Negotiating culture is a way of joining, overlapping and mixing cultures through interaction and communication. New cultural practices are generated, thus enabling routine actions to be established that are relevant and suitable for the team and the task. Culture production is based on an understanding of interculturality as a dynamic process involving the emergence and conscious development of a common culture within a specific context. Based on the interplay of action, reaction and adaptation, negotiation is an ongoing process and should be initiated purposefully during the forming stage of the team development process and should continue throughout a team’s life cycle.
With this in mind, the next step refers to the 'how' of this negotiation process. Two models will be introduced here to assist us in this regard, the dune model and Bono's six thinking hats. The dune model is helpful in establishing and clarifying the influence of contextual factors on negotiations within the team. Bono’s six thinking hats encourage viewing issues from new perspectives. This process can help to decide on practices that are well suited to the team.
The dune model
The dune model visualises behavioural rules and the potential for changing or amending them. Bolten (2014) uses three types of rules: These are the 'must', 'should', and 'could' rules. Within a social and organisational context, there may be rules which are not negotiable and may be even formalised in company laws and regulations.Therefore, they might have a binding force for team members and as such must be accepted. These are the 'must' rules. These could, for example, be company rules for reporting, data protection or codes of conduct. Other examples of rules which a team may see as binding could, for instance, relate to public and school holidays. The team may decide to consider them strictly as ‘non-working days’ regardless of work pressure.
The second category relates to generally valid behavioural rules and conventions which can be considered to be how one ‘should’ behave. Because they are not manifested in norms and laws, they can be changed by teams. An example for a ‘should’ rule is how employees are compensated. It might be common in a company to acknowledge achievements by giving out individual incentives and rewards. However, in a team context it may be possible to amend compensation incentives and address the needs of the team and find alternative ways to motivate team members. On a social level, a team might decide that team members should not work on the weekend but that this is not a 'must' rule.
Finally, we encounter the 'could' rules. These are conventions which may still be very young, are context specific and highly negotiable. Using the metaphor of the dune, these can easily be ‘blown away’ and therefore amended and changed, or simply become lost. Many of the issues related to work processes are likely to fall into this category. A ‘could’ rule, for example, might relate to rituals when starting a meeting, such as having a ‘check-in’ round where everybody quickly states how they feel.
The following is an illustration of the Dune model adapted from Jürgen Bolten (2014)
The dune model
Source:
Bolten, Jürgen (2014). The Dune Model – or: How to Describe Cultures. Reprinted with permission. Accessed 22 May 2024
Click on the image for a larger view.
Applying this model to the creation of an e-culture means that team members need to develop an awareness of those context factors and behavioural rules which are binding (or ones they wish to be considered as binding), and those which can be amended, i.e. areas where there is greater scope for negotiation within the team.
Task: My dune model
Considering a team you have been or are anticipating to be a member of, note down three rules you would place into the must, should, or could category. These can be company or social rules.
Bono's thinking hats
The idea of the six thinking hats by Edward de Bono dates back to the 60s. The idea behind the hats is that you cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. This means that trying harder in the same direction may not be as useful as changing direction. And you can change the direction of thinking by asking different questions, represented by the different coloured hats.
Applying Bono’s hats is therefore a strategy to develop flexible thinkers as they help to consider different perspectives. This can help you to find a way of reconciling different approaches of working in a team and finding a well suited approach for your team. It can also be used as a tool to handle difficult issues.
Let us start by looking at the different hats in more detail:
Illustrations by Marie Seeberger(http://www.behance.net/marieseeberger) CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0
The white hat calls for pure information, i.e. just simple facts. Possible questions that help to search for information might be: What do I know and what else should I know in order to be able to assess the situation adequately? What does the information I have tell me? What questions should I be asking?
The red hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition. It is through the red hat you express emotions and feelings and share fears, likes, dislikes, loves and hates. Questions which might elicit feelings could be: How did I feel earlier on, how do I feel now? What are my feelings and emotions around the issues at stake?
The black hat relates to logic. Can we identify the reasons? Why are things not working? It identifies the difficulties and dangers, and where things may go wrong. This is probably the most powerful and useful hat, but it can be problematic when overused. What do I need to be cautious about? What could be difficult? What could we improve? What could go wrong?
The yellow hat symbolises brightness and optimism. Under this hat you explore the positives and probe for value and benefit. Is there anything positive I can take away from this situation regardless of my critical approach? What could be possible benefits?
The green hat refers to creativity, possible alternatives and new ideas. Or it could be considered to be an opportunity to express new concepts and new perceptions. What other options do I have to handle the situation (e.g. playfully, with humor)? Are there any other or new ideas? Is there a new way to do this?
The blue hat manages the thinking process; it controls the ‘thinking outside of the box’ mechanism and thus refers to reflection: Where do I stand and what is it I have to do next? The blue hat relates to management or in other words, what is the subject? What are we thinking about? What is the goal? Can we see the big picture?
There are different ways of using Bono's thinking hats. One idea is to think back to a situation that irritated you where you were not sure how to respond. Instead of responding immediately, take your time and use the Bono's hats in order to find an adequate response and possibly even a solution. This can then lead to a new routine or approach that could become an integral part of your team culture. Let us look at an example for this.
Example: Case "Understanding and meeting deadlines"
Moniq is rather unhappy with the behaviour of her colleague Richard. Ever since he joined her VITeam three weeks ago, he has not met a single agreed deadline. She spends a considerable amount of time reminding him and becomes increasingly annoyed about his behaviour. She is also afraid that the project will suffer as a consequence. She considers whether to escalate this by bringing it to the attention of their boss…
Before making a decision, she applies Bono's Thinking Hats and comes up with the following:
White hat / Facts: What do I know?
