Forster N. - Maximum performance (2005)(en)

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19.When shaking hands, which of the following is true?

a.In France, it includes a slight grasp and a quick, crisp handshake.

b.In China, a pumping handshake conveys pleasure.

c.Among Arabs, the handshake is limp and long.

d.Among South African Blacks, the handshake is followed by clenched thumbs and then another handshake.

20.Men do not shake hands with women in:

a.South Korea

b.India

c.Saudi Arabia

d.Thailand

Answers: 1. a, b, c and d. 2. a. 3. c. 4. b. 5. a, b, c and d. 6. a, b, c and d. 7. a. 8. a. 9. a, b and c. 10. a, b, c and d. 11. a. 12. a, b, c and d. 13. a*. 14. a, b and c. 15. b. 16. d. 17. e. 18. a, b, c and d. 19. a, b, c and d. 20. a.

(* Some doubts have been expressed about this answer. However, owls are certainly regarded as taboo by Navajo Indians in the USA.)

Award yourself one mark for each correct answer and then add up your total ______

Interpreting your score

16–20: excellent understanding of other cultures, 11–15: good understanding of other cultures,

6–10: below average understanding of other cultures, 0–5: limited understanding of other cultures.

Source: adapted from Nowlin (1990).

Introduction

In this section, we will look briefly at the problems associated with communication between different cultures, some different rules of business protocol and the errors that can be made by those who are unfamiliar with the body language and social cues of other cultures (adapted from Forster, 2000c: ch. 3). While a detailed discussion of all the dimensions of cross-cultural communication is beyond the scope of this book, it is worth touching on this topic for three reasons. First, most organizations now employ culturally diverse workforces and the management of these is becoming a more significant people management issue. Second, increasing numbers of employees are embracing international careers, or are being sent on expatriate assignments by their employers. Third, cultural differences are becoming more important as business continues

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to globalize, where reporting lines can run from an operating plant in China, through a regional HQ in Hong Kong and back to a corporate centre in Europe or the USA. Hence the need to think and manage beyond our home-cultures’ mind-sets can only become more important in the future.

We’ve seen in the preceding sections how complex communication can be in organizations. If we then include cross-cultural differences in communication (linguistic, attitudinal and behavioural), we have yet another level of complexity to deal with. This is because culture has a highly pervasive influence on the behaviour, perceptions, attitudes, motivations, values, morals and personalities of individuals. All of these are, to a very large extent, shaped by culture (from the Latin word for civilization, cultura). Humans have now evolved to a point where culture has superseded instinct in determining much of our habitual thinking and behaviour. The importance of culture lies in the fact that it provides the body of knowledge and techniques that enable us to act, both physically and socially, in the world and provides us with worldviews that enable us to make sense of ourselves and the people around us. Culture can also shape many of the things that we take for granted, such as facial expressions, use of personal space, posture, gestures, personal appearance, etiquette, body contact and appropriate conduct when dealing with men and women. Shakespeare’s memorable line, ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players’, shows how all individuals must learn the lines, gestures and manners appropriate to their culture if they are to succeed in life. Culture can even influence how we perceive time. Cultures throughout the world organize time in two basic ways: either monochromic (M-time) or polyphonic (P-time). M-time is characteristic of people in the western world, where time is linear, segmented and manageable. People from cultures on P-time place a different emphasis on time, where appointments are not necessarily ironclad commitments.

We do not usually think consciously about our culture, unless we perceive it to be threatened by some external force or we are put in a situation where we are in a cultural minority. In other words our cultures operate largely at an unconscious level. Try this quick test: pick up a pen and a piece of paper and try to describe your home-country’s culture in detail. It is not as easy as it sounds. However, much of what we habitually think, how we interpret the world and how we act are the result of what we have been taught in our culture. Hence a business executive who has been highly successful in one culture might find it difficult, if not impossible, to function in another culture, unless he or she is aware of the significance of cultural differences. Another important element of culture is that it takes years and years to learn and

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internalize. Yet, when it comes to overseas postings, we expect expatriate staff to engage in business relationships with people from other cultures and learn their culturally prescribed ways of doing business in a matter of weeks, if not days.

