Dubai is a thriving business hub of the Middle East region and thousands of companies and therefore teams work here. The rapid growth of Dubai from a creekside trading village to a global city is well documented; this growth and the unique nature of work life here presents greater challenges for teams than exist in most parts of the world. This means that businesses need to work harder than most to build effective work teams in Dubai.

Transient Workforce

We know that settled teams with low turnover of staff are statistically more successful than those that have changing membership; spare a thought for commercial flight crews who fly with a new team on every flight you take! Because approximately 80% of the UAE’s workforce is expatriate and transient and many workers are not here for the long haul, teams face the challenge of dealing with this ever changing roster of who is on the team.

Fear of Job Loss

Having said that people are always moving on from teams in Dubai, I am going to contradict myself and say there is a paradox here. Quite a few workers stay for very long periods in a job here – ten, twenty even thirty years – motivated by the safety that comes with staying put and keeping your visa. Things are changing and people are less worried about losing or changing jobs, but because a visa is required to live here and you can’t be unemployed for long, people stick around in teams.

Sometimes, this is not good because they are a ‘B’ player – one that is basically doing OK but is perhaps not someone you would enthusiastically rehire, given the chance (a great question to ask yourself when assessing if an employee is an ‘A’ or ‘B’ player). Also, no new people coming into a team limits your ability to innovate or take on new ideas from the outside world – another crucial aspect of how to build good teams at work.

Cultural Mix

We are blessed with tremendous diversity in the UAE – with people from almost every country in the world living and working here in our teams in business. When I am doing a team coaching program I am used to having say 8 nationalities represented in a room of 12 people.

This diversity is a fabulous opportunity but it is sometimes not harnessed correctly or can be a hindrance because of the innate hard wiring human beings have to not trust people who are different to us. For most of our existence, strangers meant threat. We assume a position of danger and make threat assessments constantly and subconsciously – some say every five seconds on average.

When working on a team with people who are different from us, we will naturally gravitate to the comfort zones of people from a similar background, nationality, age or even race. This prevents true connection and cohesion within a team and is something that has to be recognized, owned and interrupted. This can only be done by conscious and intentional work towards relationship building, understanding and curiosity about each other. Again, something that good teams do well.

With these three key factors comes an increased challenge for companies trying to build effective work teams in the UAE – more son than in other parts of the world. I have coached teams in the UK (where I am from) and I am struck by how different an experience it is when the team members are all from the same nationality and demographic.

Focusing on Trust and Communication to Build Your Team in Dubai

Given that we have these potential roadblocks, companies and team leaders need to consciously work on these things in order to have a better chance of building great teams at work. Here’s a few things to think about.

Awareness

Eckhart Tolle said in his book ‘The Power of Now’, “Awareness is the greatest agent for change”. If we are ignorant, then we cannot do anything about it. The first step is making people aware of the situation. This is the first step of my 5A coaching model – explained in “The 5A Team Coaching Model” another blog post I wrote – Start learning more about these topics, educate others on the team, and create an atmosphere or culture of openness, curiosity and learning within the team. This leads to the second point.

Create a Culture of Learning

When I am coaching teams, we always start any session by creating our behavioural contract together. How should everyone behave? This is their chance to consciously agree the right behaviour that will mean we have a great outcome in the team coaching room, but also identifies what not to do.

This is a conversation you can have in your team more widely about your team life together, and specifically to tackle the issues above. ‘How should we be cultural learners, and not cultural critics’? By specifically naming the behaviours you need (for example openness, suspend any judgement, listen, be curious – or whatever rules you want to make for your team) you create the right behaviour and also clarity of what not to do. This way you can create open eyes and ears to what everyone else is like and what they need to be a happy and engaged member of the team.

Don’t Do Nothing – Do Something

Einstein said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result”. If you don’t take action, you will never change. If you want to communicate more effectively and build trust in your team so you can overcome these challenges, then you have to do some things differently if you want to create a better team. You can’t be expected to do lot of new and different things – but just a few things done consistently and differently can really make a difference.

Building trust and communicating better is a vital part of team building. With a little bit of conscious effort, an open mind and curiosity, you can overcome some of the roadblocks that get in the way of improved teamwork here in Dubai.