Today's globalization requires awareness of challenges and opportunities that demand new leadership styles and techniques in order to be effective and successful. Leading improved performance in multicultural teams can be challenging and fulfilling. Barriers to performance within these teams include communication misunderstandings, differing attitudes toward hierarchy and authority, and cultural norms for decision-making can derail a team from achieving their desired purpose. This article examines some creative strategies such as adaptation and interventions for improving work performance with multicultural teams, factors that influence multicultural teams and some leadership techniques, including improving team cohesion and using a coaching style of leadership to implement them.

Today's businessmen and women are learning a new languagethat of globalization or globalcentrismdealing with the interrelatedness of all peoples and nations and an appreciation for the cultures of the world. In fact, due to cross-border mobility and the ability to either move or work within global organizations and communities, global work is considered quite commonplace today. Many organizations deal in the global economy, thus leaders at all levels in the organization will have to consider new thinking in order to be effective in the ever increasing global business world. In order to be globally literate in business, one must think beyond the borders of our own company's wall and beyond the borders of our nation to see all business as potential for global business. This brings many challenges and opportunities including work teams that consist of members from different countries: multicultural teams. Diversity in teams has multiple benefits such as increased innovation, better ideas, higher levels of creativity, and the expansion of a company's horizon to understand the local context for implementation; at the same time, multicultural teams require a new form of leadership. The failure to successfully lead multicultural teams can lead to negative consequences such as a non-integrated workforce, poor team and organizational performance, as well as potential discrimination for workers, which can lead to lawsuits as it did with Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart. In order to lead multicultural teams to improved work performance, leaders must be aware of the barriers and subsequent strategies that attempt to derail a team before it even starts and sets strategies to grow and thrive in the new global arena.

Effective Executive Magazine, Multicultural Teams, Globalization, Organizational Commitment, Global Organizations, Global Economy, Non-Western Cultures, Decision Making Process, Structural Interventions, Managerial Interventions, Corporate Culture.