Being a good team player consistently ranks as one of the most important skills employers around the world look for in candidates. While there is consensus on the need to be good team players, people coming from different cultural backgrounds often have very different ideas of what that means. Most people learn how to operate within teams by osmosis; few take courses on that topic. As a result, major issues often arise when culturally different people work together on the same team, because they assume that all teams operate according to the set of unwritten rules with which they are familiar. When team members come from different cultural backgrounds, this implicit assumption often leads to team breakdowns. This chapter examines some of the dynamics that may lead to such breakdowns.

This chapter also explores two key value differences that impact teamwork. The first and most prominent is a culture s and a person s sense of individualism. The second is their risk orientation. It concludes by examining the incompatibilities, the points of tension they create, and how people with differing views of teamwork might come to understand each other better and work together more effectively.

In my first week of work I saw Americans eating food at their desks and at times eating food in front of me without offering any to me or other coworkers. I tried not to let this bother me. One day I offered some of my food to a couple of nearby coworkers to try...