A reminder: intercultural management matters.

Employment relations in intercultural teams are getting more relevant in Turkey as the foreign labor force grows. Start-ups and more mature Language Teaching Organizations (LTOs) are rushing to hire people for their language skills and they tend to underestimate the most important qualities for the position. Mistake by mistake, the results are high turnover rates and an undesired impact on the moral of the staff. The mistake starts by posting the job ad with emphasis in the language skills - Native Speakers wanted, and it continues with the lack of learning and development programs and effective cross-cultural management.  

In Turkey, it can be said that Istanbul is the most international city for being the most touristic place in the country and holding most of the FDI. It has three international airports and one of them, Istanbul Ataturk Airport, according to the Airports Council International (ACI), ranked 15th in the list of the busiest airports of the world in 2017. Istanbul also hosts more than one third of the total legal foreign workers and it has 40% of the total foreign population legally living in the country according to the latest statistics from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT).

Based on this information, we might think that the LTOs with foreign workers in this city have a cross cultural approach but the reality is that most of them don’t. The most common Turkish management styles are particularly hierarchical, collaborative and unilateral in terms of communication. Employees have to ask permission to talk to their managers and the delegation of individual tasks is a weird practice. Frontline employees listen but do not give opinions when talking to their superiors. These facts bring along issues like cultural clashes, demotivation, high employee turnovers and low level of customer satisfaction.


To avoid this, managers must first be aware of the cultural differences in their teams and most importantly they have to assess themselves to look for cultural bias. Drawing a Diversity & Inclusion policy is a good start. Since most of LTOs in Istanbul have intercultural teams, adopting a specific language as official for communications  and granting a certain degree of freedom from normal rules could give them a competitive advantage as teachers’ autonomy is key to innovate in the industry and keep high levels of customer engagement and satisfaction.


If you are a team leader, embrace your strengths by understanding your staff backgrounds and draw policies that enclose a well-thought corporate culture. In addition, you should also prevent your team from having cultural misunderstandings with the customers. A periodical cultural training is a good idea to make them know how to deal with Turkish and multicultural customers. Promote cultural awareness and provide practical exercises to develop cross-cultural skills. Also, organize different activities to integrate the team and consolidate teamwork between frontline workers and other staff.

Managers transmit the corporate culture in the companies, so don't take for granted the intercultural management of your LTO.