Richard joined the team only three weeks ago. I don’t really know anything about him and am not familiar with his cultural or personal background. In what kind of situation is he in right now? Maybe he has family issues, maybe he has a different understanding of what is meant by deadline, maybe he feels a bit overwhelmed with the novelty of the task and doesn’t feel comfortable enough to admit it? Or maybe he is unmotivated because he was pushed into joining our team?
Red hat / Emotions: What are my feelings and concerns?
I am actually frustrated and angry because Richard is just not doing his job. I have been working with this team for a long time and really feel committed to the team spirit and doing a good job.
Black hat / Judgmental: What are worst-case scenarios?
Richard keeps missing deadlines and the project fails. If I escalate the case and this turns into a personal conflict between us, which could also endanger the project's success and make everyone miserable in the process.
Yellow hat / Optimistic: Is there anything positive about this situation? Am I actually being too stubborn about the issue of meeting deadlines and stifling from my own anger? Are the deadlines simply not realistic? Is this situation telling me that I might be working too hard and am missing out on my private life?
Maybe we, as a team need to rethink the setting of deadlines and how to approach milestones? Maybe we are not being realistic about them and could rethink them to save us from being too stressed.
Green hat / Creativity: What options do I have?
Instead of escalating this, Moniq decides to find out more about her colleague Richard and schedules a phone call with him. She also decides to review the milestones they have established critically. Another decision she makes is to take an afternoon off and clear her mind.
Blue hat / Direction: Where do I stand and what are my next steps?
With the knowledge, ideas and thoughts she gathered she decides to not directly accuse Richard, but to review milestones and take up the issues in her team from a more general perspective. She also initiates a discussion in the team as to how they could improve their approach to deadlines and develop a common understanding about this. What she could envisage is to establish a traffic light system whereby the green light indicates that there are still two weeks to go, the yellow light shows that the deadline is approaching and the red light indicates that the deadline has not been met. She could also envisage establishing a routine whereby every team member briefly reports where they stand at the beginning of their meeting and whether they anticipate problems meeting the deadline. Whatever practice they decide upon, this would then become part of their e-culture.
The thinking hats can also be used in your team, for example prior to making a decision, as the hats will help the team to consider different viewpoints and ways of moving towards a good solution. It provides them with a wider and much more detailed picture of the options, and it allows emotions and scepticism to be brought into the picture as well. The following is an example:
Example: Case "Independence vs teamwork orientation"
Andy, Martha and Nuri are members of a project team. They have developed their identity profiles and started to chart out how they want to work together. Martha is a very independent person whereas Nuri values cooperation and would rather that they work together on tasks as a team as much as possible. Together they apply Bono’s hats to evaluate how they might reconcile these two approaches.
White hat / Facts: What do I know? Here it would be helpful for Martha and Nuri to highlight what they mean by pursuing independent and a cooperative working styles. Martha may be arguing that working independently allows her to schedule her work according to her own rhythm and irrespective of time zone differences. She may also say that working on her own enables her to concentrate better and be more effective. Nuri might say that he is better able to generate ideas when talking to people rather than sitting down in front of his computer and that it doesn’t bother him whether he works at night or during the day.
Red hat / Emotions: What are my feelings and concerns? If they perform most of the tasks together as a team, what could Martha's concerns be? Would she worry that they will spend too much time on tedious discussions and thus risk missing deadlines? Or would she fear that the team might get into arguments over issues which are difficult to solve online? She might feel that she won't be able to show what she is capable of when she is dependent on the other team members. What could Nuri’s concerns be? Maybe that he might lose track of what Martha is doing and so fail to see the overall picture? It could also be that he feels working on his own all the time is uninspiring and that he will miss the social aspects of working together. He might fear that Martha will present the team with finished results and will no longer be willing to compromise on issues. He could also worry that if they don’t work together closely they may need more time at the end to integrate all the parts. Added to this, he strongly believes that working together brings out the best ideas.
Black hat / Judgmental: What are worst-case scenarios? What is the worst thing that could go wrong if they decide to work independently or cooperatively? The worst thing that could happen if every team member works independently is likely to be that the team's results are a patchwork and the different parts do not fit. If they work cooperatively, the worst scenario is likely to be that they become engaged in endless discussion, lose track of what they are supposed to be doing and struggle to meet the deadline. In both instances they could end up with poor results.
Yellow hat / Optimistic: Is there anything positive about this situation? It could encourage Martha and Nuri as well as Andy to think about the pros and cons of both working approaches and put these into perspective.
Green hat / Creativity: What options do we have? There are various options as part of the negotiation process. However, with the previous discussion in mind it may be helpful to go through the work schedule and identify those areas which can best be tackled independently and those areas where cooperation is most effective. Because Nuri and Andy are not concerned about working times, they might want to accommodate and follow Martha’s daily rhythm when scheduling their meetings. They could also install a system to structure their meetings and speaking time in order to use their time together constructively.
Blue hat / Direction: Where do we stand and what are our next steps? The team may decide on a trial phase and follow a mixture of cooperative and independent work approaches and re-evaluate after a couple of weeks.
Their agreed working style would then become part of their e-culture.
What both approaches offer is that they facilitate constructive and complementary utilisation of the differences and contradictions inherent to interculturality. It is important that the results of these approaches flow into the development of an e-culture, which should then fit both the task and the team members, enabling each one of them to flourish.
Zuletzt geändert: Mittwoch, 22. Mai 2024, 15:37