How to enhance the cooperation of global teams through multicultural leadership?

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Management Styles, grade: A-, University College Dublin, language: English, abstract: The aim of this literature review essay is to outline the potential of global teams, along with highlighting possible obstacles in their cooperation and the subsequently moderating role of multicultural leaders to enhance the overall team performance. Global team members are characterized by their heterogeneity in language, origin, and culture and thus, have a great potential to increase the performance of international operating organizations significantly. Nevertheless, higher creativity through different mentalities and low groupthink could be impeded by cultural misunderstandings and language barriers.

Multicultural leaders, who are identifying themselves with more than one culture, have the possibility to overcome these obstacles by enabling global teams to successfully cooperate. Cultural Intelligence, a global mindset and cross-cultural communication skills are required competencies on which multicultural leaders depend on in their roles as boundary spanner, bridge maker and blender.