I worked in South Korea from 2000 to 2002 and I recall my first meetings with Koreans. I would walk into a meeting room and be introduced to the most senior person in the room. He would greet me and then his very first question was, “How old are you?” I tried to hide the shock and hide my confusion by giggling and I then briefly told him my age. His next question was, “Are you married?” At that point I burst out laughing in sheer embarrassment.
My #unconsciousbias started insulting this man I had just been introduced to. My insults were all kept inside my brain of course, but I was livid with anger, “You’re such a condescending misogynist!” How dare you ask me such unprofessional questions at a business meeting! I expect you’ll be asking me for my hotel room number next!”
Unconscious bias can arise when individuals unconsciously apply their own cultural norms and expectations to interpret the actions and behaviours of others. In my case, my initial reaction to the businessman’s questions reflected a bias rooted in my Western cultural perspective, which led to feelings of insult and indignation.
Culture clash and cognitive diversity
Before travelling to Korea I had done some reading about #koreanbusinessculture, plus the company I was working for had offered some training on the topic. But somehow, I was not prepared for those questions. The cultural clash in this situation was related to our cognitive diversity. Cognitive diversity in a team is related to differences in thinking, communication styles and cultural values.
I soon found out that the gentleman I was speaking to was behaving in a very professional manner. Our diversity here laid in the differences between his quite hierarchical upbringing compared to my egalitarian upbringing and experiences to date. The Korean person wanted to know where I fit in the social ladder of the group of people being introduced to him so he could address me with the proper level of respect.
Patrick Lencioni identifies the absence of trust as the primary dysfunction of teamwork. In cognitive diverse teams trust can be difficult to build initially because of varying ways of communicating.
The need for cultural intelligence
#Culturalintelligence, or the ability to adapt in culturally diverse environments, is essential in navigating encounters with cognitive diverse individuals. By understanding and appreciating different cognitive styles and cultural norms, individuals can mitigate the negative effects of #cultureshock and foster more productive interactions.
Culture Shock can occur, not only when we are working with cognitive diverse people, but also when we join a new organisation that has a very different culture to the previous organisation we worked for. We’ll look at that tomorrow in the second part of our Culture Shock mini-series. In part three later this week we’ll look at the symptoms of culture shock and how to work your way out of it.
What are your personal experiences with Culture Shock?
To read parts 2 and 3 of this post click on the page numbers below.
Have you ever found yourself in a meeting room where you really want to speak up and say what’s on your mind, but instead of blurting it out you decide it’s safer and wiser to keep it locked up inside? Or maybe you’ve noticed a colleague holding back a valuable idea. This is the face of fear in the corporate environment and it has more power than we’d like to admit. In this post I’d like to look at creating fearless team dynamics.
What separates high performing teams from the rest is the presence of trust. When there is fear instead of trust, team members conceal weaknesses and mistakes. However, before looking at creating a culture of trust and a culture of fearless team dynamics, let’s look at fear.
What do individuals fear in corporate organisations?
There are several reasons why individuals might feel afraid in an organisation.
Fear of loss of reputation, position or job security
Fear of judgment (from peers and senior management)
Fear of failure (what happens if…)
Fear of being ridiculed by peers
With this feeling of fear, individuals hesitate to ask for help. Consequently, they jump to conclusions about others’ intentions, hold grudges, and dread meetings. subsequently, they have difficulty making decisions, miss deadlines, deliver mediocre work, and lack focus and clear objectives.
All in all, fear hinders teamwork and overall team performance. As team leaders, we need to learn to transform fear into trust. To create fearless team dynamics we need to convey the understanding that individuals can speak up and share their ideas without fearing consequences.
How to build trust in cognitively diverse teams
Amy Edmondson’s concept of psychological safety shows how individuals thrive in environments where they can voice their unique perspectives without fear of retribution.
Teaming is the art of communicating and coordinating with people across boundaries of all kinds – expertise, status, and distance, to name the most important. But whether you’re teaming with new colleagues all the time or working in a stable team, effective teamwork happens best in a psychologically safe workplace.”
Amy Edmondosn, “The Fearless Organisation”
Her research illuminates the path from fear to trust through showing respect and openness or as some say, transparency. I’d like to focus on those two factors for this post because neither is simple in teams that have cognitive diversity.
Showing respect around the world
The way you show respect around the globe, can differ greatly. In every situation that we face, we need to remember that we judge implicitly according to our normality. So if your understanding of showing respect is shaking someone’s hand when you greet them and perhaps in a team meeting you tell them bluntly that you disagree with their idea, that is your normality.
We need to keep in mind that our normality is just that. It is normal to us, but that does not mean that our team members also believe that is the correct way of showing respect to someone. Their cultural backgrounds and experiences will determine what they view as showing respect.
If your colleagues do it differently, you might misunderstand them or you perhaps judge them harshly. Once we start judging people, we start jumping to conclusions and there goes psychological safety and trust out the window.
The software engineer and the head of marketing
Imagine that on our very diverse team we have a 23 year old Dutch software engineer and a 48 year old Mexican Head of Marketing. The way we demonstrate respect to them will differ according to their normality. How do they view respect? Only then can we reciprocate correctly.
