When working internationally, there are certain principles
that are good to remembe

1. Acknowledge differences exist
2. Understand and analyse why those differences exist
3. Appreciate the unique values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours of different cultures
4. Adapt your behaviour — including your cross-cultural communication style — to meet the needs of others.
5. Be sensitive to feedback and adapt accordingly.

When things just don’t seem to be going right… Remember:

Don’t take things personally!

This comes from personal experience. When you don’t understand why people are behaving the way they are or people aren’t doing things the way you thought they would, don’t jump to the conclusion that they are doing it to annoy/upset you.

The first lesson of intercultural communication is to STOP BEING SELF-CENTRED. You’ve probably stumbled across a cultural difference which has prompted a form of Culture Shock.

My other articles related to culture shock can be found here:

What Is Culture Shock?

The Stages of Adjusting To A New Culture

10 Culture Shock Principles For Working Internationally

Before You Go: What To Do Before You Leave

Overcoming Culture Shock

The Classic 5-Stage Culture Shock Model

Rhinesmith’s 10 Stages of Culture Shock

Collective Culture Shock

Advice For  Expats Moving to the Arab World

Posted via email from The World At Work

Click Here: Chinese Business Etiquette Instructional Video

You may also find these links useful:

See my blogs:

Far East: Top Ten Tips for Doing Business in Each of Five Countries
and
The Art of Business Card Giving: An East West Perspective

From China-Business-Connect:

Expert Site on China

China: 5 Things You Should Know

Leadership and Management in China and US

Free China Business Toolkit

BECOMING AN EFFECTIVE GLOBAL NETWORKER X.doc (67 KB)
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Posted via email from The World At Work

Why is it that serious attempts at sharing knowledge across
cultures frequently end in frustration, disappointment and a sense of aggrievement on all sides?

The problem is that people from different cultures have fundamentally different beliefs about the proper roles of bosses and subordinates, teachers and students, and even about the nature of knowledge itself.

Drawing on my research in the fields of intercultural communication and knowledge management, I recently presented two alternative sets of knowledge-related concepts at a lecture I gave at Tampere University of Applied Sciences (Finland). Both sets are valid within certain cultural settings, but neither of them can be easily transferred to another culture. To prove the point, I recounted numerous stories of knowledge-sharing failures in families, in businesses, and in marketing communications.

But there are success stories, too. In the 1980’s, for most people a telephone was as mobile as the length of its wires allowed. But in 1987, Nokia enjoyed a marketing coup when Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the (then) Soviet Union, was photographed in Helsinki using a Nokia mobile phone to make a call to Moscow. The picture appeared in newspapers around the world, and thus a new concept – “mobile phone” – was created in the minds of millions.

But what can we, in the serious business of intercultural education, learn from master marketers?

Following my presentation, Ann Seppänen commented that, “As teachers, we need to realise that ideas and concepts like “critical thinking is good”, “plagiarism is bad” (and many others) are elements of our own particular brand of education. For students who join us from very different educational traditions, such brand-related concepts may need to be created from scratch.” She had certainly embraced my message that teaching and learning have different cultural approaches.

Also, even when foreign students are aware of ‘our’ brand, they will naturally prefer their own. So if we believe our brand has merit, we need to promote our perception of its benefits vigorously. Otherwise, we will never be able to fully engage with our diverse students – they may do it ‘our’ way to earn ‘brownie’ points but they will not be persuaded it is the best way to do things.

Finally, if we ever venture into foreign markets (as exchange teachers, for example), we should not expect our brand to be universally admired and appreciated. The most successful brands, from Nokia to Coca Cola, are customised for each local market.

Keynote speaking at International Gala Awards Banquet

The end of the year found me  doing a whirlwind lecture tour in
the Baltic States & Finland. I also undertook some interesting engagements here in the UK, culminating with being the keynote speaker at a Frost & Sullivan’s prestigious Excellence in Best Practices Award Gala Banquet. What interesting people I came to meet running some fascinating businesses. The occassion offered unparalled access to European Industy’s movers and shakers.  Needless to say Christmas arrived very quickly! 

