Leadership
Cultural Diversity for Technical Leaders
A condensed research report on findings of a technical leadership study conducted in large business organizations in Australia
Purpose of this article
In this article, my aim is to share a summary of a research report based on one of my cognitive science leadership studies, a Ph.D. dissertation.
This study provides insights into the impact of cultural diversity on the learning of technical leaders in large business organizations in Australia.
The study can be replicated in other countries and geographies with similar diverse multicultural business environments similar to Australia.
Study background
Cultural diversity in this study focuses on technical leaders from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds working in large business organizations in Australia.
These technical professionals, who are leaders in their domains, work for a common goal, which is to contribute to the company's business goals and objectives for revenue growth.
These “intrapreneurs” serve the specific departments of the business organizations within the scope of the study. In other words, they are internal entrepreneurs.
Cultural diversity is an important component of technical leadership in large business organizations. In this study, I observed that all corporate organizations have similar policies on cultural diversity.
For example, IBM Australia provided the following statement in relation to cultural diversity in their organization:
“Diversity at all levels of the organisation makes good business sense. We want to attract and retain the best people. We want to participate in the global marketplace. And we want to increase business effectiveness through a balanced approach to decision making — a diverse workforce helps us to achieve this.”
I observed that large business organizations using a culturally diverse workforce, by considering the values of their technical leaders and empowering them with their equal opportunity policies, produce better results in the market.
Considering these points of view, in my interviews, I asked an open-ended question “How does cultural diversity in the workplace contribute to your learning?” to all participants with technical leadership backgrounds.
Various respondents, during the interview process, frequently repeated the following key phrases as extracted from qualitative data analysis artifacts:
Difficulty in communication
Multicultural environments
Variety in the culture and logic
Enriching and challenging
These types of qualifying terms enabled the establishment of the hypotheses for the study. I plan to provide the methodology of the study in a separate article to keep the size of this article in a reasonable size.
From the analyses (both quantitative and qualitative), it was evident to identify three different main groups according to their responses at the end of the interviews. The following table displays the three major categorizations with respondent rates:
Group 1: Cultural diversity is a contributing factor to my learning
45 % of respondents
Group 2: Cultural diversity is NOT a contributing factor to my learning
20 % of respondents
Group 3: Cultural diversity does not make any difference for my learning
35 % of respondents
The first group believes that cultural diversity is a contributing factor to the learning process of technical leaders in the workplace. The second group believes that it is not, and the third group believes that it does not make any difference at all.
By considering and using this categorization, I want to provide some sample responses here. These responses can provide insights into the thinking of technical leaders about diversity in the workplace.
Group 1: Cultural diversity is a contributing factor
Respondents in this group were made up of a majority of participants. They believe that cultural diversity contributes to the learning process of technical leaders in the workplace. These technical leaders found cultural diversity as a positive contributing factor to their learning process.
I want to provide you with some sample responses to highlight critical points on how diversity impacts technical leaders from a learning point of view.
The following excerpts from the interview transcript show that cultural diversity creates different perceptions, perspectives, and approaches in the workplace:
“… I enjoy the diversity in the workplace, people from different backgrounds bring a variety in the culture, logic, and can look into problems from different angles.”
“… as each culture has so much more to offer. More ways of doing things that have a major impact on what we are doing and what we are learning…
“… I embrace cultural diversity in the workplace. Different ways, different accents, different approaches…Learned heaps from them, people from different backgrounds, not only at work but also at home, in fact, I am married to a person from different cultural background and no regret mate…” (interview transcript)
The use of the phrase “cultural diversity” during the interviews triggered the thought of verbal and written communication naturally. For example, when I started asking a question about cultural diversity, nearly all respondents said something about communication in the workplace.
The following response, which is from a person from English speaking background, taken from the interview transcript as unchanged and found to be an interesting view about cultural diversity and communication in the workplace:
“Now I think communication is a major point I would like to comment on here. It affects communication greatly because different ethnic backgrounds have different ways and different interpretations of information and outcomes and you really have to get clear lines of communication happening to be able to ensure that the desired outcome for everyone is achieved the same.
One negative point I found was that… it can be frustrating sometimes, when you think that you’ve actually communicated a situation or a form or scenario and people have communicated to you “yes I understand” and then clearly, later on, they haven’t understood.
You find the reason why is that it is their way, they have to say yes, they don’t want to say no to look less important or not to be able to deliver because of their background can get very frustrating.
People of different backgrounds definitely enhance constantly conflict management skills. I wouldn’t be qualified to further comment on that because of my experience so far here today, that would just be having a guess.
How they go about solving a problem and how they actually solve a problem, the cultural background does have an influence. How they go about solving a problem as opposed to how they solve a problem is probably the greater influence, because their approach would be different according to their cultural background.
