A continuación, le indicamos cómo puede obtener información valiosa de diversas perspectivas y orígenes.

Active listening is key to facilitating a team. This enables you to hear the messages and also helps others hear as well. It develops understanding and shows that you value all ideas. This sets an example for the team and they will begin to actively listen as well, enabling the team to grow and hear each other.

In our survey of 22 success factors for transferring a person's skills from a monocultural to a multicultural context, Active Listening came out as number one, both for business professionals and intercultural experts. Ensuring people know that their perspectives have been acknowledged and understood is a pre-requisite to any lofty ambitions for 'team synergy'. But listening attentively to others can be exhausting for those who are bursting to share with everyone what’s bubbling up in their mind. I try to remember 3 things when listening: 1) take your finger off the trigger as others speak 2) listen to the whole of what their saying, not just selected parts and 3) listen to what opposes your view, instead of what confirms it. It's hard.

Ironically, it can be more productive to remember to ask some questions of YOURSELF before digging into people's diverse experience : "What am I (really) noticing and hearing?" [focus on the facts and stay curious] "How am I interpreting it? Could others interpret it differently in the team?" "How am I judging this? How could others judge this differently?" This ability to consciously stretch our range of interpreting and evaluating others, allows us to then ask follow up questions using a wider viewfinder, rather than posing questions confined to the narrow limits of our instinct.

...and it's probably a key to building quicker consensus. People don't always need to have their opinion accepted as 'right', but they do need to be heard and acknowledged. By ensuring that minority voices have been understood...that’s often enough to build commitment to a final (and different) decision.

How a team is led contributes significantly to innovation in multicultural teams. One powerful piece of research was conducted by Carol Kovach, where mono-cultural and multicultural groups where asked to find innovative uses for common objects. Mono-cultural teams showed average performance compared to multicultural teams that either performed exceptionally well or performed very poorly...they weren't average. The difference was in the approach to leadership. Those led by a someone who openly recognised and acknowledged the cultural diversity in the group went on to work WITH this cultural diversity as an asset. Leaders who ignored or suppressed cultural differences to focus immediately on the task, performed badly.

This takes guts. We are naturally drawn to people similar to ourselves. In terms of personality, looks and values. But that bashes diversity. That’s why white males surround themselves with … …. Yup! New insights, fresh approaches, cultural insights give us the inspiration to drive innovation. But not without conflict. Take the good with the bad. Try listening without critisizing, Try acceptance without judgement. Try something new instead of leaning on 🔴conventional 🔴traditional 🔴familiar New is sexy New is exciting New is normal for changemakers and market leaders

WHERE the voices are heard is also important. In some cultural groups people feel safer by having their voices heard within peer groups rather than in plenary. That voice may then be expressed (with acknowledgement to the source) by a more 'dynamic' member of the sub-group or someone who has the gravitas to support that perspective. As a facilitator it's not always better to call out individuals when some people in the group have grown up somewhere where it is considered appropriate to blend in and not stick out.