Perhaps the Dutch software engineer has been brought up in an environment where respect is shown by telling an individual (irrespective of their role) straight up, directly, what they think. Even if it’s something that can sound negative such as a disagreement.
The way we show respect can vary, and we usually show respect according to how we see respect.
Try that same technique with the Mexican Head of Marketing. Imagine if he has been brought up in an environment where social status depends heavily on seniority and age. Imagine you’re in a team meeting, and you’re two levels beneath him in the organisation. If you transfer a negative comment about something he has said or done, bluntly, you could make him lose face, lose respect for you and likely not want to work with you again.
Transparency
What about the element of transparency? As leaders, we are expected to encourage transparent communication if we endevour to have psychological safety on our team. Yet, transparent communication is also an element that is very cultural.
Imagine you have a colleague who likes black and white communication. This colleague is content to say, “No, I don’t think that your idea will work” to your face. In a team situation where black and white communication is appreciated, that type of transparency would work. But what if you have a colleague who was brought up in a society where the mere sound of the word, “No”, or any form of disagreement can appear to be a high level of disrespect and a sign of breaking a harmonious relationship? How do you expect that colleague to say exactly what is on their mind in a team meeting?
It is up to you to help them. You need to modify your communication, in a way to have them tell you what is on their mind. It’s up to you to formulate the correct questions. Consider questions that do not seem intimidating or that are very open. This technique allows enough space for the person to tell you what is really challenging them.
We mustn’t jump to the assumption that our colleagues’ passport determines their communication techniques. It is our passport, profession, religion, age and also the society we were brought up, amongst other factors, that influence our communication.
Creating fearless team dynamics
In conclusion, the journey from fear to trust within cognitively diverse teams is vital for fostering an environment where every member can thrive. Fear, stemming from various sources such as the fear of judgment, failure, or loss, can severely hinder teamwork and overall performance. However, by prioritizing the cultivation of trust, leaders can unlock the full potential of their teams.
Central to this transformation is the establishment of psychological safety. This concept emphasizes creating an environment where individuals feel safe to voice their perspectives without fear of repercussion. Yet, achieving this requires a deep understanding of cultural nuances in communication and respect.
Respect, a cornerstone of trust-building, manifests differently across cultures. What may be perceived as respectful communication in one cultural context could be viewed as disrespectful in another. Similarly, transparency, another key element, needs to be tailored to accommodate diverse communication styles. Leaders must navigate these differences sensitively, ensuring that all team members feel empowered to express themselves.
By embracing cultural differences and fostering an environment where every voice is valued, teams can transcend fear and unlock their collective potential to thrive.
Are you a talent development professional wondering which skill to focus on for 2024 for your teams?
In today’s interconnected global landscape, cultural intelligence (CQ) has emerged as a critical skill set for professionals to effectively navigate diverse environments. It enables individuals to foster understanding, create collaboration, adjust misalignments and help create a thriving team.
We’re not born culturally-intelligent, but the good news is that we can develop it. In fact we can continue developing it with each challenging situation we face. Let’s look at the four steps that can help you and your team overcome challenging situations that hinder achieving goals through miscommunication and misalignment.
Meet Sarah, a software engineer working on a multicultural team. She finds herself in a challenging situation with her colleague, Kayla, from a different cultural background. Despite their shared goals, communication barriers and misunderstandings have hindered their collaboration. Sarah has been working on an important document that needs to be sent to a client ASAP. Sarah sends an email to Kayla asking for her feedback before sending it to the client.
Kayla does not give Sarah the feedback. Sarah is stuck. She knows that Kayla is an expert on the subject matter and would really like to have her input before sending the document to the client. What has gone wrong?
Let’s work through Sarah’s situation using CQ.
When you find yourself in a challenging situation, ask yourself the following:
How motivated am I to adapt?
What do I know about the other person’s cultural influences?
How do I usually behave and what is my code switching strategy?
What is one action I can change?
Step 1: Drive – Motivation
How motivated is Sarah to adapt? She needs to change something to influence Kayla and convince her of the importance and urgency of this document. In this situation Sarah is very motivated because not only does she have a financial bonus at the end of the project, but she generally feels she will learn and develop her skills by applying new communication techniques. She knows she will improve collaboration and team spirit so that next time it won’t be so difficult to get the feedback.
Your motivation might change according to each situation you find yourself in. Some projects will motivate you to adapt and code switch and others won’t.
Step 2: Knowledge – Understanding the Other Person:
What does Sarah know about Kayla’s cultural background that can influence the way she communicates and behaves?
Sarah comes up with 3 points that influence Kayla’s behaviour.
1. Firstly, Sarah knows that Kayla works in a very relationship-oriented culture. In such an environment, it is usually vital to build a trusting relationship before giving feedback. For Kayla, giving a 5-line bullet point email just with feedback could come across as harsh. Kayla does not wish for Sarah to misunderstand these comments as criticism. This might ruin the relationship between the two for any future collaboration. Therefore, she prefers not to comment at all.
