Tag Archives: Cross-cultural

Oldie but Goodie: Indigenous Contributions to Global Management

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Because Cultural Detective is used by so many corporations, business schools, and management development programs, we are obviously very interested in strategies for broadening the scope of management teaching.

Recently I was perusing our archives, and found this terrific article from way back in 2005, authored for us by Cultural Detective Malaysia co-author Asma Abdullah. It focuses on indigenous contributions to global management, and I thought some of you might enjoy reading it, for the first time, or seeing it again with new eyes. Oldie but goodie, in my opinion!

Dinner in Damascus

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Punch me! Punch me! Tell me this is not a dream. I’m actually in war-torn Syria right now. This is my first meal here with a super hospitable family from Damascus who took me into their home the first second I crossed the border. I was watered, fed, washed, loved and pampered without even asking. Laying in bed last night I could not close my eyes, just listening to the shooting in the far away street …

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I am co-author of Cultural Detective Vietnam, and am in the midst of a journey that traces the path of Islam from its origins as it spread outward around our planet. Thank you for following!

Global Success By Trial and Error?

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The idea occurred to Dianne that a blog about “How to convince your boss to work with Cultural Detective” could spark some interesting conversation. Always in the mood for some good dialogue, I took the bait!

To those of us who live and breathe “developing cross-cultural competence,” it seems like a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t appreciate a deeper understanding of the cultural values that are most likely driving your international clients’ decision-making process? Isn’t it logical that understanding what makes our global clients, vendors or colleagues “tick” would translate into improved relationships and ultimately more or better business?

We know, by evidence of the shear number of cross-cultural mishaps resulting in project failures, job loss, plant shut-downs, etc., that millions  of dollars are lost annually by culturally inept managers following a path of trial and error versus embarking on a path of structured learning to develop competence for working across cultures. But because those dollars are not directly traceable to a lack of cultural competence, the trial by error path to global success continues to lead organizations through a maze of cross-cultural dilemmas which ultimately may or may not end well for the organization.

If you’re seeking the most direct path to your global success, it makes both personal and organizational sense to prepare the way by learning a core process for developing global competence. In fact, there was a 2007 Accenture study that involved interviews with global managers, who reported a belief that adopting a cross-cultural communication training program could improve business productivity by 26%! Most importantly, their belief was supported by actual improvements in productivity of 30% reported by organizations who did implement cross-cultural training programs.

The bottom line is that by using the Cultural Detective Method you are far more prepared for any cross-cultural situation, so that ultimately you will be more productive and effective in your job and for your organization. Better prepared employees feel more successful and have much better job satisfaction. What boss wouldn’t want that for their employees?

Our clients report feedback such as the following:
  • 30% increase in global customer satisfaction, due to training technical support representatives with the Cultural Detective
  • Alleviation of the typical “low” resulting from culture shock that many expats feel, and shorter time-to-competence on assignment, due to providing pre-departure training that includes the Cultural Detective
  • The Cultural Detective tools allow the flexibility to meet emerging needs/respond to time-sensitive opportunities because they provide “just in time” effectiveness in a cost-effective manner.
  • Cultural Detective training results in “positive and creative resolutions that bridge value differences.”

As I think more closely about this question, “How to convince your boss to work with Cultural Detective tools,” the answer clearly lies in the Cultural Detective Method and the Value Lens tools themselves! What does your boss value? And what does his/her boss value? Leverage whats important to them and put their values to work for you!

So, what do you think? How would you convince your boss? Let us hear from you!

“Diversity Training Doesn’t Work!”

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“Diversity Training Doesn’t Work: Rather than extinguish prejudice, diversity training promotes it!” This was the title of a 12 March 2012 Psychology Today online article.

While so many of us complain about media sensationalism, I begrudgingly have to admit that, in this case, the inflammatory title led me to read this article from among the 200+ crossing my desk that day.

The article’s author, Peter Bregman, relies on research from 2007 to prove his point. He repeats or paraphrases the subtitle four times throughout his article, each time stating it as fact. Yet, in reviewing the original research he cites, I feel it does not support his premise. The original paper is much more nuanced and even-handed (“certain programs increase diversity in management jobs but others do little or nothing”).

While I take issue with much of what Mr. Bregman says in his article (that there are two types of diversity training, for example: those that tell people what to say/not say, and those that break people into categories. Come on, really?), there is also learning to be gained from it. His conclusion: “We decided to [teach all managers] to listen and speak with each other — no matter the difference — which is the key to creating a vibrant and inclusive environment,” was one I could heartily agree with.

