Members of the NFGL Local Network Uppsala attended an enriching workshop on

"Leadership in a Multicultural Environment" on May 26, 2015. It was the final locally
organized NGFL event of the Spring semester at Uppsala. The workshop was
conducted by Lena Zander, a professor at Uppsala University's Department of
Business Studies and a specialist researcher in the field of cross-cultural leadership
and teams.
The workshop was designed to facilitate brainstorming and exchange of ideas and
experience that relate to successful leadership in multicultural teams. At the
beginning, participants were divided into three groups, and were asked to share
their experiences of challenges they faced while leading a multicultural team and
how they overcame them.
Among the wide variety of issues that emerged, the most common was the difficulty
in cross-cultural communication. Some felt that when directives, suggestions and
motivated speech by non-English speakers are denominated into a English, some
details become distorted or lost in translation. They also discussed how leaders
often face the challenge of moderating the proactiveness in participation (or lack
thereof) to ensure all members get to be heard and contribute, since sometimes
whether members in a team are "floor-takers" or "floor-givers" (as addressed to, by
Lena) may be culturally influenced.
The second assignment was to discuss the reasons behind the success and failure of
a multicultural team. This was also an interesting session where participants were
very diverse in their views. Although the leader was commonly perceived to be the
one who makes or breaks the multicultural team, leadership qualities crucial to this
ranged from having an acceptable in-command persona, being a good listener and
understanding cultural differences. It was also argued that a team needs to begin
with some degree of harmony and consciousness of multiculturality among the
members.
An interesting dimension was added by a team that mentioned that sometimes
there may be 'background leadership' where a member in the team would have
more influence than the actual leader. Another unique perspective was evaluating
what 'success' and 'failure' mean - in terms of the cohesiveness of the team as well
as project performance.
Lena enriched every segment of the workshop with her own experience and
insights, and often dug out interesting details from the participants' unique cultural
backgrounds, adding both knowledge and humor to the workshop.
The event was followed by a fika and mingle session by the participants, who
expressed their satisfaction with the workshop and their interest in participating in
more events in future semesters.