Frost & Sullivan Excellence in Best Practice Awards:
The much anticipated and highly competitive Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

My presentation “Developing Roots & Wings for your Company” explored how businesses can develop a culture of excellence that filters down from the leader to all members of staff. This builds individual self-confidence, self-esteem and self-belief that in turn enables each individual and the organization in turn to reach full potential. This talk covered the need and the ways in which an organisation can adapt for foreign markets to do business with greater knowledge, understanding and success. http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/meawardsevent.pag?id=171353456

HSBC’s Women In Business Conference
Held in Weybridge, UK, HSBC’s conference also featured Karen Darby
of uSwitch fame as a keynote speaker. Although it was our job to inspire the women who attended to reach their full potential, I certainly received my fair share of inspiration from the audience! One of the main topics being discussed was home-life balance to which I contribute my own story of how I ended up redefining what ‘success’ means to me and my observations that in a partnership with children, I believe, one of you has to put home and family first and the other has to put work first. And, I’m one who firmly believes that there is life after children!

Estonia: Export Mentors Club
A welcome return to Tallinn saw my sixth visit to Estonia where I spoke to members of The Export Members Club on behalf of Tallinn City Enterprise Board. My talk was on the topic: ‘Playing to Win: how to raise your game in international markets’.

Estonia: Tallin University of  Technology
‘Communicating Across Cultures’ was my theme for the
lecture I gave to staff and students of the Tallin University of Technology. My thanks go to Professor Peeter I was humbled to find that we had standing room only for the event.  www.ttu.ee

Finland: Tampere University of Applied Sciences  
December found me visiting Finland – a place I love – and my first visit to Tampere. Although a little cold the first snows still had not really arrived. My presentation to staff and students was on: The Implications of Culture on Effective Knowledge Sharing in Multi-Cultural Groups.  http://tamk-en.blogspot.com/2009/11/knowledge-sharing-across-cultures.html 

Latvia: Conference on High Performing Virtual Teams 
The pace was still high energy as I arrived in Latvia to
address a conference whose theme was on High Performing Virtual Teams. The topic for my breakout session was: ‘Knowledge Sharing in Global Teams’. This highlighted that people from different cultures have fundamentally different beliefs about the proper roles of bosses and subordinates, and even about the nature of knowledge itself. Therefore, transferring knowledge is not as straight forward as one thinks.

London: 3 Day MBA
Back to London to deliver one of my ’3 Day MBA’ courses. These are always enormously satisfying. There is always such a range of people – different industries, different nationalities, different challenges – but with one thing in common: a hunger to thrive in the global market place. Three days of wall-to-wall ideas and solution finding – we are all exhausted but invigorated at the end of the course.

Essex: Education Sector Lunch & Learn
Blyth Eden were the hosts of a special Lunch & Learn session for
educationalists in the Essex region where I was invited to address delegates on ‘How Different Cultures Teach and Learn’. This talk emphasised the differences in expectations about the roles of teachers, students and pupils across cultures, and highlighted the unexpected problems that arise from this.

PASSION for the PLANET Radio Interview
Finally, I got to say my piece on the radio, about the importance of respectful communication in a widely diverse community, when I was interviewed by Chantal Cooke. PASSION for the PLANET is a radio station that is dedicated to ethical living in a very broad approach.

The six indicators are: Cooperation, Convergence, Coordination, Capability, Communication, and Cultural Intelligence. These ‘Six Cs’ help provide those working on global virtual teams with a common vocabulary for talking about, for example, team performance measures, developmental priorities and improvement strategies. This part of his presentation can be found in his book: Where In The World Is My Team, which I thoroughly recommend.

However, it was interesting to hear about his research on what distance does to teamwork. Virtual teamwork encourages individualism and less cooperation, along with perceptions of unfairness and a sense of paranoia that people are deliberately missing you out on communication or deliberately not replying to your emails. It would seem that reduced levels of commitment also contribute to this startling fact:  there is a 50% decline in project success when virtual teams are involved!

Currently, Terry is working on a new framework: developing individual adaptablility for working with different cultural orientations. As yet his work is unpublished so it would be inappropriate to review it here.

