, hobbies, cultural background, experiences or anything else that you find relevant.
Finally, summarise what good teamwork is for you and present your strengths, and your weaknesses as a team player.
Have fun with this task!
Watch the videos of your team members and take notes on what you’ve found in your team.
While watching consider for example:
What competences do each of you bring to the team, like language skills or expertise in a certain subject?
What roles do you take?
How can you build on each others' competences?
How will you all fit together in your team?
2.7 Team assignment
Finally, it's time to work together! This assignment should help you to get to know each other better and to explore the diversity of your team. Based on your team's profile, you will eventually draw up a team contract.
To complete this team assignment, meet up virtually and work through the steps together.
Step 1: Map your team
Teams work most effectively when goals are clear, roles are defined, and the value each team member brings to the table is understood. Thus first, share what you discovered during this module about yourself and each other with your team. Take into considerations your comments and videos.
What is it that each of you brings to the team?
Think of a way to map your team and create a visual representation.
Thinking along the lines of effectuation ('who you are, what you know, who you know'), reflect on how to best utilise your team's diversity in your group project and discuss:
How will you all fit together in your team and how can you work together well?
How can you build on each others’ diversity, competences and networks in relation to your Global Challenge?
Take notes!
Step 2: Cultural profile
Now explore the cultural profile of your team. For this, you need your individual scores from the cultural self-assessment.
Appoint a person who will gather all your individual scores and plot them on the Erin Meyer rankings in order to create a cultural profile of your team. You can use this handout (.jpeg) and alter it, e.g. using Paint. Then, share the cultural team profile with everyone on the team.
Now look at this visual representation of your team's diverse cultural dimensions and discuss:
In which dimensions do you see a lot of similarities?
Where do you find the cultural differences of your team?
How could this possibly affect your teamwork?
What measures could you take to improve the communication within your team?
Take notes!
Step 3: Discuss
Thinking about the cultural and entrepreneurial profile of your team, discuss:
How can having a contract help your team work well together?
Step 4: Team contract
Write a team contract for the rest of the project.
This should consist of five rules that you all commit to following from now on. For example, this may include:
How will you each communicate with each other?
What are things that your team will do?
What are things that your team will not do?
What will you do as a team when you run into personal or academic challenges going forward?
Remember to refer to your team contract regularly throughout the rest of the course.
2.8 Reflection
Finally, take some time to look back at the module and reflect:
What do you consider to be features of more effective and less effective teamwork?
What specific challenges to effective teamwork arise from collaborating in a virtual environment?
What will you do to support the collaboration process of your team?
Which competences does your team need to move forward with your challenge?
Write down your thoughts and discuss with your team.