How leaders can build trust within a culturally-diverse team

For a culturally-diverse team to perform exceptionally, leadership needs to be shared among its members, says Associate Professor Carol Gill.

"We're all different in terms of the way we see the world, and culture is one of the lenses in which we see the world differently," she says.

Professors Carol Gill from Melbourne Business School, Nicole Gillespie from University of Queensland and Bart De Jong from the Australian Catholic University spoke with Yasmin Rupesinghe on the latest episode of the Melbourne Business School Podcast about a new way to foster trust to improve performance in culturally diverse teams.

"There are two different types of leadership. One is where there's a nominated leader, who can tell people what to do, and the second type of leadership is collective leadership," she says.

"This is where the individuals step up to leadership or make a leadership intervention in a team and of course it may be multiple interventions that will be made in any single interaction in a team.

"One team member might show the team what direction to go in. Another team member might make an intervention about how the team should proceed. A third team member might talk about social aspects of the team, encouraging others or supporting others.

"We know that there are many different interventions, and the thing is that these interventions will build trust because the conflicts that may occur when things are more chaotic will be addressed by these leadership interventions.

"So, leadership can play a very big role in increasing trust, either by dyadic interactions where they talk one-on-one with others or where they speak to the team as a whole."

Listen to the full episode above or visit our podcasts page for more.

Carol Gill is an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Melbourne Business School, who has specialised in the fields of executive development, human resource management and organisational development for more than 25 years.

Nicole Gillespie is the KPMG Chair in Organisational Trust and Professor of Management at the University of Queensland Business School, and an International Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Reputation, Oxford University.

Bart De Jong is an Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Australian Catholic University, whose research focuses on trust in teams and has been published in scholarly journals such as Academy of Management Journal (AMJ), Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP), and Organization Science.

Yasmin is a Program Manager on our Executive MBA and Senior Executive MBA programs, and a radio presenter for PBS FM.

To find out more about studying at Melbourne Business School, visit mbs.edu