Chapter 7 Getting Your Team to Act Like a Team (part 1)

By Yue-er Luo, Erik Duerring & William Byham

Teamwork in China is a challenge. This might surprise those who think of Asian cultures as community-minded and harmonious, but in China the reality is different. Traditionally, this society was not based on a broad sense of community so much as along family and clan lines. Teamwork within families is commonplace, but teamwork among otherwise unrelated and unconnected individuals has little historical precedent. Also, given the scarce resources mentality that has been discussed earlier in these pages, there is little natural tendency for teamwork. All this means that teamwork does not come naturally in China at either the junior or senior level.

Young people born in the 1980s and later (known as the “Post ’80s,” “Little Emperors,” or sometimes as the “Praised Generation” because of all the positive reinforcement they received while growing up) now occupy the junior levels of most office environments in China. They tend to operate individually, working against each other to show up their colleagues. They are less willing to share knowledge, information, and useful contacts; to them, sharing such resources limits their chances for individual success and for looking good compared to their colleagues.

When local employees are organized into a team, there will be a tendency for talking, rather than listening. This talking should not be mistaken for interaction. Little cooperation will occur, and plans often will fail because team members will not be inclined to follow team rules.

Following
As an expatriate, you instantly will be seen as a leader in China, regardless of your previous experience or position in the organization. This fact has wide-reaching implications for you as a manager. It will have a direct impact on how you need to perform, because you will always be “on stage,” under constant scrutiny. Your staff will be looking to follow your lead.

For most Chinese, following is a more ingrained behavior than working as part of a team. Chinese staff are good followers if they have a strong, competent leader with whom they can identify. As followers, they are reliable, discrete, and loyal; they try hard to empathize with their leader. In contrast with many employees in the West, whose loyalty is more anchored on the goal and the psychological feeling of owning the task, Chinese employees actually feel emotional ties to their leader. In China the leader must project a strong vision, have obvious expertise and thus credibility, be prepared to stand up for his or her staff, and demonstrate loyalty to them. Strong leadership is essential, but there is one significant cost: When a strong leader leaves the company, often his or her followers will do the same. This possibility needs to be accounted for and remedial strategies put in place to combat it.

How to Develop Teamwork

Stage One: Be Careful Whom You Select as Team Leaders

Obviously, selection is key—you need to choose the right people for team leadership positions, both in the eyes of senior management and the local employees. Also, when selecting team members, their ability and motivation to work in teams should be prime considerations.

Stage Two: Provide Leadership Training

Leadership training and development for existing and potential managers is critical in helping them make the transition from followers to leaders. It is important that the training not just teach theories, but provide models of good leadership—for example, showing videos of effective leaders handling difficult team situations. Many young Chinese managers have not seen models of effective individual or team leadership. Their parents—working in the bureaucratic setting of state enterprises—likely would have told them stories not of leadership, but authority.

A special training challenge occurs when a young Chinese employee is chosen to be a team leader. The young team leader must learn how to respect older team members and still be effective in his or her leadership role, because, to a large extent, the loyalty and contributions of older members will determine the team’s success.

Providing leadership training is one thing, but there also must be adequate follow-up to ensure that the newly learned concepts and skills are applied on the job. To reinforce the training, you, as the expatriate manager, must follow the training precepts and demonstrate the effective behaviors in meetings with your management team. By seeing you in action modeling the leadership behaviors, your local managers will better understand what they need to do and why the new leadership behaviors are important. Following your lead, they will become progressively more effective in taking on team leadership roles.

Stage Three: Teach Cooperation Skills

When fostering teamwork in China, it is a good idea to establish ground rules. Basics that might be assumed elsewhere should not be taken for granted. An example of a “Team Contract” was featured in Chapter 5. The following norms for successful teamwork also can function like a team contract—they must be spelled out, accepted, and observed by your team.

• Accomplish team goals first—The team’s goals and their accomplishment should take priority over any individual goals.
• Utilize one another’s skills—The team agrees on each member’s role and accountability as well as how it will use each member’s skills and expertise.
• Support one another—No one person can achieve the team goal all alone. Team members need to see how they can support each other to accomplish the group’s objective. They must learn how to solve conflicts among themselves in a constructive manner and without appealing to more senior staff for resolution.
• Listen to others—Openly hearing different points of view can help the team reach a better solution. Listening also involves the emotional support and empathy that team members give one another when facing difficulties.
• Execute team agreements—Accomplishing results depends on how well team members can execute the team’s agreed-upon actions. It is imperative, then, that team members truly buy into the agreement and contribute their best skills and efforts so that the team can achieve its goals.

Teams function best when their members contribute equally and have equal footing. Younger Chinese employees might learn team skills relatively quickly; older or more-senior team members could take longer. Also, older Chinese staff might find it difficult to let younger team members play meaningful roles.
Changing this deeply ingrained practice will prove very difficult, but appropriate training can help.

Recognizing and rewarding positive team behaviors will help the new behaviors take root. For example, you might give out “high-performing team” or “partnership” awards. Such awards are more symbolic and “face giving” than financial. You also can treat the team to a celebration dinner—Chinese managers like celebration dinners. You can further reinforce desired team behaviors by publicizing stories of other teams’ exemplary behaviors and how successful teams have helped to achieve overall company or customer satisfaction targets.

Yue-er Luo, Erik Duerring & William Byham, DDI World 

© Development Dimensions International, Inc., MMVIII. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from Development Dimensions International, Inc. 

This is the first part of Chapter 7 of the book Leadership Success in China: An Expatriate’s Guide. Next week we will publish the second part of the chapter. Leadership Success in China: An Expatriate’s Guide is written for expatriate leaders who want to jump-start their China career and quickly get up and running in their new environment. For more information about the book or to purchase it, click here.