Multicultural Team Effectiveness: Emotional Intelligence as Success Factor

As a result of increasing globalization, more organizations are operating internationally. Multinational companies often rely on successful teamwork to achieve goals and compete in the fast-paced global market. Indeed, teamwork plays an important role and can lead to faster results. Teams with members from different nations and backgrounds place special demands on operations; diversity adds complexity and a longer learning curve for establishing effective processes. In multicultural teams, the role of emotions has gained increasing interest in recent years. Practitioners report that where people work together, emotions are often present. An awareness of emotions seems to be especially important, as cultural differences in emotion processing and diversity among members may cause negative emotions and lead to conflict and misunderstandings.