24 May 2002
The Arab was sure his American co-workers were making fun of him. He was standing in the doorway of the office of one of them. They had been telling a story about Bears and Babies. Then the two Americans broke into raucous laughter. The foreign national was sure they were telling the silly joke to humiliate him; perhaps, he later told the me, they had planned to tell the story just to show him how stupid he was. Some weeks of passed before the Arab discovered the two Baseball greats, Yogi Berra and Babe Ruth!.
We all have our cultural orientations, the contexts in which we feel we mostly easily communicate with others. Shared cultural values facilitate communications with others. Alignment of habits and goals, work and communication styles expedite productivity. They also create a buffer zone to individuals who have been raised in different cultural contexts. The differences can either be a hindrance to building mutually fulfilling relationships, or a great opportunity to grow personally and professionally.
American culture by nature is assimilative. The concept of the melting pot is patently an American one. Kenson Ho, managing director of The Chinese Agency Canada Ltd said in a May 2001 issue of Training and Development Magazine, “…every Canadian company has to look into [cross-cultural training] because of our multicultural belief. The message is, Welcome to Canada, you can be yourself. But in the United States, it’s more like, Welcome to America, be an American…’”
Current generations of immigrants to America and to other countries do not feel the same pressure to assimilate into host cultures the same way they did a hundred years ago. Now, in general, immigrants have higher literacy rates and more education than they did during the time of their forefathers. They basically come to host countries for the educational and economic opportunities of the host country; not because they want to become like the citizens of the host country. Businesses in the West have to understand this important development.
One of the worst assumptions any manager can make of their immigrant coworker is that the immigrant wants to be just like the manager: see the world the same way as the manager, eat the same foods as the manager, speak the same way as the manager. Sure, it’s easily argued within a corporate environment that the peons must “follow the program,” as they like to say in America: all employees must do what they’re told or they should simply find another job. But really: is that the best way to get the most out of a human asset? Inflexibility and close-mindedness in a business only take advantage of the few characteristics and skills that fit within such a narrow corporate framework. Human beings are not replaceable cogs.
The teams that thrive the most are the teams in which cultural differences are not only pointed up but are celebrated. Celebration does not mean the team or organization should devote a month of advertising to each culture represented on the team, with posters and emails and bulletins. Instead, celebrated means staff should exercise the natural curiosity we are all born with to learn more about the individuals with whom one spends at least a third of one’s day. I once worked on a team in London that had representatives from at least eight countries. The environment was comfortable and the level of camaraderie high as individuals would ask about each others’ countries, staff would offer their own national flair to situations, and everyone would poke fun at each others’ peccadilloes (the French were an especially delightful target for many on the team).
Relaxed orientations in which differences are not pushed into a closet or hushed up for fear – not the reality – of injury foster the most productive of meetings. Indeed, sessions in which differences of opinion and point of view are an acknowledged part of a team or organization facilitate the expression of differences of opinion about issues facing the enterprise. Acknowledged differences also nurture the birth of potential solutions that monocultures are hard-pressed to generate for themselves. Genuinely cross-cultural teams don’t need to think “out of the box,” because there is no box in which thinking is cloistered.
Companies and managers should take a facilitative approach to managing culturally diverse teams, instead of investing time in “bringing staff into line.” Organizations stand to benefit mightily from the synthesis that arises. The key to successful blending is the example Management sets for the rest of the enterprise. A manager of a multicultural team must include in his or her professional development plan the time to learn about his fellow team members: where they come from, how they solve problems, and who, for them, are their national Bears and Babes.
William R. Dodson is Managing Director of Silk Road Advisors, L.L.C., a management consultancy that builds and improves working relationships across cultures. He is the international business editor of the American Management Association’s (AMA) MWorld Journal of Management, and writes the weekly column “The Cultured Business”, found at www.silkrc.com and at the Global Perspectives section of the AMA’s member website. He can be reached at sradvisors@gmail.com or +1 (847)722-7817.