Français. Deutsch. English.

Events
Approach

Services

Team
References
Media
Videos
Contact

Services / Integration - common ground

Building a multicultural team means first creating an organization and allocating responsibilities and limits for individuals of different nationalities according to a wise mixture that reflects the balance (or imbalance) of a merger or a consolidation. However, after that everything still remains to be done. How can staff begin to move forward together, overcome ambiguities, avoid ineffective meetings, understand each other, manage their team successfully (and their boss), set clear rules and abide by them ? Above all, how can everyone learn how to openly express their differences in an atmosphere of trust ?

For many years Pateau Consultants has offered a global approach that allows any team to be accompanied in its growth. The methodology that we have developed and continue to apply to Franco-German cooperation and integration has also been successfully used with multicultural entities :

• a team audit, identifying past and underlying feelings, fears and attractions, sources of motivation and de-motivation, what is at stake, the subcultures in play (national, of course, but also regional, corporate and professional), allows the personalities of the main players to be outlined ;
• a detailed needs analysis results in a plan of action for top-down teambuilding ;
• overall monitoring and team development complete the approach.

 Our intercultural teambuilding

Examples :

“Bridges” seminars Thales since 2008

Many of Thales teams have used our intercultural management tool since the first “Bridges” seminars began. The objectives are to get to know each other better, to control the downside of distance cooperation, to understand cultural differences, to succeed in openly discussing “touchy subjects” and to concretely improve everyday work relations.

The tenth “Bridge” seminar brought network architects together for two and a half days. Nine different countries were represented : Germany, Australia, Brazil, China, Spain, the United States, France, Italy and the Netherlands. Their comments say it all :

“It makes you consider and question your way of doing things I really appreciated the teambuilding, the good balance with working sessions and the concrete outputs ; it's the first time I see useful workshops !”

“I liked the dialogue part where people put out all their thoughts and after we could grow together addressing much more deeply our internal issues.”

“If in your team members are not supporting each other, then use this seminar.”

“I recommend it for sure. It gives you a different perspective of the teamwork.”

“I would like you to know that in these 2 and a half days I have improved my sense of cooperation and teamwork. I have participated in similar workshops before but I have never seen such an integrated team as our SDI group. It was a really good experience seeing people from different cultures working together with cooperation and teamwork as a common goal. Thank you all and count on my team.”

Multicultural seminars at Airbus 

This company's increased integration has resulted in the implementation of a much more transnational organization. As cooperation from day-to-day has become more and more difficult, many sectors have asked us to help them improve their communication effectiveness. We have assisted over 300 employees from engineering with our intercultural teambuilding seminars. Each session has been attended by German, English, French and Spanish co-workers. Below are the conclusions from the Domain Materials and Processes sector six months after the seminar.

Examples of positive results observed in the daily business :

• General message : Our minds are now on a different “switch” !
• Better communication, less friendly avoidance : more phone calls less e-mails, more in-depth discussions, more personal conversations…
• As a result : Better personal contacts having substantial influence on the quality and rapidity of work
• The teams are definitely equipped with new skills
• Use of cultural awareness and empathy, listening and self-reflection, more self-confidence in decision-making
• Better analysis basis of the reasons of misunderstandings due to intercultural competence
• Seminar participants act as facilitators, etc. by explaining cultural differences instead of sharing negative national stereotyping.
• Changes in behaviour, like :
  • British native speakers slow down and use less slang
  • Harmonization of information level and personal understanding
  • Increased active participation in transnational context
  • Participants correct attitudes perceived negatively by others
• Broader horizons

We made some big steps but we are still far from being perfect !

Teambuilding seminars are adapted to the needs of the company with an emphasis on specific objectives :

• Bringing team members closer together through a teambuilding seminar that combines fun activities with a “cognitive” approach
• Creating a climate of trust with intercultural communication tools as a way to trigger awareness and to improve cooperation
• Overcoming a communication breakdown within a team
• Identifying the various cultural dimensions likely to create conflict or dysfunctions

We organize an evaluation session six to eight months after every program which allows us to assess the quality of the results and how well the action plan, drawn up during the seminar, is being put into action.