2. Secondly, Sarah also knows that Kayla likes to understand why she is being asked to work on something, rather than just do it because someone has asked her.
3. Finally, Sarah knows that Kayla is group-oriented. Kayla’s message was full of the word “I”. I need your feedback, I am writing this because … etc.”
Step 3: Strategy – Adapting and Bridging Differences:
Armed with this knowledge, Sarah devises a strategy to improve her interactions with Kayla.
She reflects on how Kayla might perceives her because of the way she writes her mails. She realizes that she might come across as rude, bossy and even arrogant.
Sarah identifies areas where she can adapt, an important one will be on how she will write her messages. She is going to spend some time building the relationship, being more group-oriented and use the “why” technique.
Step 4: Action – Implementing the Strategy
Sarah implements her strategy by putting her thoughts into actions. She decides to use TEAMS and the webcam instead of email to communicate, she explains why the document is so important and finally she decides to use the term we and incorporate collective words such as “our goal”, “what can we do together as a team to improve this document” and generally asks Kayla to work on the document together.
As a talent development professional, it is hard to know which skills to focus on for your team. When looking to create high-performance, and navigating the complexities of cross-cultural interactions, developing cultural intelligence is paramount. By following the four steps – Drive, Knowledge, Strategy, and Action – individuals like Sarah can effectively bridge cultural divides, foster inclusivity, and unlock the full potential of diverse teams. Embracing cultural intelligence not only enhances professional relationships but also cultivates a more enriched and impactful work environment where psychological safety thrives.
In a recent podcast by The Economist1, Amy Edmondson, author of “The Fearless Organisation” stated that there is a misconception that psychological safety equates to happiness and comfort in a team.
Psychological safety is not the absence of stress and it’s not job security, it is the absence of interpersonal fear.
Amy Edmondson
What is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety is the belief that individuals feel safe for interpersonal risk-taking. It gives team members the space to speak up and state their opinion or to make errors. Consequently, they can admit to having made the error without having to hide what was really done.
Consequently, psychological safety is prevalent in teams where individuals have mutual respect and trust. Generally, most of us want to be liked and want to be seen as competent at fulfilling our tasks. However, if there is fear of being laughed at when we state our thoughts, we prefer to keep quiet.
If psychological safety is absent in a team culture, usually there is negative prejudging amongst colleagues. This influences individuals to not be authentic and to have to hide their true thoughts and ideas.
Innovation Creates Growth
A psychologically safe environment encourages team members to share new ideas without fear of judgment, leading to increased innovation. Generally, when team members feel safe, they are more likely to take risks. They then learn from failures, and use setbacks as opportunities for growth.
In effect, it creates team spirit and collaboration. Basically, individuals listen to one another and support one another by asking for help and giving help where necessary.
In turn, it creates a team culture that allows for growth and high performance.
Open Communication
Trust, collaboration and innovation open the room for constructive feedback which fosters open communication. This in turn helps team members learn and grow collaboratively.
Google conducted a study called Project Aristotle to identify the key factors that make a successful team. As a result, the study found that the most important factor in predicting a team’s effectiveness was the presence of psychological safety.
The Leader’s Role
Team leaders play a crucial role in building this safe environment. Chiefly, it is the leaders who need to consciously give each individual the time and space in each meeting to express themselves and to ensure that feedback is given when learning is necessary.
Think about how you react when bad news is expressed. Do you get angry, show your frustrations or raise your voice to the person sharing the bad news?
Consider instead, to reward the person who admits to having made a mistake. Explain to them how they can learn from it and share their learnings with the others on the team.
Building Trust in Culturally Diverse Teams
Multicultural teams can often find it more challenging to build psychological safety. Culture influences the way we build trust and give feedback. Similarly, it also impacts whether it is acceptable to give one’s personal opinion in a public setting.
Leaders of multicultural teams need to first be aware of what cultural values might be impacting each individual on the team before they can consider the best approach to encouraging psychological safety.
For example, imagine you are leading a team where one individual has been brought up to always show that they are confident and need to be in the spotlight. On the same team, you have an individual who has grown up to learn that showing you are better than your colleagues is a loss of face. How would you encourage the latter person to speak up?
To conclude
We have seen briefly that psychological safety is not about comfort and happiness, it is a key factor in creating a team culture where individuals are encouraged to express their opinions, take risks and make mistakes all without the fear of being mocked, laughed at, or retributed.
Remember that a team culture reflects what is encouraged, reinforced and rewarded within the group.
What can you do to help build psychological safety in your team?
The Economist Podcast, Boss Class 4, Inside The Yellow Line ↩︎
You can elevate team morale and foster effective communication through cultural intelligence.
Individuals in culturally diverse teams can often have very diverse communication preferences. These might range from direct and assertive to more indirect and diplomatic approaches. Despite some teammates preferring give feedback on the spot, irrespective of who is present, others prefer to do it in a roundabout way, perhaps over a cup of coffee in the team break area. The former can offend team members who are not accustomed to it and the latter can confuse those who see communication more as black and white without any grey areas.
