Within and beyond languages
An intercultural team can be of great advantage when
it comes to solving complex problems, as different points of view are
coming together. At the same time, cultural diversity comes along
with some challenges. We often underestimate the cultural implications to
achieve such cooperation.
Working with an anthropologist and my first female director, always
motivated to recruit collaborators of different cultures together and work as
one team, is like handing a set of watercolors to a sketch artist who has
always worked with charcoal. Amazigh, Arab, French, American and other cultures
opened a whole new range of possibilities and boosts our creativity to decision
making and problem solving. However, the applied language appears to be a
further problem in communication during our meetings and internal/external communication
as we always need intermediator with mono-langual colleagues. While almost 60
percent of the work we do is in English (with some mixing here and there), the
language abilities vary greatly.
As project manager/coordinator, I have found myself
developing my communication skills and language without realizing in it,
swinging with four languages a day. The consequences are often misinterpretations
and misunderstandings. It is frustrating and sometimes causes tention! I learn
to overcome this challenge by recognising and appreciating the differences and
similarities and learning how to deal with them.
I do appreciate to be exposed to intercultural team at Dar Si
Hmad and I have experienced how it can be of great advantage. Every culture is
unique so there are differences between every single culture. But instead of
complaining about these differences, such creative diversity is embraced and
integrated into our work concept. By doing this many problems can simply be
overcome.
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