Goodman has pointed to another significant element of culture: ‘In many respects, one can think of culture as being analogous to an iceberg. As with an iceberg, there is the part of the culture that is clearly in sight and there is a larger part of culture (the most dangerous) that is submerged, out of sight, below the waterline, waiting to destroy any business venture if people are unaware of its hidden dangers’ (Goodman, 1994: 41). Cultural items ‘above the waterline’ include language, food, festivals, clothing and dress, architecture and art. Those ‘below the waterline’ are much more numerous and include business ethics, values, morality, facial and body language, male–female relationships, family fealty, learning styles, work motivation and employee loyalty. Understanding and respecting these differences is essential if an organization’s employees can adapt to working with people from different cultures.

How linguistic and cultural differences can cause problems with communication

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.

(Emperor Charlemagne of France, 772 CE)

One of the most visible signs of the multiplicity of human cultures is language. Although English is fast becoming the common global language of business and education, it can still cause many misunderstandings. Semantics too can cause a lot of problems. For example, the words and phrases ‘free market’, ‘accountability’, ‘corporate regulation’ and ‘business ethics’ mean different things to a typical Swedish, American, Russian, Australian or Indonesian businessperson. The Japanese word ‘Hai’, which translates literally as ‘Yes’, can also mean ‘Yes, I’m listening’ rather than ‘Yes, I agree’. Thais perceive the word ‘No’ differently to English-speaking people, because they do not have a word for this in their language. Here are a few more examples of how even very subtle mistakes in translation can cause problems (and some amusement) for English speakers:

•A detour sign spotted in Japan read, ‘Road closed. Please drive sideways’.

•Pepsi Cola’s ‘Come alive’ jingle was once translated into Taiwanese as, ‘Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.’

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•The first time Coca-Cola was introduced into China, it was translated phonetically as ke-kou-ke-la. After thousands of signs had been printed, the company discovered that this meant ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse stuffed with wax’. Having researched 40 000 Chinese characters, they found a close phonetic equivalent, ko-kou-ko-le, which means ‘happiness in the mouth’.

•Kentucky Fried Chicken, also in China, discovered too late that their logo, ‘Finger licking good’ had been translated as ‘Eat your fingers off’. KFC bit the dust again, this time in Mexico, when they realized that their advertisement, ‘It takes a tender chicken to satisfy a tough man’, had been translated as ‘It takes a hard man to satisfy a tender chicken.’

•When GM introduced the Chevy Nova into South America they were blissfully unaware that ‘No va’ means ‘It won’t go’ in Spanish.

•When Ford tried to sell the Pinto in Brazil they were puzzled by its low sales, until someone pointed out that ‘Pinto’ was Brazilian slang for ‘tiny balls’.

•The Parker pen was introduced into Mexico with the slogan, ‘It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you’. But the word they used for embarrass, ‘embarazar’, means ‘to make pregnant’, so this was quickly withdrawn.

•The operating manual of a car rental firm in Tokyo advised customers, ‘When passenger of foot hove in sight, tootle him with your horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigour.’

•A dry cleaning shop in Belgium once advised its English-speaking customers to ‘Leave your clothes here and spend the rest of the afternoon having a good time.’

•An advertisement in the Gulf States featured a washing machine. On the left-hand side was a pile of dirty washing, the washing powder was in the middle and a pile of clean washing was on the right-hand side. Naturally, this was not well received by the target audience and the advert was quickly withdrawn. Why?

•The Scandinavian company, Electrolux, once introduced a vacuum cleaner into America with the slogan, ‘Nothing sucks like an Electrolux’.

•In 1998, a logo for Wall’s ice cream in the Gulf States was withdrawn after they discovered that the design, when turned upside down, looked like Allah. This blunder scuppered their plans for a single, worldwide logo and is estimated to have cost the company $US25 million.

