Cross-Cultural Reading - Part 2

Since the Bernard's, Chen, and I were participating in a cross-cultural training program, I decided  to simply ask Chen for an explanation of his actions. “Bo,” I exclaimed, “you had all of these great examples! Why didn’t you jump in and share them with us earlier?” “Were you expecting me to jump in?” he asked, a look of genuine surprise on his face. He went on to describe the situation  as he saw it.

“In this room,” he said, turning to M. and Mme. Bernard, “Erin, is the chairman of the meeting. As she is the senior person in the room, I wait for her to call on me. And, while I am  waiting, I should show I am a good listener by keeping both my voice and my body quiet. In  China, we often feel Westerners speak up so much in meetings that they do this to show off, or  they are poor listeners. Also, I have noticed that Chinese people leave a few more seconds of  silence before jumping in than in the West. You Westerners practically speak on top of each other  in a meeting. I kept waiting for Erin to be quiet long enough for me to jump in, but my turn never came. We Chinese often feel Westerners are not good listeners because they are always  jumping in on top of one another to make their points. I would have liked to make one of my  points if an appropriate length of pause had arisen. But Erin was always talking, so I just kept  waiting patiently. My mother left it deeply engrained in me: You have two eyes, two ears, but  only one mouth. You should use them accordingly.”

As Chen spoke, the cultural underpinnings of our misunderstanding became vividly clear to  the Bernard's—and to me.

The experience was, frankly, rather humiliating for me: this was a cross-cultural training I was  supposed to be leading, but I found myself, uncomfortably, in the role of a student. It certainly  changed the way I lead meetings. I am now more prepared to recognize and flexibly address the  differing cultural expectations around status and communication. When I moderate meetings  with Chinese and Western participants, I always make sure to invite those who are quiet to speak.  I let the Chinese participants know in advance what topics I will be asking for input on and advise  them I’ll be calling on them individually so everyone is comfortable and prepared when I do.

And if some don’t respond immediately, I allow a few more seconds of silence before speaking  myself. When I ask questions, I go around the table to hear input from each team member in order.

As for the Westerners, I prep them to speak a little less in order to give their Chinese colleagues  more space. For me personally, it has become glaringly clear that my Western tendency to fill up quiet space is not a good strategy. When Chinese are in the room, sometimes the best way to  get them to contribute is to just shut up.

Knowing when to talk and when to be quiet is just one of many skills any global manager needs  to develop, and often those skills are multi-faceted and counterintuitive. Although there’s been a great deal of research and writing on the topic of cross-cultural management, much of it fails to  present a sufficiently nuanced picture that can be of real use to managers working internationally  or with foreign colleagues. As a result, it’s all too common to rely on clichés, typecasting cultures on just one or two dimensions - the Japanese are hierarchical, for example, or the French communicate in subtle ways. This can lead to oversimplified and erroneous assumptions - the Japanese  always make top-down decisions, or the French are indirect when giving negative feedback.

It then comes as a surprise when your French colleague bluntly criticizes your shortcomings, or  when your Japanese clients want buy-in from the cook and the cleaner before reaching a decision.

Often I find that even experienced and cosmopolitan managers have faulty expectations about  how people from other cultures operate. The truth is that culture is too complex to be measured  meaningfully along just one or two dimensions. To help managers negotiate the complexity of  cultural variation, I have built on the work of many in my field to develop a tool I call the Culture  Map. It is made up of eight scales representing those behaviors where cultural gaps are most  common. By comparing the relative position of one nationality to another on each scale, the user  can decode how culture influences day-to-day collaboration.