How to deal with a multicultural environment

When we set up our office in Antwerp 3 years ago, we thought it would be easy as Brussels & Antwerp are in the same country.

When we set up our office in Casablanca 3 years ago, we thought it would be easy as most people speak French and 2 of my 3 partners are from Moroccan Origin (but born in Europe, and you will see how important the difference is later).

When we set up our office in Paris in January 2018, we thought it would be piece of cake after what we lived in our 3 other offices.

Well, I think the major lesson here is that we were completely wrong : EVERYONE is different even if he/she lives at 100km from your home.

In a multicultural environment like us (100 people split in 17 different nationalities), we have many differences in terms of:

• Educational background,
• Culture,
• Religion,
• Traditions,
• Sens of Humour,
• Limits.

And the biggest problems between employees we’re facing are in 99% of the cases :

• Miscommunication: people simply have different styles of communication, it might be direct, diplomatic or even silent
• Body language : people can feel bad about other’s body languages
• Stereotypes : let’s face it, it’s very difficult not to judge a person when we already experienced situations with other people from the same nationality, race or religion. My 2 business partners always thought it would be easy to work with Moroccans as they themselves are from the same origin. Biggest mistake ever : they grew up in Europe and don’t have the same background, that’s why they needed to forget about all stereotypes and start adapting.

If you’re dealing with multicultural teams, the first thing to acknowledge is that you need to adapt.

People won’t change who they are so you, as a manager / employer / director / colleague, need to cope with the fact that if you can’t change someone, you will need to adapt your communication style.

Below, you will find some things that helped me manage different cultures :

1. Spend time together: your team members need to get to know each other in order to start appreciate each other & not being scared anymore about a nationality they never worked with before.
2. Get to know everyone’s strengths & weaknesses: like I said before, every human is unique so rather than putting people into “boxes”, you’d better start to discover the other’s weaknesses & strengths.
3. Listen to people: if someone didn’t feel good about what someone else did, let him/her explain you the situation and deal yourself with it in order to avoid any more trouble within the team — it’s often a miscommunication which the people involved don’t see.
4. Train your teams about multi-cultural environments : sometimes people just need to understand each other to get along.
5. Direct/indirect communication: you need to understand what is the most appropriate for the person you’re dealing with.

A lot of the people working in our company and applying to work for us see this multicultural environment as an advantage.

And, personally, I’ve never learned so much since I’m managing people from so many different nationalities — sometimes, it’s like if you were travelling through them when they explain you their traditions, food, jokes, etc

But my biggest success always remains when I see 2 people from 2 complete different environments become very close colleagues or even friends and explain to me that’s the thing they like the most in our company.

That’s the best reward I can get (with people performing of course 😊).

— Madam Recruitment.