(Source: various websites, 1997–2003)

However, these linguistic misunderstandings fade into insignificance when we look at the way culture shapes rules of behaviour and social

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attitudes. On one level, stereotypes such as, ‘The British can’t cook’, ‘The French drive like maniacs’, ‘Germans have no sense of humour’, ‘The Greeks never get anything done on time’, ‘Italian men never escape from their mothers’, ‘The Irish drink like fish’ and so forth can be amusing. But they also remind us that there is a fine line between having a laugh about each other’s cultures and discriminating against people on this basis. On another level, if negative cultural stereotyping is not discouraged, it is just one small step to the racism that underpinned the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, or the kind of virulent, genocidal racism that culminated in the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and other more recent instances of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Hence, unless leaders are aware of cultural stereotypes (which are entirely learnt), there is a real danger that they will be unable to manage culturally diverse workforces effectively.3

Here are some examples of some cultural differences that can lead to mutual misunderstandings and antipathy: many people in East Asia regard Americans, Australians and Britons as loud, pushy and arrogant. Conversely, these nationalities and many Europeans regard Asians, collectively, as quiet, deferential, conformist and often lacking a sense of humour. The Britons and Americans rarely use business meetings for socializing. For people from the Middle East and East Asia, this is a normal part of meetings and essential for building up business contacts and relationships. There are differences in the way that punctuality is perceived in different cultures. For Germans it is very important to arrive at meetings at a pre-arranged time. To be late is simply unacceptable. For Italians, Spaniards and Greeks, this is usually less important. How employees deal with their bosses also varies from culture to culture. Junior Japanese employees have to develop highly tuned systems for interpreting what are often deliberately vague suggestions from their senior managers. They call this sasshi, meaning ‘the ability to guess’. Most American, British or Australian employees who are accustomed to being told what to do by their bosses would not be able to cope with this for long. The Japanese often hold several meetings to deal with problems: one to decide what the problem is, a second to gather further information and a third to deal with the problem. There may be further meetings to communicate decisions that have been made outside these meetings by senior managers. Again, this is something that Americans, the British or Australians find incomprehensible, unless they understand something about Japanese business protocols.

Even very simple things like greetings vary from culture to culture. Hand shaking is almost universal, but there is only one Muslim country in the whole world where it is acceptable to shake women’s hands

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– Indonesia. Some handshakes are very soft (in many African countries) and quite hard in others (in Anglo-Saxon cultures). It is acceptable for Greek, Spanish and Russian men to kiss when greeting each other, but most Australians and Americans would feel very uncomfortable with this. In Vietnam, men often express friendship by touching and holding each other during conversations. For many Americans or Australians this would be considered inappropriate. For many Muslims, touching the head is deeply offensive, whereas touching the shoulders is seen as a sign of brotherhood. So patting the child of a Muslim on the head, which is seen as a sign of care or protection in western cultures, could cause offence. In Korea, young people are socially forbidden from touching the shoulders of their elders. For Kuwaitis, it is considered highly offensive to cross your legs at functions, because this shows the sole of the foot. The ‘open legged’ posture is popular amongst men from all Arabic states.

Eye contact varies enormously. In all western cultures, maintaining steady eye contact is seen as a good thing, signifying honesty and reliability. In eastern cultures this is not so. In general, junior employees will lower their eyes when talking with senior managers. Westerners are sometimes described as ‘people who stare’, which can be seen as threatening and underpins the idea of ‘giving face’ to your hosts. In less deferential and hierarchical western companies, questioning the boss is often acceptable in meetings; in Chinese companies it isn’t. The Chinese traditionally do not show emotion in public because the idea of ‘saving face’ is deeply rooted in their culture. For the Chinese, displaying emotion violates face-saving norms by disrupting harmony and causing conflict. For most cultures, a smile is usually a sign of happiness or friendly affirmation. For the Japanese, this can also be used to avoid answering a question or to mask an emotion. A nod from a Japanese person often means ‘I understand you’ or ‘I recognize you’, not ‘I agree’. Chinese and Japanese people consider blowing the nose in public to be pretty disgusting, but the Chinese find spitting in public places quite acceptable. You might have to be careful about offering alcoholic drinks or pork to Muslims, but also remember that it is considered extremely rude to refuse any food offered to you by many people from Japan or China.

