What does it take for global teams to work smoothly across cultures and perform at their best?
Keiko Sakurai, Aperian’s Director of Consulting, recently explored this question in a webinar, A New Approach to Healthy, High-Impact Teams. Drawing on her decades of experience supporting global teams, she shared practical strategies for building trust, managing conflict, improving communication, and creating an environment where diverse perspectives drive stronger outcomes.
Here are some of the key takeaways that can help any team reach its full potential.
Across industries and regions, most global teams face similar hurdles: communication breakdowns, cultural and work style differences, and difficulty building trust, to name a few. These challenges don’t stem from a lack of skill or motivation. They arise naturally when diverse perspectives, time zones, and cultural norms come together on one team.
Teams that recognize these dynamics early can address them before they erode performance. The first step is acknowledging that culture and communication shape how trust is built, how decisions are made, and how accountability is shared. When teams create explicit norms around these areas, collaboration becomes smoother, and members can focus on collective goals rather than navigating misunderstandings.
At the center of Aperian’s Global Team Effectiveness Model is inclusion, which connects and sustains every other aspect of teamwork. Inclusion is more than ensuring everyone feels welcome. It’s about team members increasing their familiarity with various work styles and leveraging different skills within the team.
This awareness influences everything from how a team manages conflict to how it measures success. Inclusion acts as the “heart” of effective teams, while strong virtual communication serves as the “circulatory system,” allowing ideas, feedback, and energy to flow freely across cultures.
Every high-performing team begins with strong foundations: clear goals, defined roles, and mutual trust. Trust is what allows teams to collaborate confidently, take risks, and share feedback across boundaries. But not all trust is built the same way.
There are two distinct but equally important forms of trust:
Both forms are essential. Teams that focus solely on tasks may overlook the relational bonds that create psychological safety. Teams that rely only on relationships may struggle with accountability and clarity. The key is balance.
In culturally diverse environments, understanding how colleagues build trust is critical. In some regions, trust grows through proven results and consistency; in others, it develops through personal connection and shared experiences. Recognizing these differences allows team members and leaders to “style switch” by adapting their behavior to build trust effectively across cultural and work style boundaries.
As teams move from forming to performing, healthy tension is a sign of growth. Conflict is not a problem to eliminate but an opportunity to strengthen collaboration when managed well.
There are two types of conflict:
The goal for global teams is to minimize affective conflict and manage substantive conflict. Diverse perspectives, experiences, and working styles can drive creative solutions, but only when there’s psychological safety to express differing views.
Cultural preferences also shape how people handle disagreement. Direct communicators may value open debate, while indirect communicators may prefer more nuanced or private discussions. Effective teams learn to flex their approach, adapting to what helps each member feel heard and respected.
Once teams establish trust and manage conflict effectively, the next step is building clear, inclusive processes. Decision-making is often where cultural differences show up most strongly.
In some organizations, decisions are made quickly by a few vocal members or senior leaders. In others, consensus-building takes time and happens behind the scenes. Neither is inherently right or wrong, but without transparency, both can leave team members feeling excluded or unheard.
Aperian’s work with global teams shows that the most effective leaders make decision-making explicit. They clarify:
When everyone understands the process, even complex, cross-functional teams can move forward with alignment and commitment.
In today’s matrixed organizations, many professionals must influence people they don’t directly manage. Aperian’s work with clients draws on research such as Terry Bacon’s Elements of Influence, which outlines influence techniques across three strategic approaches:
While most professionals rely heavily on one or two of these—often the rational approach—successful global influencers develop agility across all ten. The goal is to recognize when your default approach isn’t working and flex to another style that better fits your audience or context.
Influence, like trust, is deeply shaped by cultural norms. Understanding how your colleagues prefer to collaborate and make decisions helps you choose the most effective strategy, whether that means building consensus behind the scenes or leading with data and logic.
Effective global communication requires more than understanding direct and indirect styles. Team members need to be aware of language barriers, meeting norms, and cultural nuances. For multilingual teams, using Global English best practices can make a significant difference:
These simple adjustments foster psychological safety and make collaboration easier for everyone, especially non-native English speakers.
Cultural preferences also influence how teams communicate agreement and disagreement. For example, in indirect communication cultures, a “yes” may signal acknowledgment rather than consent. Asking open-ended questions rather than yes/no ones encourages more meaningful responses and helps uncover real concerns.
Similarly, meeting participation norms vary widely. In some cultures, voicing opinions publicly is valued, while sensitive topics are discussed privately to preserve harmony in others. The most effective global teams create shared ground rules, such as circulating agendas and materials ahead of meetings, using visuals to support understanding, and summarizing and sharing meeting notes within 24 hours.
These universal practices help bridge cultural preferences and ensure that everyone can contribute.
When trust is strong, communication is clear, and inclusion is intentional, teams move from coordination to true collaboration. High-performing global teams share a few defining traits:
Reaching this stage is the result of deliberate investment in the foundations of team health. The payoff is immense: teams that understand and value their diversity innovate faster, adapt more easily, and create environments where people genuinely want to contribute.
At Aperian, we know global teams can achieve remarkable results when they have the right tools and a shared understanding to work effectively together. By building trust, improving communication, and fostering cultural awareness, organizations can turn everyday collaboration into lasting performance.
Contact us to start a conversation about how Aperian can support your global teams and help you achieve your goals.
For more insights from Keiko on enabling high-impact teams, download the full webinar recording.