Cultural Intelligence can help elevate team morale and foster effective communication
Effective communication fosters a collaborative environment and creates harmony by allowing team members to express themselves in their preferred manner rather than in the manner that the majority of the team feel is acceptable.
In culturally diverse teams, sometimes team members lack awareness of teammates’ values, assuming that everyone communicates the same way, that feedback should be given exactly the same and that all emails should be written according to one format.
However, we all have different problem-solving skills and the way we speak and write is highly connected to how we think, see the world, create relationships and problem solve.
If we overlook these diverse communication styles and assume that all team members communicate the same way, we can fall into misalignment and miss our objectives. Let’s look at a brief case study.
Case Study: The Project Deadline Dilemma
Background: In a dynamic marketing agency, a team of creative professionals was tasked with delivering a high-stakes project with a tight deadline. The team comprised individuals with diverse roles, including designers, writers, and project managers.
The Misalignment: The project manager, Alex, was known for their direct and succinct communication style. They believed in concise updates and straightforward instructions to keep the project on track. On the other hand, Sarah, the lead designer, had a more collaborative and big picture approach. She preferred detailed discussions to ensure a thorough understanding of the creative aspects of the project.
As the project progressed, communication challenges started to emerge. Alex assumed that brief updates, including emails made up of bullet points, were sufficient for everyone. Sarah, on the other hand, felt left out of crucial decision-making processes. She struggled to join all the dots without the big picture elements she needed to problem-solve. Moreover, the lack of detailed communication, for her, led to misunderstandings about the creative direction, and deadlines began to slip.
Alex not only did not elevate team morale, they created exclusion, lack of collaboration and undermined team spirit.
Consequences of not using cultural intelligence
1. Missed Milestones: Due to the misalignment in communication styles, the team missed several project milestones, impacting the overall timeline.
2. Frustration and Tension: Team members, especially Sarah, became frustrated due to the perceived lack of involvement in decision-making. This tension started affecting team dynamics.
3. Quality Compromises: The final deliverables did not meet the expected quality standards because of the miscommunication on creative elements.
Resolution: Recognising the misalignment, the team decided to hold a workshop that was not related to work objectives but rather to discuss their cultural values which in turn impacted their communication.
Cultural Intelligence helps us understand the differing values of our teammates, highlighting what communication techniques they prefer. This in turn leads to improved collaboration, on time delivery and elevates team morale.
A colleague of mine was in Thailand a few years back on a business trip. On her last day, her final meeting ran a little longer than planned. She was panicking slightly that she would miss her flight home and as she finally slipped into the back seat of the taxi, she asked the driver, “How long until we reach the airport?” The driver timidly answered with his polite Thai smile, “Sorry Ma’am, do you need to wash your hands?”
I remember laughing very heartily when I first heard this story.
Cultural Intelligence is the skill of interpreting cultural patterns and then adapting our communication to be more effective.
How can such a simple sentence be interpreted so differently to what was really intended? My colleague was really nervous that she was going to miss her return flight to the Netherlands, but the Thai taxi driver thought she needed to use a restroom. In some countries the word “toilet” can seem vulgar and therefore it isn't used. Even restroom was obviously not a word this taxi driver was confident using. So he kindly asked her if she needed to wash her hands, when in fact my colleague just wanted to know how long it would take to reach the airport.
Leading in business with Cultural Intelligence
So what does this have to do with cultural intelligence? If cultural intelligence (CQ) is the skill of interpreting cultural patterns and learning to adapt our communication skills accordingly, then this is a perfect example.
If we were brought up in a society that expects good communication to be clear and transparent, in a business meeting when we ask a simple question such as, “Will the delivery arrive on Thursday?” we expect a simple answer. "Yes it will"or "No I don’t think it will because… " But that “yes/no” answer is a pattern used by societies where it is considered acceptable behaviour to speak directly and actually it is also acceptable to use negative terms without creating discomfort or creating loss of face.
However, if we are dealing with somebody brought up in a culture where a direct, "no" can be considered rude or aggressive that “no” might never come and we are expected to learn a different pattern of communication. Imagine being in Qatar, Japan or Brazil. If you ask that such a “yes / no” question questions to a business associate whom you don't know well, it is likely that you will often receive an answer that could appear (in your ears) to mean "yes". You would need to spend quite some time interpreting what that, "yes" really means. So the first cultural intelligence skill here is to recognise the communication pattern and the second skill is adapting our communication to find out what the real meaning of the sentence could be.
4 steps to developing CQ
Cultural Intelligence allows us to learn the communication and behavioural patterns of certain societies and then apply different communication techniques accordingly.
There are 4 steps to developing Cultural Intelligence
Step 1: Drive
How driven (or motivated) are you to modify and adapt your communication to reach your goals? This is a question that only you can answer. How important is it to you that that delivery arrive on Thursday and what are you willing to do to find out the true answer?
Step 2: Knowledge
What do I know about the other culture? What do you know about that person’s cultural upbringing that can help you determine what their communication pattern means?