For Americans and many other nationalities, the rounded, pinchedthumb and index finger ‘A-OK’ gesture is easily recognized as meaning ‘fine’, ‘perfect’, or simply ‘okay’. For Japanese people this means ‘money’. For Latin Americans and people from Middle Eastern countries this has an obvious offensive or obscene meaning. To signify stupidity in others, the French, Germans and Italians generally simply tap their own heads. In the UK and the USA this means ‘I understand’.

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North Americans, French, Italians and Germans also make spiral motions with the forefinger toward the side of the head to indicate a crazy idea. A finger raised towards an individual to indicate ‘come here’ would be considered very rude to Arabs, who instead signal this with the fingers in a downward grasping motion. Last, but certainly not least, culture has a profound influence on shaping and defining what men and women ‘are’ and their roles in society (see Chapter 6).

The purpose of presenting these examples is to show how easy it can be, even for experienced managers, to offend unintentionally those from another culture. Consequently, cultural sensitivity is a competency that is of growing importance to leader/managers and organizations. For example, imagine you are working in an advertising firm in the USA. You’ve recently been reading some marketing reports showing that some 35 million Americans are of Spanish descent, and their collective consumer purchasing power has risen by 100 per cent in a decade. How would you target this group? Without an awareness of cultural differences, you’d probably just overdub existing English advertisements into Spanish or translate existing hard copy advertisements into Spanish. However, this would be extremely ineffective, because there is a world of difference between, say, a Cuban who fled the country in the 1950s when Castro came to power, a poor firstgeneration Mexican immigrant and a third-generation Puerto Rican whose grandchildren regard themselves as Americans. In spite of a common language, the Hispanic community in the USA originates from many countries. It constitutes a number of identifiable subcultures, with wide variations in levels of affluence, patterns of consumer spending and political allegiances. Hence a blanket approach to advertising to these groups would be very ineffective in comparison to selective advertising.

In some sectors, like the design departments in the automotive industry, it would be commercial suicide not to have culturally diverse workforces. Why? Because the car is a global product. For example, the prestigious course on Vehicle Design at the London Royal College of Art has only produced about 300 graduates in 30 years. Yet it has always had a mixture of nationalities enrolled there. Currently, the design studios of companies as diverse as Jaguar, Audi, Porsche, Skoda, McClaren F1, Lotus and Aston Martin are staffed by RCA graduates. Almost all of these do not work in their countries of origin. This cultural mix is useful because the car is a global product and yet needs to reflect national market tastes. Without this, it would not be possible to design and build cars that can be built from the same basic plans, using the same manufacturing processes and, at the same time, allow customization to reflect local market needs and consumer preferences.

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Hence, even within a domestic context, effective leaders should have some knowledge of cultural differences, particularly if they are managing culturally diverse workforces. This is even more important if you are a leader whose company operates in international markets.4 This knowledge comprises the following:

•an awareness of cultural differences – even superficially similar cultures are often quite different under the surface,

•a respect for other cultures – because no single culture is ‘better’ than another (even if we might disagree strongly with certain aspects of the value-systems of other cultures),

•an ability to accommodate cultural differences within an organization’s people management policies – for example, allowing Muslims time to pray to Mecca during working hours,

•where to get advice on the management of cultural diversity in the workplace.

Another method is to expose home-country nationals to other cultures by sending them on international assignments. Many multinational companies encourage cross-border moves to promote the development of cross-cultural management skills amongst their managerial staff. If face-to-face communication is still the most effective way of communicating, one of the best ways of developing international communication within companies is by exposing people of many different nationalities to a melting pot of language and cultures, through international postings and job mobility (Forster, 2000c).

Conclusion

Having read through this chapter, you may have a fuller appreciation of the complexities of interpersonal and organizational communication, and how leaders and managers can use communication media more effectively. Exercises 3.1 and 3.2 showed how most people often think they are good communicators and it is other people who lack this important leadership and managerial skill. The reality is that most people overestimate their personal communication skills. It is apparent that, on both an interpersonal and an organizational level, communication is a much-desired but often undervalued skill, and most leaders and managers can learn to become better communicators, given time and effort. Communication practices must also be consistent under all organizational conditions. If they are not, the organization will, sooner or later, encounter problems. And, although you may be a leader/manager in a company operating within your own national boundaries at the present time, it is absolutely certain that your workforce will become (if

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it is not already) more culturally diverse in the future. This means that at some time in the near future you may also have to add an understanding of this to your leadership and people management tool-kit.