Since 1995, Transparency Internationl have produced a comparision of 180 countries by their perceived levels of corruption. Denmark is seen to be the least and Somalia the most corrupt currently. Check out your country’s perceived level of corruption.

Ask yourself these questions about corruption:

• What is it?
• Can you find reasons to justify it?
• Where do you think the money/gifts go?
• Why could people from a ‘corrupt’ society be suspicious of you?

Difficult questions to answer as your answers depend on the culture you are accustomed to. The trouble is, what is considered corruption in one country is perfectly acceptable in another. Also, we tend to ‘judge’ other countries by our own experiences and norms. When working in the Middle East, I was amazed to learn that those who come from a culture where ‘oiling the wheels’ (bribery) is comon place look suspiciously on those that do not adhere to that practice. They find it difficult to understand the motivation behind someone whose purpose is to carry out their job well – because it’s their job.

Read about my experiences below and check out the Corruption Perception Index to see how corrupt your country is perceived to be in relation to the rest of the world.

I was visiting Russia with my husband on a lecturer tour. When we first arrived in the country, we were waved through the customs gate, even though most others were being stopped to have their Customs Declaration stamped.  When we came to leave Russia at the end of our stay, a customs official looked at our Customs Declaration (unstamped) and said he would have to confiscate our foreign currency and jewellery.  When we protested we had been waved through on arrival, and that the cash and jewellery had been brought into Russia from England, he just shrugged and kept repeating, “It’s your problem”.  This went on for several minutes, with mounting frustration on both sides.

Finally, the Russian official, with total contempt, decided to take direct action to resolve the situation.  He asked for all our dollars, removed $80 and handed the rest back to us.  Eventually we realised that, when the official said, “It’s your problem” he was expecting us to ask, “What do we have to do to solve it?”  His choice of language provided the prompt, but we didn’t recognise it as such. It could only work with people who knew the system. In hindsight, the whole thing was a ‘set up’ and we had been targeted as we arrived as being the ones to get pulled over on the way out of the country.

Something similar happened to me when I was in Malawi with my business partner, Phillip.  Driving a rented car out of Lilongwe, we were waved down by a policeman on the highway.  The man in uniform walked around the car, checking the road tax disc and the tyres.  “Your tyre is worn,” he said finally.  “It’s smooth.”  Phillip got out of the car and verified that the tyre did, in fact, look illegal.  The policeman’s next words were interesting.  He said, “I should fine you.”

Phillip realised that the expected response would have been “But you won’t, will you?” as he handed over his driving licence, having first inserted some money, a bribe, into its folds.  Instead, he asked how much the fine was gong to be and asked for a receipt so that he could reclaim the fine from the car rental company.  The policeman was most put out. In conversation, the policeman then made it clear that they would stop any car driven by a foreigner and look for any excuse to issue a fine, as a means of raising funds for the police, or attracting a bribe (for the individual policeman).

Both the Malawian policeman and the Russian Customs official were using their positions to add to their personal funds.  In other poor countries, officials of all kinds charge ‘fees’ for doing their jobs, often with the knowledge and connivance of their employers or their government departments.  By the standards of some in the West, this would amount to corruption.  However, one oriental explained it like this:  “Those countries cannot afford to pay their officials well enough, so they allow them to charge end-users of their services.  It is done unofficially, and in addition to any official fee that may be involved.  How is that different from tipping waiters in a restaurant in the West?  Owners of restaurants get away with paying their staff low wages, knowing that they will get tips.” 

Clearly, what is considered corruption in one context is perfectly acceptable in another.  It is therefore wise to withhold judgement, recognise that business practices vary around the world, and take a pragmatic approach. But the consequences of bribery and corruption can be tragic as empahsised by Transparency International:

In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play,” said Huguette Labelle of Transparency International. “The continuing high levels of corruption and poverty plaguing many of the world’s societies amount to an ongoing humanitarian disaster and cannot be tolerated. But even in more privileged countries, with enforcement disturbingly uneven, a tougher approach to tackling corruption is needed.” 