Let's go back to that simple question, "Will the delivery arrive on Thursday?" Is the person you are speaking to from a face-saving, indirect speaking culture where the word, “no” is not often spoken? Or have they spent most of their careers working in multicultural environments and ,“I’m trying my hardest” actually could mean that the delivery might arrive?
The pattern is just that; a pattern. It is not obvious (and certainly not a pattern) if only used once. The pattern becomes more obvious when several people of the same group use the same pattern. It can take several trials and discussions before you realise what the communication pattern is.
Step 3: Strategy
Once you have understood the communication pattern you are only half way there. You still have not worked out if the delivery is arriving on Thursday. This is where cultural self-awareness comes in. Ask yourself: "How do I usually communicate in such a situation? What do I need to do to figure out if the delivery is running late, lost somewhere, if the cargo truck has had an accident or if they are expecting me to pay off the customs officials to get the cargo into the country?"
In step three you create your strategy. This could sometimes be as simple as just asking an open question, for example, "What are the chances that the delivery arrive on time or what are the challenges that we are facing right now?" Or it could be a longer strategy. Do you need to leave the "group" meeting and invite your associate to drink a cup of tea maybe a beer in a trust-binding one-on-one discussion to be told what is really going on with the delivery?
Step 4: Put it into action
Whatever your strategy ends up being, step 4 is where you put it into action. This is where we sometimes have to come out of our comfort zone to learn what we are really capable of. If you are uncomfortable in this kind of "trust" creating one-on-one meeting, plan it out carefully.
Step 4 needs to be tried, analysed and tried again until it works and until you start to feel more comfortable. After each new action, ask yourself three questions:
How dit feel?
How did the other person react?
Would I do it again the same way or should I change something?
Only at this point do we really start to develop cultural intelligence.
The first step to reaching full impact in your global calls in this age of less travel and more home-office, is to use cultural intelligence. Our business world seems to shrink day by day. When you look at your agenda in the morning it likely says:
07:30 am meeting with Japan
11:00 am with Switzerland
6:00 pm with the USA
We have conversations and discuss business strategies, on a daily basis, with people all over the globe. Yet, do we modify the way we describe our thoughts and strategies depending on whether we are speaking to a North American rather than a Korean? Have we learnt how to create a strong business relationship with a Finn, a Qatari and a Brazilian?
Today, more than ever before, our daily activities require us to be ever so alert about very different mindsets. If you want to reach full impact in your global calls, you need to switch off autopilot and consciously prepare your meetings in advance, according to the mindset of the people you are expecting to deal with. One way to do that is to use Cultura Intelligence.
What is Cultural Intelligence?
Cultural Intelligence is the skill of being able to interpret unspoken codes of culture and then switch our communication styles accordingly, so that we become more effective with the person with whom we’re dealing and therefore reach our goals
There are two parts to that statement above. Firstly, we need to learn to read the “unspoken codes”. That might entail understanding when a “yes” means a “no”; how to know whether the question being asked is used to display interest or displeasure, or perhaps knowing when a smile or a laugh is hiding loss of face or embarrassment.
The second part of the statement refers to modifying our communication. Without that adaptation, we often struggle in really reaching the impact we were hoping for. If you are successful in reading the unspoken code but persist on using the same communication and behaviour you started with, it becomes much harder to reach your goals.
Let’s look at an example of how to use cultural intelligence.
Asia-Pacific Conference call
Julie works for a multinational organisation in Western Europe where each colleague is responsible for a different world region. She has recently started a new role as Head of Asia Pacific. Once a month, Julie has a conference call with the managers and teams in her region, Australia, Vietnam, Japan, etc. It’s her responsibility during each call to learn what the best practices are from each team.
Julie prepares her meetings meticulously, practising the exact questions she will ask the group and then how she will distribute the information afterwards. What Julie hasn’t prepared, is how to understand the unspoken codes that the various cultural norms might influence.
Julie comes out of her first few meetings feeling as though she has not achieved what she wanted. Her goal is to supply her manager with the best practices from the region. The Australian team supplied her one and she may have received one or two other results. However, she is missing quite a few, namely, the Japanese best practices, and Japan is an important market for her.
Julie wonders to herself, why is it that she can rarely get the information she needs from the Japanese market?
Cultural intelligence can help you decipher the unspoken codes
Why is Julie not effective in communicating her request to the Japanese team? Let’s look at how Julie can use Cultural Intelligence (CQ) to figure our what she needs to do.
Step 1 of CQ is Drive. Is Julie driven? Yes, she is. She is motivated to modify her communication and behaviour to reach her goals.
Step 2 of CQ is Knowledge. This is a very important aspect. What does Julie know about the Japanese culture? Well, Julie has learnt through reading up on Japan, that Japanese people are usually collectivist, or group-oriented. This could mean that a colleague is not willing to show or share their personal opinion. They would usually rather express the opinion of the team. Therefore in Julie’s case, the Japanese team likely need to have a team meeting after each call to discuss what they have heard in the meeting and then be able to give their opinion on the subject as a team at a later date.
