03.04 - Language

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From the course by University of Michigan

Leading Teams

873 ratings

University of Michigan

Leading Teams

873 ratings

Course 4 of 5 in the Specialization Leading People and Teams

In this course, you will learn how to build your team, improve teamwork and collaboration, and sustain team performance through continuous learning and improvement. Specifically, you will learn best practices for composing a team and aligning individual and team goals. You will also learn how to establish roles, build structures, and manage decision making so that your team excels. This course will also help you manage critical team processes such as conflict resolution and building trust that have a profound impact on your team’s performance. You will discuss some of the best ways to harness the productive potential of teams while mitigating the risks and traps of teamwork. In modern organization, most of work is done in teams, yet the results of teamwork are exceptionally mixed. Many teams are poorly designed and structured, fraught with dysfunctional conflict, experience coordination breakdowns and serious motivation challenges. As a result, many teams fail to realize their potential and frequently underperform even individuals working on similar tasks. After completing this course, you will acquire a set of tools and practices that enable you to effectively set up, run, evaluate, and continuously improve your team. Such insights will both make you a more effective team leader but also a standout contributor in team settings.

From the lesson

Managing Team Dynamics

It is common to see teams working on identical tasks and having similar access to organizational resources and talent produce systematically different performance outcomes. This occurs because we mismanage team processes, or how teammates work on the task and interact with one another during teamwork. In this module, you will learn how to recognize most typically process hurdles in teamwork and how to overcome them, thus creating high-performing teams.

03.01 - Coordination12:16

03.02 - Common Information Effect7:07

03.03 - Social Loafing5:16

03.04 - Language4:32

03.05 - Working Across Cultures2:55

03.06 - Managing Conflict8:44

03.07 - Resolving Task Conflicts4:52

03.08 - Recap: Manage Team Dynamics3:11

Meet the Instructors

Scott DeRue, Ph.D.
Edward J. Frey Dean at the Ross School of Business
Management and Organizations, Ross School of Business
Maxim Sytch, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Management and Organizations Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow
Management and Organizations, Ross School of Business

In the increasingly global world of business it often happens that some of our

teammates are more fluent than others in the Lingua Franca, or the primary

language that's used for internal communications within the company.

Many global firms, even if they're headquartered in France or

Germany, often use English as their primary language of communication.

And the varying level of fluency

in that primary language can create a worrisome dynamic within teams.

Research by Sidon Yillah from Harvard shows that we

often equate language fluency with expertise and

competence and as a result we can wrongly dismiss insights and

contributions from those teammates who are less fluent in that language.

This effect goes even further.

Where we often build status hierarchies and

teams around language fluency and not actual competence and expertise.

As you can see, that effect has very detrimental consequences,

not only for your teams, but also for the entire organization.

So what can we do about this?

Now I want to be clear that the responsibility for countering this effect,

lies with both the more fluent, and the less fluent speaker of the language.

As a more fluent speaker of Lingua Franca,

solicit inputs from teammates prior to the meeting.

Recognize that you're putting them in a particularly uncomfortable position.

When you ask them to speak off the cuff, impromptu in a meeting.

Prepare written handouts in advance, and make sure that your spoken language is

aligned with the written language, in which case your handouts

create a secondary, redundant channel of communication.

Adjust your vocabulary.

It's probably a good idea to reduce the usage of idiomatic expression such as,

do you have any skeletons in your closet?

Your Asian teammates would also tell you that often struggle

with Americans' frequent use of sports analogies and metaphors.

Monday morning quarterbacking, who's the quarterback again, why Monday,

why morning?

Reduce the use of jargon and acronyms as well.

And finally, you actively engage others in the conversation.

Refrain from dominating the meeting.

If you're running the meeting using a conference call, it is a really good idea

to make sure that each teammate owns and leads part of the conversation.

That makes the team substantially more engaged.

Now, as a less fluent speaker of Lingua Franca, first of all,

resist avoidance behaviors.

In some of Tidal and Neely's research less fluent speakers of

the primary language would just avoid going to meetings all together.

Now, you have to take your preparation to the next level.

I often find that the less fluent speakers of the primary language that

use within the company, are thoughtful and diligent enough to prepare the script.

But they really struggle when the presentation goes off script, and so

it's of course critically important to think about what you're gonna say and

how you're gonna say something in a presentation, your script, but then think

about the most likely objections, questions, comments that can come up.

How would you respond to these questions?

Think and prepare your response.

Some of the best orators and debaters in the world are so good, not because they

were born that way but because they're exceptionally well prepared.

If you're presenting, it's perfectly fine to pause and

ask if people understand what you're saying.

Ask colleagues to repeat if you missed a particular point.

And then refrain from switching to your native language.

Varying levels of fluency in that primary language creates a fault line or

a division in the team between more fluent and less fluent speakers of the language.

Every time you switch to you native language, you typically deepen, or

exacerbate that fault line.

So refrain from doing so.

One way to make sure it doesn't happen to you in meetings is don't sit next to

someone who speaks your native language.

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