Communicating Successfully When Managing Multicultural Teams

Day by day globalization covers new areas of life and calls for continuous learning and adjusting to new cultural dimensions. Managers are expected to display adaptation to new ways of working, cultural sensitivity, cultural intelligence and to posses multicultural competencies communication skills. Understanding the impact of cultural diversity on the communication within the organization is essential for the success of a company. Especially in multinational companies, when departments working on the same projects are located in different countries, the managers rely more and more on cultural- specific country characteristics in order to chose the best negotiation and communication techniques. The aim of this paper is to show how the country specific cultural characteristics impact on the success or failure of a business and the organizations’ challenge with preparing managers for success in international business environment. The paper is based on literature review and on authors’ experience in managing multicultural project teams, in international environment.