Cooperation in heterogeneous groups

Cultural anthropology has revealed the many ways people give meaning to their world and relate to it, to each-other, to time, to authority etc. From a different eyehole research in cross-cultural and developmental psychology showed how mechanisms such as the self, perception, memory, and thinking, taken as universal for such a long time have very diverse manifestation across cultures. All of these directly affect how we understand and engage in cooperation.

And if we come together from far away places, we tend to bring into the cooperation all our divergent preconceptions, expectations and manners. This diversity can affect cooperation in many ways for the better or for the worse. It may hinder or improve the outcome of the work. It may affect how people feel about the joint work. It can also result in the unexpected development of its participants, as well as in the exclusion of some of them. What is certain is that heterogeneity makes visible all the underlying subtle actions and adjustments that participants display in interaction. Whenever participants engage in cooperation on the bases of shared rules, the cooperation will focus on the task or the mission of the group and the rules of interaction can remain implicit as an invisible fabric keeping together participants. As soon as there are divergent practices and expectation toward collaboration, the fibre of interaction will cease to be transparent, participants will have to deal with it parallel to dealing with the task. How to deal with this fabric, how to reweave it in the most advantageous way is the subject matter of research on heterogeneous groups.

Our training translates research results to practice to overcome the obstacles of collaboration and make difference a source of advantage

  • Understand the dynamics of multicultural cooperation
  • Counter the difficulties coming from different cooperation / communication styles
  • Learn to create a common team culture: common team identity, common collaboration rules and shared concepts

Contact us to explore training options