Lack of knowledge about cultural norms and values can lead us to false negative judgments
It is usually easier to read the unspoken codes if we have acquired an understanding of the different cultural values of the people we are dealing with. Without that knowledge we are often prone to rely on our biases and start judging our counterparts negatively. In this case, Julie might erringly think that the Japanese team members are not speaking up because they are not experienced enough or don’t understand her or that they are just plain shy.
Step 3 of CQ is Strategy. Once Julie feels she knows why the team is not speaking up, she then needs to create a strategy that will allow the Japanese team to display all their knowledge and talk about their best practices. There may be several different ways of doing this and each individual should determine what would work best for them.
Step 4 of CQ is Putting the strategy into Action. Once the strategy has been decided, put the thoughts into action and see what happens. The action can be verbal or non-verbal. It could be a different manner of asking questions or a distinct approach to writing emails. It might be as simple as transforming the method of building trust with the team.
I don’t have enough hours in the day to go through all of that
Well, yes, it can seem a little long-winded, but what happens if you don’t take the time to think through your strategy? Are you prepared to risk missing your desired goals and not reaching full impact in your global conference calls?
An Italian sports-event manager, Elisabetta, has just finished a conference call with Japanese clients. She switches off her webcam and thinks about the meeting she just held. Her gut feeling is that she wasn’t very successful but she can’t really place her finger on what went wrong. Why did she have the feeling that her Japanese business associates didn’t really consider her to be competent and reliable?
We often hear that we need to adapt when working with people of different cultural backgrounds. Is that still important with the current pandemic? Travel is close to impossible so we don’t need to learn to use chopsticks in Japan or avoid using our left hand at the table in Qatar. Do we still need to worry about whether we should “bow, kiss or shake hands”?
It is just as important to adapt your style in virtual communication. Actually, it’s perhaps even more important. It is easy to misinterpret a message through email. There is usually little context to help you grasp the real message being sent.
Building Trust
If trust is the key to creating high-performing multicultural teams or earning new clients, then we need to learn to build trust through our virtual communication, be it a conference call with Japanese or an email to a Swiss person. The way we build trust with an Indian is different to how we build trust with a Finn or a Filipino.
Let’s go back to Elisabetta. Nobody had ever told her that firstly she needs to control her emotions in Japanese business meeting and secondly that silence is common. Silence can mean many different things in Japan and should not be interrupted, especially not in virtual meetings.
However, knowing something is not necessarily automatically going to help. Milton Bennet says that intercultural sensitivity is not natural and that ‘Adaptation means we need to consciously shift our perspective and intentionally alter our behaviour[1].
Japanese tend to say,”Only a dead fish has an open mouth”.
Italians tend to wear their heart on their sleeves. If they’re happy they’ll smile and laugh with joy, if they’re angry they’ll grimace with frustration. If they’re confused, their forehead will wrinkle in a puzzled frown. Japanese tend to say, “Only a dead fish has an open mouth”. This means, a true professional controls his/her feelings in business meetings. Loss of control is deemed unprofessional. Therefore, Elisabetta’s gut feeling was probably spot on. Her meeting was likely unsuccessful due to her constant large gestures and the fact that she kept interrupting the silence that she was “hearing” from the Japanese side.
Silence to Elisabetta means there is a lack of communication or misunderstanding and she feels she needs to break the silence. Elisabetta adds more and more information into the silence meanwhile her constant chatter doesn’t allow the Japanese clients to digest what she is saying.
Building trust with your clients, colleagues or service providers of different cultural backgrounds requires “code-switching”. This means adapting your communication and behaviour. Whether we’re writing an email, leading a conference call or meeting face-to-face, we need to deliberately work at certain skills that are not innate. This could be for example, not using too many facial gestures (in Japan) or learning the cultural values of your multicultural team to know what motivates them. It could also require learning to give feedback indirectly to an Indian service provider.
Step 1: An effective conference call with Japanese, Indians or Finns – Know yourself
The first step to becoming interculturally competent is to know yourself. Take a good look at yourself and ask, “What are my preferred ways of communicating? How do I usually behave in meetings and in situations of conflict and how do I problem solve?”
Let’s take a concrete example. You are the project lead of your team. Your preferred way of communicating is through email and you tend to be very task-oriented. You write short messages and get straight to the point in all your messages. In most cases you don’t even add a greeting or a salutation because you find it unnecessary.
The software company you have outsourced in India is not meeting your timeline needs. This frustrates you because you cannot accept any more delays in your project. You need to consider the best way to tell the Indian service provider that you are not happy with their service. Typically you would do that in a short email with bullet points that specify what you are not happy with, expecting this to get them moving faster. (Stop…. don’t click on send…yet).
Step 2: Effective conference-calls: Learn the values of the ‘other’ culture
The second step is to learn the values of the other person. What is the cultural background of this person? How might they perceive me and my communication style according to their values?
Let’s go back to our scene. Indians are generally relationship-based. As a result, they like to exchange personal information with the person they are dealing with. Secondly, they are usually high-context communicators, that is to say, they read into the body language that is being used to interpret the message rather than just listen to the words. Words that are negative, like, “no”, can create disharmony and loss of face. Moreover, they are quite hierarchical, therefore they usually wait for the manager to give them instructions on what needs to be done.
