Embracing and Managing Cultural Diversity in Your Project Environment

Today’s project teams often bring cultural diversity to a project. All your team members need to feel they belong and are accepted. That means cultural sensitivity is an important skill for project managers.  Here are tips to help you manage cultural diversity in your projects to improve project outcomes and address culture-related issues that arise.

• Consider cultural sensitivity training. Identify your project team’s experience with working across cultures. If their experience is limited, schedule cultural sensitivity training. This training not only builds skills; it makes a statement that all cultures will be embraced during the project. It also helps facilitate communication. Look for specialized training programs, workshops, or online resources that cater to the specific cultures on the team.

• Take advantage of diversity. Promote and celebrate the richness of the project team’s diversity as a strength. Diverse team members can provide valuable insights for navigating cultural nuances. Ask team members to share their experiences to build rapport as they work with other team members. Seek out their unique viewpoints to enhance problem-solving. In addition, share diverse team members‘ viewpoints with key stakeholders to expand stakeholder’s perspectives and their perception of the project’s value.

• Align project controls with cultural norms. Consider cultural preferences when building your project plan, communication methods, and approach to conflict resolution. For example, build regional holidays and local working hours into your project schedule. Take into account cultural norms of hierarchical or consensus management as you develop your approach to decision-making. If team members are used to different norms (hierarchical or consensus), talk through the process and identify what will work best for the people and stakeholders involved. Making these adjustments builds trust and avoids misunderstandings.

• Promote a culture of “positive intent.” Despite your best efforts, cultural misunderstandings are likely to occur. Promote a project culture where team members expect positive intent from each other. This helps ease tensions. Create a norm where team members immediately raise a concern if something makes them uncomfortable. The team members then meet and strive to understand the concern. Sharing the intent of the communication or action is key to understanding. Team members can agree about how to move forward in a way that is comfortable for all involved.

For example, one team member conveys their ideas bluntly and directly while others like to share their ideas as possibilities to consider. The blunt team member comes across as bossy or directive when that wasn’t their intent. The other team members can share their feelings about the bluntness, so they can talk it through and come up with a way to interact that works for everyone.

Do you have questions about how to solve cultural issues that arose in a project? Or techniques you’ve used to embrace cultural diversity to improve outcomes? Maybe you can share some of the nuances of your culture and how to work with those on a project. Share with us in the comments section.

For more about diversity, belonging, and inclusion, check out Pat Wadors’ Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging course.

 

Coming Up

Anna Lung’aho Anderson and I get so many questions from people who want to transition into a career in project management. In this LinkedIn Learning Office Hours, we’re going to dig deep into the work YOU have to do to move into project management. Yes, it does require some effort on your part. We will talk about how to figure out if project management is a good fit for you; learning project management hard skills and terminology; how to update your resume, LinkedIn profile, and approach to networking; and finally, how to research companies you apply to so you have a better chance of getting their attention. We’re also going to explore how to move into project management from non-traditional backgrounds, such as sales, real estate, customer service, nursing, and (fill in your current role here).

I am really excited about this event because Anna provides many more services and resources related to project management careers than I do: Career Development Coaching, Resume Writing, Interview Preparation, Negotiation, Resume Review, Change Management, Executive Coaching, and Leadership Development. I hope you will join us on Friday, December 8, 2023, 11am MT, 12 PM CT for this deep dive into the first steps to moving into a project management career.

 

My updated Advanced Microsoft Project has been published to the LinkedIn Learning library. This update is completely rerecorded with a new, comprehensive sample project. It is half as long as the previous edition because I took out all the topics I cover in my other Project courses. My humble opinion is that it is also more engaging, because of everything I’ve learned about recording videos in the past 8 years! Here is a link that lets you watch the course for free for the first 24 hours after you begin watching.

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/advanced-microsoft-project-22898395

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 53,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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