My experience has been, that people who come from European, Anglo-Saxon backgrounds are more likely to go and do something and be more arrogant and rush about it and be up-front about it, as a rush generalization. So people say from other cultures which are more subservient or more relationship orientated as a community. They are much more likely to question by consensus and not necessarily go out there and just go and do something because that is considered not to be done.” (interview transcript)
The perspectives of respondents who are from non-English speaking backgrounds are also considered to be worth mentioning here. These technical leaders seem to experience some sort of difficulties in the beginning however they all admit that they have some sort of support to improve their communication skills. The following two extracts from two different respondents ratify this argument:
Respondent 1 (Works in Australia for six months):
“As a person from a non-English speaking background and from a different culture, I had difficulty in communicating initially, but over a period of time with some effort, I improved myself and enjoyed working in a multicultural environment.” (interview transcript)
Respondent 2 (In Australia for 11 months):
“This is the first English-speaking country I work in. I used to speak English in my country, but I found spoken English very different here. I am here for 11 months now but in my early days, I was really shy, nervous, and didn’t know how to communicate with my colleagues.
I have many years of leadership experience in the computer industry and I finished a computer science degree in my country also I am a certified engineer but the difficult part is making logical statements and convincing my peers with my knowledge.
I felt that they saw me as a bit confused and illogical when I attempted to explain advanced technical things to them in a group or one-to-one. All my concentration was on my language, worried about my accent, worried the words I choose and worried about my grammar.
I can admit I feel more confident now because I had good support from my colleagues and my clients. I haven’t seen that many people from different countries before. As I see those people with broken English [laughter], I feel more relaxed because I am not alone here who are struggling with language difficulties, incompetence in slang [laugher],. I believe Australia is a great multicultural country, and I find the people here very understanding and easy going…” (interview transcript)
Even though it is believed by professionals from English-speaking backgrounds that there are some language problems encountered while communicating with people from non-English speaking backgrounds, some respondents believe that cultural diversity in the workplace contributes to teamwork a lot. The following extract from the interview reflects this clearly:
“ … I find cultural diversity to be both enriching and sometimes challenging. It is good to be able to work with people from different cultural backgrounds. Their insights into technical problems and their dedication to resolving issues vary and I find that collectively, we are a stronger team for that. Language barriers can sometimes be a problem, especially if English is not their main language for communication. However, this obstacle is a small price to pay when we consider the level of contributions each of the members put in.” (interview transcript)
Group 2: Cultural diversity is NOT a contributing factor
This group of respondents believes that cultural diversity does not make any contribution to learning activities and/or performance in the workplace.
This minority group believed that cultural diversity caused some problems at work as they mentioned their concerns. The following response is an example of this strong view:
“… In the technology workplace, not much as all things we do are guided by the results our customers seek of us. Working with people should be independent of their background, as personal matters should remain personal. Personally, I don’t see any benefits people add with their cultural background. They even make it more difficult sometimes because I witnessed many communication barriers in really serious situations.” (interview transcript)
Another strong view from one of the respondents concerning cultural diversity is not a contributing factor in the workplace:
We definitely have a diverse background here in this company. Probably more diverse than anywhere else I’ve been. In Melbourne, most workplaces have a pretty diverse cultural background. I guess I don’t really see a close relationship between cultural background and technical leadership skills, and performance.
I think all sorts of different backgrounds can perform well and do well. I guess the issue here is that cultural background is a barrier to being able to interact with people. There are lots of problems, often people from different cultural backgrounds speak English only as a second language, and often the accents and the way that they express themselves are not easy to follow, and often it requires asking questions and or rewarding the way you ask the question and just reconfirm to make sure that you’ve understood or they’ve understood you.
So that’s something that you typically come across, that sort of problem. I don’t think this cultural diversity stuff contributes to my performance as a technical leader here, then again we’re dealing in a technical area where things can be expressed using technical notations or numbers, using diagrams, and things like that.
So in the end I think the message gets through but sometimes due to language difficulties, it can take longer to get that message across and to confirm that the message has gotten across. Some say that migrants bring different ways of thinking, and new dimensions but I haven’t really noticed being different in the way they think. Obviously, they have different skillsets which are learned in their countries and which are more prevalent in some geographic regions than others. Well, I haven’t really noticed any differences in the way they go about solving problems… (interview transcript)
This group of people (who did not believe cultural diversity was a contributing factor to their learning) focused mainly on communication problems created by accents and other language problems either written or oral or both.
Some respondents in this group believed that people from different cultural backgrounds with limited language should not take tasks such as customer interface since they may create serious problems due to a lack of their local communication skills.