Let me focus this post on the constructive learning we might get from this article. Mr. Bregman urges the reader to do nine different things. I consolidate them, as there was quite a bit of redundancy. They are:
  1. See people as people instead of categories. Train them to work with a diversity of individuals, not with a diversity of categories. Move beyond similarity and diversity to individuality. Don’t reinforce labels, which only serve to stereotype. Reveal singularities. Help them resist the urge to think about people as categories.
    • I wholeheartedly agree! Yes!!! Please! That is exactly why Cultural Detective looks at an interactional process of how people communicate in real situations (using the Worksheet with real-life or prepared critical incidents).
    • It is why we have a package titled, Cultural Detective: Self Discovery, aiding users to create Personal Values Lenses.
    • It is why Cultural Detective: Blended Culture looks at the multicultural experience of so many of the individuals in our world today.
    • It is why our definitions of “culture” go way beyond nationality or ethnicity, and include looking at multiple influences on why we are the way we are (see Layering Lenses).
    • While we are all unique individuals, we are also all members of groups and communities, and our world views are shaped by those groups (cultures) in which we were raised. Cultures establish patterns of behavior that are historically sanctioned, so we each learn all kinds of things that seem natural, yet are culturally determined. Viewing people as unique individuals not influenced by culture is a step backwards, and not helpful in understanding others.
  2. Stop training people to be “accepting” because it doesn’t work.
    • Again I agree! If people can better understand themselves, and get a bit of insight into why others might behave the way they do, we won’t need to lecture them. These are two of the Cultural Detective Model’s three core capacities (Subjective Culture/know ourselves, Cultural Literacy/understand others’ intent, Cultural Bridge/skills and systems for leveraging similarities and differences).
  3. Teach people to have difficult conversations with a range of individuals.
    • Yes! The CD Worksheet came to life as a conflict resolution tool in multicultural workplaces in Japan in the 1980s and 90s. It emerged from diverse individuals having just such difficult conversations.
  4. Teach managers how to manage the variety of employees who report to them. Teach them how to develop the skills of their various employees.
    • While I might offer this as one reason to conduct diversity training, coaching, or mentoring, I can definitely agree with the goal. Cultural Detective offers a process for understanding, valuing and leveraging individual cultural differences. Our newest package, Cultural Detective Bridging Cultures, focuses precisely on skill development.
  5. Help them resist the urge to think about others as just like themselves.
    • Yes! Thinking about others as just like ourselves is one stage of a developmental process. Learning to distinguish the ways in which we truly are similar and different, seeing value in the similarities and the differences, and creating ways to benefit from them, is what Cultural Detective is all about.

The initial research referenced in the article, (“Diversity Management in Corporate America,” Frank Dobbin, Alexandra Kalev, and Erin Kelly, American Sociological Association, 2007), was a systemic study of 829 companies, designed to see which kinds of diversity programs work best, on average. A weakness in the original study is that it looked purely at diversity, not on inclusion or competence to manage diversity.

Having said that, the findings showed that diversity councils, diversity leaders, and mentoring programs most strongly correlate with increased management diversity, while training and diversity performance evaluations have a lower correlation. To quote the study authors, “On average, programs designed to reduce bias among managers responsible for hiring and promotion have not worked. Neither diversity training to extinguish stereotypes, nor diversity performance evaluations to provide feedback and oversight to people making hiring and promotion decisions, have accomplished much. This is not surprising in the light of research showing that stereotypes are difficult to extinguish. … Research shows that educating people about members of other groups may reduce stereotyping.”

“Optional (not mandatory) training programs and those that focus on cultural awareness (not the threat of the law) can have positive effects. In firms where training is mandatory or emphasizes the threat of lawsuits, training actually has negative effects on management diversity. Managers respond negatively when they feel that someone is pointing a finger at them.”

The original article by Dobbin, Kaley, and Kelley presents three broad approaches to increasing diversity:
  • Changing the attitudes and behaviors of managers
  • Improving the social ties of women and minorities
  • Assigning responsibility for diversity to special managers and task forces

These are all situations in which the Cultural Detective Model can be used to help shape constructive interactions and manage differences effectively.

What do you think?

What time should we meet?

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This cross-cultural dating mishap (in response to this post, and building on this thread) is a true story submitted by Erin in Sydney:

I have many cultural mis-step stories in general, but the only one date-wise I can think of is this one when I was living in Chile. (Warning: it’s not hugely funny or unique!)

First date: I turn up “on time” (Chilean time, e.g., 45 minutes late). He turns up on time (gringa time, at the agreed time). He was a bit peeved that I made him wait so long.

Second date: I turn up on time (gringa time). He turns up on time (Chilean time). This time I had to wait nearly an hour.

We ended up pololeando (a Chilean word meaning “dating”) … though the timing thing was always an issue.

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Thank you, Erin. Everyone, we are eager to hear a few of your “mis-steps!” It is our belief that sharing our Cultural DeFectives with others can even the playing field a bit, showing that intercultural competence is a lifelong enjoyable learning journey rather than a static state.

