How much does our cultural background affect our ability to do business with people from another culture? Ask anyone who has worked on a multi-cultural team, and you'll find out: a lot.
Ask Charlene Solomon and Michael Schell, authors of Managing Across Cultures: The Seven Keys to Doing Business with a Global Mindset, and you'll get a more precise answer. "Cultural awareness has become a fundamental business prerequisite for all managers in global organizations," they write.
A huge number of companies conduct business globally today, and even those that don't, frequently run up against cultural issues with foreign team members at clients, vendors, or even headquarters. Still, most managers have not received proper training. Write Solomon and Schell, "All too often, by the time people realize they need cultural training, they've made their first blunders and cost their companies and careers dearly."
The most serious errors made by Americans when dealing with other cultures include ignoring other cultures' need for relationship building and assuming other cultures share our love for risk-taking, say Schell and Solomon.
"Americans are pathologically optimistic. For no reason at all, we believe that things will work out okay. We're not even aware of how profound that thinking is until we come into contact with people who ask us, "Why do you think that?'" said Schell. Added Solomon, "We're also not afraid to say, 'Let's try it, and if there's something we have to fix or tweak along the way, we'll deal with it then.'"
By contrast, said Schell, someone from the UK is likely to say, "Why do you do think this is going to work?" He tells the story of an oil and gas company's British division identifying excellent exploration locations in the Persian Gulf. The British team's recommendations were reviewed by Texas oilmen at company headquarters-and routinely rejected.
The reason, said Schell, is the proposals began with a list of the risks of the project, followed by a history of the region. The opportunities were placed at the end, and the language in the section was more understated than would be used in the US. Astoundingly, by simply reordering the sections and adjusting some language, the British were able to get a proposal approved the next day.
Empowering or crazy?
Such a large misunderstanding between two cultures that appear similar makes you wonder about the true scope of cultural differences. Schell and Solomon's book goes a long way toward illuminating this issue, offering extremely practical advice along the way.
The authors separate cultural differences into seven main categories: how cultures view hierarchy/egalitarianism, groups, relationships, communication, time, change, and work/life balance.
For example, in egalitarian societies like the US, Australia, Israel, and the Netherlands, business managers are viewed as coaches who provide resources and motivation to realize individual potential. Managers empower employees to make decisions, and employees are expected to take the initiative.
In hierarchical cultures like India, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, social ranking is somewhat fixed by birth, and family status plays a role in how much one can accomplish in the future. Hierarchical organizations have distinct layers and everyone expects to see visible trappings of power and authority. Written and verbal communication is more formal.
"When an American manager introduces himself to a new team, he says, 'I'm here to learn. Tell me what we do well, what we don't do well, and how to fix it.' We like that because it empowers us and makes us feel valuable," said Schell.
"If that manager went to a hierarchical country like Mexico and said that, the workers would look at him like he was crazy. They would think: 'If I knew the answers, I'd be the boss. You're not supposed to ask me!'"
Strangely personal?
In each of the seven categories, a graph shows where countries rank on a scale. For example, on the relationship scale, the US and Canada are at the far end: most transactional. China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are among the countries at the opposite end: most interpersonal. Countries like Germany, Israel, and the UK fall in the middle.
One reason Americans tend to underestimate the need for relationships, said Solomon, is that time is so important to us. "We don't realize that building relationships and taking time to talk to people are really important. We tend to think these things are gratuitous."
On the contrary-treating relationship building with disdain is one of the most harmful things Americans can do when trying to develop an effective working relationship with executives from Asian and many European countries. For example, said Solomon, if Americans were to distribute the type of curt, information-only e-mails they use with each other, the Asians on the team would be upset and insulted.
It's not necessary to feign interest in a near-stranger's family, cautions Schell, something Americans tend to find distasteful. "That isn't what building a relationship has to mean," he said. "It's taking a few minutes to chat about something on a conference call, taking a little bit of a personal interest in the person on the other end of the phone, and being polite in an opening note in an e-mail."
Indeed, said Solomon, such niceties are fairly easy to get used to. "We practice it internally," she said. "Opening an e-mail with a hello, if appropriate saying you hope they had a good weekend, closing it with your name, just being polite. Also, we take some time before meetings start and see that time of relationship building as part of the business process."
Practicing is not just a way to get comfortable with something you don't usually do, said Schell. Because our cultural values are instilled in us from early childhood, they run very deeply. As a result, when we're in a stressful situation, we tend to revert to our cultural roots. Imagine an American executive traveling to China to discuss a problem at his organization's manufacturing facility, becoming frustrated, and exacerbating the situation by abandoning all social niceties.
That's where practice comes in, say Solomon and Schell. Athletes practice so that even as the last batter in the ninth inning, they can keep their emotions under control. But no one teaches that to a business manager. "The idea is to go into your practice behavior when something happens so you don't lose it all when confronted by a stressful challenge," said Schell.
Avoiding land mines
Of course, within every culture, individuals have their own personal styles and behavioral preferences. The book contains 35 questions you can ask yourself to determine your personal cultural profile. You can then compare your personal tendencies with the cultural attributes of your home country.
"For example, you may not be as transactional as a typical American, making you more relationship based. Knowing that about yourself helps you understand how other people are different and how to recognize those types of behaviors and what kind of interaction they need," said Solomon.
The book also has a list of eight common land mines to avoid (believing that everyone is willing to speak candidly, for example). The authors' Web site (www.rw-3.com) has an often-updated blog relating current events to cultural issues.
Clients of RW3 can access a large number of online courses and tools designed to help people working on global team, people managing global teams, people taking on an international assignment, and companies looking to take advantage of cultural diversity within their company.
"We provide information about everything you need to do business in another country," said Schell. "If you're going to Italy, how should you create your business presentation, how do you manage people, what kind of gifts do you bring? We have that information for 130 countries."
As Solomon pointed out, when she and Schell started the company in 2001, most of the people interested in culture in an in-depth way were going to be living in another company or travel extensively internationally. "Over the last four or five years, it seems like you don't even have to leave your office to have interactions with people from very different backgrounds. It's broadened the scope of what executives need to pay attention to."
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