Mind Your Multicultural Manners: It's Good for Business
Lisa La Valle-Finan
Unless you have been living in a cave lately, you are probably experiencing considerable anxiety about the global economic crisis. This emotion is immediately followed by further panic when recruiters or employers are asking you to 'go global' to make yourself more marketable. That is if you still have a job. How and when is all this supposed to happen? Is this a form of outsourcing? I mean, it is not like you are ever really going to live or work outside your home, right? So, why should going global concern you?
With the stunning realization that the world's financial crisis is interwoven, the biggest misstep any woman can make, is to think what is happening around the world, does not affect her - or her business. Today, when one country sneezes, very often we all catch a cold.
No Culture Is Foreign, It's Just Different
But there is a great deal of fear that comes with going global and things 'foreign'. How can you deal with it? One way is to reframe the issue of what is foreign. How you frame, or name, what you speak about, determines how you think about it. If you change the semantics, you change your perceptions. With a 'clear lens', cultures become less foreign, and more familiar.
You can also readjust how you think about your place on the earth. You are part of the global village. You breathe the same air as 4 billion fellow inhabitants. The term 'international' is no longer about "those people over there". Reframing the way you refer to your place in the world will help you get more comfortable in it.
Multicultural Manners: Handle With Care
As women business owners, it is incumbent upon us to look ahead to all the trends that affect our businesses and embrace them with education and an awareness about multicultural manners, in order to conduct global business successfully. Because even if you do not speak another language, it is wise to know the soft skills that will make your professional, hard skills sing. For example:
• Intercultural Business: If you are in a position to manufacture your scarves in China, do you know that you will need guanxi (pronounced gwan-SHEE) or make the right connections before you begin the deal?
• Diverse Teams or Intra-Office: Does your new, Indian team member seem unenthused about your concept? Maybe it is because he is waiting for his boss to tell you his disposition.
• Expatriation: Is your finance background suddenly an asset to a firm in Turkey, but you are finding that the process of expatriation is overwhelming you and causing stress and anxiety between members of your family? Perhaps you each need some strategies and ideas from an experienced expatriate, to cope with the various aspects of your move.
• Relocation: Have you been assigned to work for an upper management expatriate who has just returned from a two-year stint in Prague, but cannot understand his moodiness? Perhaps he is experiencing reverse culture shock.
What Makes People Tick
Of course it is important to know how to handle ourselves in another culture, but what is more important, is how we are being perceived by that other culture. And which behavior on our part will make a good impression. The following chart is actually applicable to many other cultures, with a few tweaks here and there. Understanding the cognitive behavior - how people process information, or what makes them tick, is the key to giving your business dealings traction, and therefore revenue. Here are some key personality traits that often (but not always) delineate between Western and Eastern national character, that might be worth remembering:
| Western Character |
Eastern Character
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| Me-centered |
We-centered
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Assertive
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Respectful
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Gregarious
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Solemn
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Gestural
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Non-gestural
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Enthusiastic
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Diplomatic
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Shake Hands
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Rarely Shake Hands, Bow |
A Little Local Knowledge Goes A Long Way
After re-setting your cross-cultural compass, one way to cement cultural gaps is to focus on making personal connections, when the time is right. It is not only essential to know what the national values of your counterpart are, but also your shared personal interests. Ones that can create deeper, more harmonious and sustainable business relationships. After the foundational elements of values and etiquette are addressed - whether to kiss, bow or shake hands - you can progress to a more sophisticated level of communication with the help of topic starters. Positive 'points of entry' that enable you to socialize, conduct business and create personal relationships.
I find that point of entry through film. You may find it through food, music, or some other 'arts/cultural' area other than the usual 'off limits' topics like religion and politics. But it is usually a popular cultural topic that will 'speak' to you. In any case, before you travel for business or pleasure, do your homework.
Talking with a cross-cultural professional (either in your home location or your destination location) about your objectives and how you can most effectively obtain them to make the experience most profitable and productive, is also a good idea. After all, traveling these days is time-consuming and often expensive, so for the sake of your own business, or that of your employer, consulting a certified intercultural pro makes a lot of sense.
No matter where in the world you come from, it is good to know where you are going, and how to act appropriately once you get there. A little local knowledge goes a long way.
©
Lisa La Valle-Finan. Lisa is an Intercultural trainer, writer and the Creative Director of getGlobalized™. She's been traveling and writing for 25 years, speaks English, French, Italian and Greek, and welcomes all comments. She can be reached at crossculturalpro@yahoo.com. More information can be found on: http://www.getGlobalized.org.
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| March 2009 |
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