Intercultural Work Settings: Which Competences for Managers, Leaders, and Teams?

Intercultural competences are crucial for effective collaboration in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) work environments. The goal of this chapter is to inform and, possibly, to inspire managers, leaders, and teams to become enablers of transboundary cooperation and success. It consists of three sections: 1) Theoretical Foundations; 2) Insights from Practice; 3) Methods for Learning and Development. First of all, we share our views of the theoretical concepts, which are important to better understand the multifaceted topic of this contribution. In particular, we focus on the key competences for successful collaboration in intercultural work settings. Based on our own qualitative field research in intercultural contexts, we then open the perspective on a selection of strategies experienced managers use in their practice. Intercultural competences concern all of us. Thus, in a third step, we provide insights into possible paths for action. We present a range of methods which may support managers, leaders, and teams in the development process of intercultural competences. As a synthesis, we introduce a model which summarizes the process of intercultural competence development and may serve as a reminder of the culture facilitator role we all need to play on the social stages on which we act.