To clarify this point, I observed in these environments that the majority of technical leaders from different cultural backgrounds with limited language skills were not taking any customer liaison roles and they were undertaking more internal leadership roles and responsibilities.
Group 3: Cultural diversity does not make any difference
This group of people, consisting of 35% of respondents, is neutral. They do not see any difference in cultural diversity in their workplace.
For example, the following response is concentrated on the language only and does not see any difference in the impact of a culturally diverse workforce in large business organizations.
“The IT lingo is the same regardless of your cultural background. So, not any impact is noted in our team learning activities…” (interview transcript)
The response below shows a strict view of no difference:
“… I have found the makeup of a team or workplace especially so-called cultural diversity to have no overall effects either negative or positive on my performance as a technical leader.
Having said this it is also my belief that no matter what social or economic background a team or workgroup is comprised of does not matter if the working environment does not have some level of appeal to all members.
I don’t see a difference from the people from different cultural backgrounds add extra or less value to my workplace learning as a technical leader.” (interview transcript)
Another response shows a view of no difference, however, there seems to be a kind of negative effect with language problems, but the same problem can be observed with native speakers as well:
“…Cultural diversity? No… I would sort of suggesting, not at all. The main reason is that I look at people from people's perspectives, not their culture. It’s like, you get certain people who are hot-headed, certain people who have certain characteristics.
Their actual culture might influence that end you have to be aware of that but it is no different if you are having a bad temper. It is just an attribute, so I don’t think that it actually impacts performance, skills, or anything else here.
Maybe outside of work! Another thing you have to analyze maybe and find out drives people. It shouldn’t not at all. The language I suggest can be a problem sometimes. In our leadership work, we have to communicate with customers.
People being able to speak to customers is the pride of the things we have. We do not hire people who are not English-speaking people. Everybody in this group speaks English. It can be frustrating sometimes with communication, but I know people who have English as their first language but whose communication skills are not too good.
I don’t focus on the fact that culture is there as a prime thing. I see each person as an individual and they have certain strengths, weaknesses, and attributes. An interesting point. I would suggest that there are some things that are cultural. Things like terminology, for instance. English culture even American culture, I suggest comes across in the text that’s written around technology. Yeh, I would suggest it is probably hard for people who don’t have that, not necessarily have that English background. (interview transcript)
The next response shows a view on no difference as well while the person finds it interesting to work with people from different cultural backgrounds:
“Cultural diversity doesn’t matter at all to me. It makes no difference what’s so ever, as long as people from any cultural background and things like that, as long as they are competent in what they do it doesn’t matter where they come from. <do you find those people to be different than for instance Australian people think> In culture yes but really in job <not in technical matters>, not in their job specification. So it’s interesting working with them, but it doesn’t really affect how the work is done. So in an interpersonal level that makes a difference but not on the actual job application, professional and leadership level…”(interview transcript)
It is clear to notice that these respondents look at people from different cultural backgrounds, they do not consider or focus on differences within the Anglo-Saxon culture dominant in Australia.
It is also noticed that respondents belonging to this group do not concentrate on culture or its effects at work however they purely concentrate on professional attitudes, technical leadership abilities, or business outcomes of these professionals.
Conclusions
In this study, I observed that IT departments in corporate environments in Australia consist of technical leaders from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Many large business organizations in Australia have policies on cultural diversity and executives including HR and training managers try to take this diversity in their organizations as a competitive business advantage.
A majority of technical leaders (45%) believes that cultural diversity has some sorts of positive impact on their learning process. The second majority group (35%) does not see any difference and the third group (20%), which is the minority, believes that cultural diversity does not help for their learning process.
My observations in the research settings have proven that cultural diversity is an important factor to be considered for further research in a different context and different leadership types as this study focused on only the technical leaders.
Even though there is a tremendous focus on gender equality within a diverse context in the information technology industry, it was interesting that during the interviews there was no mention of gender diversity by the participants.
Therefore, due to the importance of this topic, I plan to research this topic using a different method and approach as a follow-up to this study.
In the meantime, we can extend the topic to gain further insights by answering the question as a response to this post:
How does diversity in the workplace affect your learning as a leader?
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Academic Reference
Extract from one of the learning dissertations of Dr. Mehmet Yildiz [a Ph.D. Thesis] as part of his professional doctoral studies hosted in RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) Academic Library in Bundoora, Victoria.
MLA, APA, and Chicago Trabian Citation: Yildiz, Mehmet. “Discovering and Evaluating the Roles of Formal and Informal Learning for the I/T Professionals of Two Large Corporate Organisations .” Thesis (Ph.D.) — RMIT University, 2003., 2003. Print”.
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