Transparency International annually produce an index to compare and contrast levels of transparency and corruption at both a global and local level. Click here for the Corruption Perception Index

Source: my thanks to Roy Shepard www.royspeaks.com and his excellent book “Meet, Greet & Prosper”

Find more information about cross cultural differences in the exchange of business cards by clicking on the following links:

Top Ten Tips on passing business cards with cultural fluency

Japan: everything you need to know about business card ‘meishi’ etiquette

U.S.,  Britain, Australia: Business Card Etiquette

The art of business card giving: an East West perspective

It seems a really strange topic for someone in the UK to read/write about it because we almost don’t care and aren’t bothered – we just ‘toss’ them around and ’dish’ them out as and when required without much thought. It’s a very informal gesture – but – that informality has a MUCH deeper meaning…

I distinctly remember speaking at a conference for 800 newly appointed senior managers of an international firm based in the US. I asked “Who is carrying their business cards right now?” 90% weren’t. Why weren’t they? They didn’t think they needed to because it was ‘just’ an internal meeting. This would never happen outside of the Anglo-Saxon countries!  

You see, for us, a business card is just a function of business: a reminder to someone else of who we are and how they can contact us. In an ‘internal’ meeting, as above even with 800 people, business cards serve no purpose. They don’t give us status and they are not what give us an identity. And, anyone wanting to know contact details can look them up in the internal directory system.

In the West, business cards are strictly for networking and careful consideration must be made about if and when to proffer the card. Not least because it can also leave a negative impression. We often use the adjectives “flash” and “presumptuous” about those who dish out the card too readily. Therefore, in order not to seem too forward, we give them away very casually.

While business cards do serve an important networking function in Japan, the primary function of the meishi is to be an emissary of the owner, the body’s paper envoy preparing the grounds for exchange with the precise written instructions of how its owner must be treated. While the English term ‘business card’ is merely a bland description, the Japanese term ‘meishi’ contains two characters which literally mean ‘point at the name’. If the Western business card is something meant for future reference, the Japanese meishi is a way of smoothing communication by revealing one’s true status.

Here are a few tips on the way business cards are offered in the US, UK, and Australia. I’M TOLD South Africa is similar. 

1. Rather than offer your card when you first meet people, wait to be asked for it.
2. Showering your cards around like rain is not regarded as professional behaviour.
3. Don’t be someone who passes out business cards to everyone, but doesn’t know anybody. We see people who pass out lots of cards as being ‘shallow’ and insincere.
4. People who push their business cards on others are seen as ‘pushy’ and vulgar – it’s the height of bad taste in business.
5. When people ask you for your card, take it as a sign that they have seen that you could be potentially valuable to them. Until they ask – you have more work to do!
6. Always ask and receive your opposite’s business card before you attempt to hand them yours. Never before.
7. Ask for cards near the end of a conversation and use your request as part of the process of bringing a conversation to a close.
8. If you collect someone else’s card and they don’t ask for yours, they could be someone who doesn’t see the value of building relationships or they are simply rude.
9. One situation when it is good to offer your card before you are asked for yours – is when you offer tangible help that they would benefit from and appreciate – with NO personal benefit to you. Encourage the person to take you up on your offer by offering your card and insist they contact you for the help.
10. If you want to pass your card to someone who has not yet asked for yours , just ask permission to give them yours: ‘May I give you my card….’ And the reason why you think they should have it.
11. If you have a unique or difficult name to pronounce or remember, offer your name slowly and clearly and then hand them your business card and say – “I’ve found that most individuals have a problem with my name – so here’s my card so you can see how its spelled.” This way you are seen to be helping those you meet, rather than pushing your card on to them.
12. Writing notes on someone’s business card to remind you of a follow up action you must take is perfectly acceptable and shows you are taking a real interest in them.
13. Don’t say goodbye to an interesting person unless you have their details. They can be written on the back of one of your cards – (cross out the front to make sure you don’t give it away to someone else).

Read a story illustrating the East vs West differences in business card giving.

Find more information about cross cultural differences in the exchange of business cards by clicking on the following links:

Top Ten Tips on passing business cards with cultural fluency

Japan: everything you need to know about business card ‘meishi’ etiquette

U.S.,  Britain, Australia: Business Card Etiquette

The art of business card giving: an East West perspective