Therefore your short, negative bullet-point message, straight to the operator is unlikely going to get the response you are expecting.
What should you do?
Step 3: Code-switching – adapting your style
The third step is to ‘code-switch’. That is to say, adapt your behaviour and communication to motivate the person you’re dealing with and still get the point across.
Code-switching can be verbal or non-verbal. It’s the way you adapt your emails or even which communication medium you decide to use. It means saving face by giving indirect negative feedback. It also means that your once a fortnight task-related mails may not be the most efficient way of reaching timelines.
Is email the correct medium to use in our above case? Switching on the webcam in a conference call with Japanese or Indians could be more effective as visual aid helps read body language. Consider what words can be used that are not negative (see previous article on building trust remotely.) Especially consider whether your conversation needs to be addressed to the manager of the company or to the operator.
So how do you think Elisabetta needs to code-switch with her Japanese clients? Should she read and cite the Financial Times to improve their perspective of her competency or should she rather sip on a caffè latte in a weekly non work-related virtual, “webcam-ed” exchange with them?
[1] Milton Bennett, “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity”, Intercultural Press, 1993. 21-71.
How often are you asked by your colleagues, “Could you take a look at my presentation and tell me what you think?” This seems like a harmless task. So you take a look and say, “It looks good, maybe just change the blue border around the graph to green.”
Hmmm. What do you think has just been understood by Lila, the colleague who asked for your opinion? Inclusion is not about treating everybody equally, it is about treating each and every individual according to what gives them a feeling of belonging.
a) She thinks she´s done a great job and will just change the blue border to green, or
b) She thinks you hate the whole presentationand she will be up all night to rewrite it all.
Feedback is hard enough when we are dealing with people who have a similar mindset to ours. We´re usually a little uncomfortable telling somebody that the work they have done is not quite what was expected. When we give feedback to people who were brought up in a similar environment to ours, we are usually aware of the best way to do it. We pick up on small patterns of behaviour that are are part of the culture we grow up in. As we grow up, we see, listen and copy how people act and react to what we say and how we say it; be it at school from friends and teachers and then when we join the work-force our colleagues and managers use patterns that we recognise and we copy knowing it works.
However, it is all too easy to make unknown errors working in culturally diverse teams and assuming that just because we work for the same company and are aware of the corporate culture, that we are comfortable using the same communication techniques.
If you´ve been brought up in north-western Europe where one of the most important values is often honesty and equality, then feedback can be to the point and direct. You know that the person you´re talking to will likely appreciate your honesty and not take any offence in what you say. Therefore, with our above sample, Lila will literally only go and change the blue line to a green line and then feel her presentation is complete.
However, if Lila happened to grow up in, let´s say, Far East Asia or Latin America, where generally society values relationship-building and saving Face more that telling the “absolute truth”, then she might have understood that her presentation was indeed not good at all and needed to be redone, completely. In these societies generally feedback is given in a far more indirect manner, using techniques such as not mentioning what was not done well. So the fact that the person above only mentioned the colour of the line around the graph and nothing else, could be interpreted to mean that everything that was not mentioned was not to be re-worked.
Let´s look at the above example again and see how the feedback can be treated if Lila really is from a culture where trust is created through relationship-building and face-saving is important. Ideally you create an environment where a discussion can take place rather than just give your opinion:
Firstly, always give feedback one-on-one, never in public
2. Rather than give your opinion, ask the other person what they think about the work they have just done; “So Lila, how do you feel the presentation looks?
3. If Lila says she likes it, (and yet you think there are still some adjustments to be made) then perhaps ask, “If you had to give it a score from 1-10, what score would you give it?” Lila replies, “I´d give it an 8”. “So,” you reply, “how can we bring it from 8 to 9?” and that is where the feedback discussion begins.
Being culturally savvy means learning to read communication patterns that are different to the ones you were brought up with and knowing when to change your communication techniques (verbal and non-verbal) according to the cultural background of the team member you are facing. If you work in a multicultural team, that could mean either changing your communication with every person on the team or deciding with the team openly and up front which communication techniques will be used to express such thoughts. That would be “creating the team culture” a method of behaviour and communication that everyone on the team is happy with.
When do culturally diverse teams become high performing teams? Usually not immediately. Sometimes we need to slow-down in order to move faster.
Gender is only one factor of diversity
Gender is one factors of culturally diverse global teams. Men and women do have different ways of viewing the world, of living life and of doing business in general, but it is just one of the factors. Focusing on gender difference alone when striving for diversity does not create high-performing teams.
A 26-year-old male Brazilian software engineer who grew up on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro has a fairly different perspective of the world compared to a 55-year-old female Swiss marketing manager who grew up in the centre of Zurich. But is it’s not their gender alone that creates the filter through which they view the world. In global, project-based teams where organisations bring culturally diverse people together (virtually) so that they can gain on creativity, capitalise on less travel expenses and spend less on expatriate assignments, this culturally diverse combination is very common.