Our coverage of communication does not end here. Communication feeds into virtually every activity that leader/managers are involved in because, as we saw earlier, it is ‘a process of respectfully sharing information with others in order to improve understanding’. Therefore it underpins leadership in teams (Chapter 5), the way that men and women relate to each other at work (Chapter 6), the management of power, politics and conflict (Chapter 7), leading cultural and organizational change (Chapter 8), the management of innovation and perpetual learning (Chapter 9), managing employee knowledge and intellectual capital (Chapter 10) and leadership in high-tech, networked and virtual organizations (Chapter 11). It also underpins the motivation, empowerment and performance of employees, which are described in the next chapter.

Exercise 3.10

Having read through this concluding section on cross-cultural communication issues, are there any new insights that you can make use of in the future?

Insight

Strategy to implement this

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Notes

1For any university lecturers or school teachers reading this book, Tara Brabazon has made these comments about the use of PowerPoint in Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002):

If I could uninvent one software program, it would be PowerPoint. Without exception, the worst presentations, lectures and budget briefings I attend are conducted using this tragic package. Presenters break all the rules of public speaking: repeating verbatim the words on the screen; letting the technology determine the pace

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and order of the presentation; and even requiring the darkening of the room. Many of these presentations either do not run or start late because of problems with the technology. For students, new problems emerge. Students desire access to the overheads of a lecture – this access means that they do not have to attend the lecture. More seriously, the students who check their notes against the PowerPoint slides will invariably copy down any points they missed – word for word. This is not critical thinking; it is not even thinking. Further, the illusion of access promoted by computers creates the confusion between the presentation of information and the capacity to use, sort and interpret it. Information is not the issue; the methodologies available to assess it must be given more attention.

During 12 years’ involvement, with more than one thousand postgraduate management students, PowerPoint has hardly ever been used (and you might be thinking, ‘So what?’). Well, the interesting thing is that just three MBAs have ever suggested that this technology should be used, either in person or on their end-of-course Teaching Evaluation forms (and, even then, only in small doses). Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the ubiquitous use of this ‘tragic package’ in university teaching? For a fine example of how PowerPoint can be used to completely ruin a great speech, see http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

2For more information on public speaking, there are some useful books in the Bibliography at the end of the book.

3It is significant that the most recent advances in the mapping of humanity’s genome, and studies of our collective origins, have revealed that there is in fact only one ‘race’: the human race. Studies of the human genome have revealed that the genes that are associated with ‘racial differences’, such as stature, skin pigmentation and nose and eye shapes constitute – at most – 0.01 per cent of this. The minor differences between different human groups that do exist evolved over millennia in response to different climatic and geographical conditions, and the environmental challenges they faced. It was the geographical and reproductive isolation of early humans that created the ‘racial’ diversity we see today. In contrast, universal human traits, such as intelligence, run into hundreds of thousands of genes. Significantly, globalization, combined with increasing mobility (and interbreeding) between nationals from different countries and cultures, and the homogenization of living environments through industrialization, will mean that these superficial racial differences are likely to disappear over the next 1000 years. Some geneticists have predicted that the typical human in 3000 CE will be a honey-coloured, hairless, willowy figure who probably speaks American-English as their first language (400 million people already speak English as their first language and it is a second language to 1.5 billion).

4A detailed discussion of the communication skills and leadership competencies required in countries other than the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand is beyond the scope of this book. However, we do return briefly to the topic of international leadership in Chapter 12 and in the conclusion to the book. If you would like more information on the management of international/expatriate assignments and cross-cultural acclimatization, a starting point is N. Forster (2000c),

Managing Staff on International Assignments: A Strategic Guide, London: Financial Times and Prentice-Hall.