For this episode, we speak with Sarah Wills Carlsson, Managing Director at Nspir AB, exploring how to successfully leading highly diverse and multi-cultural teams!

What we spoke about:

* Her own leadership journey, moving from a role of Chief Engineer to Leadership & Team Coach and consultant, living in Sweden, Germany & US

* Her memory of being part of a High Performing Agile Team, creating a nucleus with the customer, questioning the rules of agile development and gathering every team member around a commonly shared goal!

* Why Diversity matter and the research behind it? A high-challenge high-risk environment for a team leader

* The need to be intentional to harness Diversity in a team: “you can’t let things happen organically!”

* Her personal experience leading a multi-cultural teams across China, Sweden and Brazil, and what she did to enable the team reach peak performance!

* It is less about how different we are, and more about how we understand and empathize with others in the teams. The team leader needs to create awareness and conversation points

* The importance of creating a focus on task-based conflicts and disagreements VS personal conflicts to navigate through the Storming phase of team development and harness the diversity of the team