Creating trust in culturally diverse teams differs
Try searching, ‘high performing teams’, and usually the results will come up with a list of attributes that includes trust, dealingwith conflict, open communication, giving feedback and valuing diversity. The first item on that list needs to be valuing diversity. The way we deal with the previous listed factors differs widely whether we are in Mumbai, Frankfurt, Rio de Janeiro or Shanghai.
Building trust with a Chinese colleague requires a different skill-set to building trust with a colleague from Hamburg. Giving feedback to a Brazilian requires very different competencies to giving feedback to a Swiss colleague. Only once we understand what the different cultural values of our colleagues are can be begin to value them and only then can we begin to contemplate how to build trust with them or how to deal with conflict in the team.
Let’s look at an example. We’ll take our two colleagues above, the software engineer from Rio and the marketing manager from Zurich. What cultural values could these two team members have that might be causing them not to see eye-to-eye?
Destiny and Time
Firstly, let’s start with their relationship to destiny and time. We’ll insert the competency of giving feedback, just to give the example a bit more depth. These are components that every ‘high-performing’ team member in any project-based team is expected to deal with daily.
Generally, a German-speaking Swiss usually feels that they are the master of their own destiny. They will wake up in the morning and plan out their day hour-by-hour (well actually, let’s face it, if you’ve ever worked with the Swiss, you know it’s closer to nano-minute by nano-minute planning), and ensure that they do everything possible within that day to reach the objectives they have set themselves.
That is to say, they won’t have any qualms about telling you that they can only speak to you on the phone for 11 more minutes because in 12 minutes they need to make another phone call. This same person is also not reluctant to give her boss some feedback at her upcoming performance evaluation telling him that his delegation skills are not great and that’s why she’s had a difficult year.
Direct speech
Speaking directly and telling the truth, no matter how difficult it might be to hear, is what a German speaking Swiss generally feels is the best policy. Planning has always been an important attribute in Switzerland. Switzerland is a country of very little natural resources with only about ten percent of its land being arable due to all its lakes, mountains and rivers. Therefore, human capital is its prime resource and in the “pre-freezer age”, parent needed to plan well ahead to be able to feed their young.
‘Let’s make sure we harvest all the fruit by mid-October so that we can preserve it for the winter and continue to feed our children.’
That is what a Swiss person would usually call a healthy relationship to time.
Now let’s look at our Brazilian software engineer. Our engineer generally believes that fate will ensure whether or not the container of goods expected to be delivered on Thursday afternoon actually arrives then or not. Brazil is such a plentiful nation where twelve months a year you can go out and harvest fruit or find scurrying animals in the forest who can provide food.
The forest doesn’t freeze over so there isn’t that much need to plan far in advance. Life will work itself out. Plus let’s not forget the very unstable economy that the Brazilians have had to deal with this last century. In the 1990s they had inflation percentages of 3 to 4 digits.
‘Whatever I have in my pockets today won’t be worth anything tomorrow, so why save it, how can I possibly plan for tomorrow? I live for today and God willing, things will go well.’
That went very well, thanks be to God!
A couple of years ago around a dinner table following a tedious and arduous seminar, a Brazilian colleague of mine remarked with a big smile on her face, ‘That went well, thanks be to God.’ The non-Brazilian colleague sitting with us told her quite abruptly, ‘It had nothing to do with God, we planned well.’ That did not go down very well.
‘Leave it to Batman’
Filipinos tend to use the term ‘Bahala Na’, ‘What will be will be’, or more traditionally, ‘Leave it to God’. Recently a Filipino in one of my workshops told me that young Filipinos today have started to give the credit to Batman, ‘Bahala na si Batman’ (leave it up to Batman). ‘Sure, Mum, I’ll be home by midnight…, if Batman wills it’.
And when it comes to giving negative feedback, well, let’s say that the Brazilians are generally far more indirect than the German-speaking Swiss at expressing negative opinions. Brazilians tend to want to save face, theirs and the people they are speaking to. Speaking indirectly keeps the harmony, the good relationship and ensures nobody is offended. That doesn’t mean they don’t give feedback, but it means you need to learn to understand it when they give it.
When you ask for feedback in culturally diverse teams you need to know how to understand it
I recollect a number of times while working in Brazil, where I had asked my team members to read over some documents to let me know if any errors had been made. Over a two-year span and many long documents, my Brazilian colleagues had not mentioned a single word to change. My French colleagues having read the same documents later on made a million amendments… What I hadn’t understood was the Brazilian way of giving feedback.
Conclusion – ask questions
So what happens when a Swiss person is working on a project team with a Brazilian or a Filipino? How can they give feedback that will not be taken as face-losing criticism? How do they deal with conflict and build trust and accountability?
So, if you ask, “Is the delivery arriving on Thursday?” and the answer is related to fate, make sure you ask many open-ended questions to figure out what the real challenges are that the team might be facing.
A ‘Culturally Diverse High Performing Team’needs to understand what the cultural values of its team members are and only then can each member start to see each situation through the perspective of the other team members. And only then can the team envisage creating its own ‘third culture’ or team charter to which it will function.
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