Managing Organizational Behavior 2nd Edition by Timothy Baldwin,Bill Bommer,Robert Rubin

Exercise 13

Making a Culturally Diverse Team Productive
You have just been honored by being appointed to one of three project action teams, chartered by your company's senior leadership officers, to work on a current strategic issue in the fi rm. You have been asked to complete your work in three months and make a presentation at the top management retreat in front of the CEO, the vice president of marketing, and other decision-makers. Your team's charge is to explore how your firm might better recruit the best young talent worldwide. The team is composed of eight people from across the company and is the most diverse team you have ever been on.
More specifically, the team consists of six men and two women; an age range of 24 to 62; three American Caucasians, one African American, one Hispanic American, and one national representative from each company unit in India, China, and Brazil, all of whom are currently on assignment in the United States. Everyone speaks English, although the Chinese woman seems exceedingly shy and not particularly comfortable with her language skills.
Recognizing it is demanding enough to achieve quality team outcomes with people you know well and understand, you are concerned it's going to be very difficult to pull this group together quickly, communicate effectively, and achieve the kind of work product you will want to present in three months. So what would you recommend that could help bring this team together? How would you attempt to minimize some of the communication and coordination challenges known to face diverse teams? Conversely, how might you best bring out the potential creativity and idea generation that is the promise of diversity? In short, what could you do to help create a productive and diversity-friendly team?