What are shared mental models and do your teams have them?

In the last newsletter I wrote about cultural integration.  I was preparing to speak at the Washington FIGT conference entitled Cultural Integration and the Illusion of Closeness.

At the same time I was working on a paper reviewing the research into teams, multi-cultural teams (MCT) and cultural intelligence as part of my professional development for the Australian College of Organisational Psychologists.

Both the MCT research and the FIGT conference have left me reflecting on mental models and the extent to which they are shared, or we assume they are shared, with those around us. 

The teams’ literature places a great deal of emphasis on shared mental models as one of the critical cognitive factors that influence a team’s effectiveness.  Team members who think alike about their work are more likely to be effective as they can anticipate the way each other will work and back each other up in critical situations.

Those of us who work with people from different cultures are very aware that people from different cultures do not always think alike. Actually it’s the variation in thinking that creates the chance for MCT’s to be more innovative and creative than homogenous teams.  But when those mental models are different and not shared it can be more difficult for teams to work together effectively.

The real risk is when we falsely assume we have shared mental models.  This was what Pico Iyer referred to at FIGT as the dangerous illusion of closeness.  Mental models shared from such things as popular culture create the illusion that we have a deeper understanding than we actually do.  

Perhaps organizational cultures can create the same illusion.  Because fellow employees from different continents share a knowledge of the company mission, the values, the way purchasing or accounting departments operate there may be an assumption that the way those employees think about communication or leadership or work ethics are also shared.  Our experience of culture would suggest that this is often an illusion.  

What we do know is that employees with higher Cultural intelligence are more motivated to interact with each other, have more cognitive understanding of cultural differences and the metacognitive ability to strategise and make more effective judgments and decisions in situations of cultural diversity.  And that would suggest they are more likely to develop truly shared mental models.

If you would like to discuss increasing your teams cultural intelligence contact me here.