Developing Cultural Metacognition to Enable Better Outputs From Multi-National Teams

Harvard Business School's HBS Working Knowledge is a forum which allows subscribers a first look at ideas under development by HBS faculty, and it recently published a paper entitled Collaborating Across Cultures, authored by Michael Blanding and featuring the thinking of Professor Roy Chua on how multi-national teams can work more creatively and collaborate more effectively

There's no doubt that the confluence of diverse cultures can create opportunities for innovation - think of the Crusades and the Renaissance, or of Japan's revolutionalising the auto industry. "To the extent that creativity is about the recombination of existing ideas", Chua says, "then combining ideas that haven't been connected before creates the potential to produce something new and useful".

The question is how to reap the benefits of that while minimising the inevitable misunderstandings.

In a forthcoming article in the journal Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, Chua uses a combination of survey and experimental research to focus on a key measure psychologists have dubbed "cultural metacognition". The term refers to a person's reflective thinking about his or her cultural assumptions. It seems to have a strong effect on how effectively people collaborate across cultures.

The good news is that cultural metacognition is not fixed, but rather it is a mental habit that can be learned over time through different circumstances. "People who have a culturally diverse social network tend to have higher cultural metacognition", Chua says. "The fact that they have to deal with people from different cultures more causes them to question their own assumptions more". 

In our experience, while encouraging people to develop more diverse social networks seems sensible, the idea that this will mean they question their own assumptions more (and so access the benefits of greater cultural metacognition) is not automatic. FranklinCovey's work in this area recognises one of the biggest obstacles in interpersonal communication is our tendency to respond autobiographically, meaning from our own frame of reference. As a result, we advise, probe, interpret and evaluate others’ messages based on our own experiences and motives.

To overcome these tendencies, we work 

• to create an initial awareness of how powerful these beliefs are,  
• to explore what the benefits and synergies can be when diverse inputs are valued / sought out and 
• to develop  a range of communication skills which allow people to tune out their own autobiography, tune in another's perspective and manage effectively what can be the uncomfortable process of having your assumptions challenged. 

We also have the experience of applying this thinking in more than 100 countries around the world, which instills confidence that team members from different cultural backgrounds will be responsive to it.