Mixed (&) nuts? A cross-cultural parenting perspective

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A Czech and a Jamaican walk into a…. relationship. And BAM! There we have it — my reality in a nutshell. Building my relatively new multiracial, multicultural blended family has been quite the ride: challenging, but worth all the energy, inspiration and personal transformation that the experience has brought about.

The key to making things work has been clear, open and respectful communication and a willingness to self-examine and adjust, while staying authentic and standing one’s ground about the key values that must remain uncompromised. As my sweetie and I say, if he and I can’t work through our differences, how can we ever expect the rest of the world to do the same?

In our case, in addition to the divergent racial realities we experience in this society (he as a black male, and I as a white female), the contrast between our upbringings and home community cultural values is quite vast. Our parenting styles mirror those which guided each of us, and they are nearly polar opposite! The parenting of our children from previous relationships, in fact, has been the hottest point of contention.

My style veers towards the permissive side of the spectrum which gives the child the time and freedom to construct his own internal moral compass experientially through empathy (of course, not totally without guidance). This parenting tendency reflects how I was brought up and is, in a way, indicative of the degree of the privilege, which has applied to me since childhood, to be generally relatively safe, and sheltered from strife.

My partner’s parenting method is authoritarian, bent on instilling strong discipline and ethic as a means to survive and thrive in a sometimes harsh world. His is a form of tough, protective love, “a strict and clearly defined” style, as he calls it. You could see how these vastly different philosophies could drive us nuts, but we are on a journey together, determined to respect one another and find meeting places somewhere in the middle. In fact, an interesting pattern is developing where we, the parents, are adopting a little of each other’s tactics as we evaluate which are useful for our particular circumstances. In short, we are really mixing it up in the mixing bowl that our family is.

What I am most excited about is that we are learning from each other and drawing on not only the richness of what was passed down to each one of us, but also from each other’s worlds. My hope is that this, for our children, rather than confuse, will open new doors and encourage new ways of seeing the world and interacting with the people in it.

Miscommunication: Too Much Cultural Sensitivity!

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This cross-cultural dating mishap (in response to this post) is a true story from UC Berkeley’s International House, submitted by Joe Lurie:

A German male student and a Guatemalan female student have agreed to go out on an evening date beginning at 8pm. Both wishing to make a good impression, decide to leverage their cross-cultural skills and sensitivity when dealing with approaches to time. The German fellow, normally stereotypically monochronic — 8 means perhaps five to eight — arrives at 8:45 only to find the anxious, somewhat distressed Guatemalan woman saying, “Where have you been? I have been ready since 7:50  as I wanted to be sensitive to your cultural clock.”

Adopting each other’s styles provoked an amusing disconnect — but in this case, not serious. They are married today!

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Thank you, Joe! Reminds me how often I used to bow in Japan when my colleagues would simultaneously stick out their arms in anticipation of a handshake.

Layering Lenses: We are All Multicultural Individuals

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“As an ethnic minority woman working in a large multinational firm, too often I feel like I have to learn only, to fit in. For the first time since I’ve worked here, I can now see, and explain, the unique and valuable perspective that I have to contribute as well!” she said, her face positively glowing.

The privilege of experiencing such affirming responses from Cultural Detective customers is part of what makes my job so incredibly worthwhile. This woman had just spent time creating her personal Values Lens, using Cultural Detective Self Discovery as well as a selection of Values Lenses from various other CD packages.

While the core of Cultural Detective is its process, which enables ongoing learning, collaboration and conflict resolution, the Lenses play an invaluable supporting role. As shown in the diagram above, one important role the Lenses can play is to help us realize that we are all unique, individual composites of the various cultures that have influenced and helped form us over our lifetimes. We are not “just” Chinese or Brazilian; we are much, much more than a single story, as Chimamanda Adichie so well told us.

In international cross-cultural work such as I’ve done over the past 34 years, too often people limit their definitions of “culture” to “nationality.” Culture goes way beyond nationality. Since by definition culture is the shared norms, values and behaviors of a group of people, culture can also include ethnicity, language group, physical ability or mobility, sexual orientation, or gender identity. More often than not, in my experience, while nationality(ies) tend to have a strong impact on our behavior, professional training, the culture of the organization to which the person belongs, the team culture, their socioeconomic level, generation, their faith or spirituality … all of these influence behavior as much as or more than national birth culture. It’s worthwhile for all of us to know ourselves in all the layers of our cultures: why we are the way we are, how we got to be who we are today. In this way we can better predict how we’ll respond, and better explain ourselves and our motivations to others, powerfully transforming collaboration.

People often ask me, where does personality end and culture begin? As a practitioner, my response is, “Does it really matter? Is there an objective, accurate answer?” We are all unique individuals and we are all also influenced by the multiple cultures in which we’ve grown up, been educated and trained, worked and lived. If we can keep our values and our goals clearly in mind, we can be flexible in our behavior and creative in our approaches, in order to perform at our highest and best in a broad variety of contexts.

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This post was part of the #MyGlobalLife Link-Up

More Than A Cross-Cultural Development Tool

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As many of you may know, the Cultural Detective Team periodically facilitates online learning events which have been designed to help new users learn or seasoned users refresh their skills around working with the Cultural Detective Method and Values Lenses.

I recently had a follow-up conversation with one of our new users, whose organization is getting ready to expand overseas to Australia. Because I often co-facilitate the online learning events, I always find it enlightening to speak with some of our new CD users and online participants to get their perspective and gauge our facilitation success by their understanding of how to work with the CD Method. It really energized me to hear this particular client’s feedback so I wanted to share!

He said he was really excited by the multiple ways he realized his organization could use the CD Method for growth, in addition to his initial hope of using it to aid global expansion. Needless to say, as he continued to clarify his meaning: by discussing how CD is really an excellent business communications tool that can be incorporated into ongoing associate training regardless of cross-cultural work, and that CD provides a superb process for coaching as well — by the end of our call I was really grinning !

It always feels good when the messages we are trying to send make it effectively across the virtual training waves, but when they are taken to another level and creatively applied to the organizational needs, the time we spend educating is worth it’s weight in gold!

Inside Egypt: Recent Gallup Poll Results

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We have all been captivated by the hope, strength, and commitment to democracy of participants in the Arab Spring. I’ve also long been a “fan” of Egypt, studying Arabic for two years while living in Tokyo, in hopes of relocating to that country (hasn’t happened yet). Thus, I was excited recently to be able to hear Mohamed Younis speak about Gallup’s research in Egypt.

Over the past decade I seem to quote more and more from Pew Research, so I was very happy to see that Gallup has made a major commitment to conduct 100% self-funded, independent polls regularly in 140 countries. This should provide invaluable data for the intercultural field.

The research on Egyptians’ opinions that Mohamed presented had been conducted just after the parliamentary elections, in December 2011. The top findings he shared with us included:
  • Despite recent challenges in the country’s transition, Egyptians are still optimistic that Mubarak’s overthrow will improve their lives.
  • There is overwhelming confidence in the transparency of the upcoming presidential elections and in participation — 86% of those polled plan to vote in the presidential election.
  • Most Egyptians believe SCAF will hand over power to a civilian government after the presidential elections.
  • Islamists and Liberals very much agree on the issues of most immediate concern for Egyptian households, including women’s rights and economic priorities such as inflation and jobs.
 Some other interesting statistics from the polling:
  • 63% of the Egyptians polled felt that protests and revolts in their country have been the result of an indigenous desire for change. Mohamed said he felt this reflected a “hyper-nationalism” and “hyper-distrust” of foreign intervention, which he said can also be seen in the fact that 46% of the Egyptians polled opposed NATO intervention in Libya (compared to just 18% who were in favor).
  • Our group of listeners was largely US American, so Mohamed shared that 41% of the Egyptians polled said closer relations between Egypt and the US would be a good thing. 40% said it would be a bad thing, for a fairly even split on the issue. His interpretation is that this split is closely related to the fact that 73% of the Egyptians they polled do not feel that the USA is genuine in supporting democracy (rather they support their allies and economic interests).
  • When asked “If drafting a constitution for a new country, which rights should be included?” the vast majority of those polled cited freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and women’s rights (ahead of others in the region). The people of Egypt are definitely envisioning a representative government.

During questions and answers, Mohamed told us how some of the Islamist parties had won seats because they had bankrolled local services such as providing burial services or pilgrimages to Mecca for those who couldn’t afford them. He did not feel the rise of these parties reflected a rise in Islamism per se, and definitely not in the desire for a theocracy.

When asked what foreign governments could do to support Egypt, the clear response was: trade not aid, due to the rising sense of independence, nationalism and regionalism he perceives.

Mohamed also talked about the need for education around democracy, and the fact that an overthrow of Mubarak is not in itself going to create jobs. He said many young Egyptians expect a government job, with high salary and a pension, but with 80 million people and much poverty, they can not expect what young people in Saudi might be able to expect.

When asked about the high price of gas sales to the Sinai, and the fact that many Egyptians blame the Camp David Accords, Mohamed responded that even though this has nothing to do with the peace accords, they are nonetheless blamed. Most Egyptians have no interest in re-engaging Israel.

When asked about security for the Coptic church, Mohamed reiterated that most Egyptians very much respect religious diversity, and that the decision to protect churches was not a government mandate but rather an organic, people-led effort.

If you’re interested in hearing Mohamed present the Gallup findings, they do have a video posted and you can also find a download of his slides. He mentioned there was also audio available on iTunes.

Please note that any errors in my report of the data and Mohamed’s comments are no doubt my own.

Other Gallup reports on related subjects available online: