Bridging the Cultural Divide: Addressing cultural differences can really help an international team

By Richard Pooley, chief executive of international management training firm Canning

There were 16 people in the room in a chateau outside Paris: young project and program managers from the US, UK, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy. They worked for Capgemini, installing IT systems in major industrial companies, and were attending a course at their company's corporate university, being trained in the negotiation and communication skills to deal with those clients.

The employees had just finished role-playing a cross-border, post-contract negotiation, and it had gone badly. I was the instructor. I looked around the room and asked one of the US staff a question: 'What is a contract?'

He looked at me as if I was stupid. 'It defines the deal. It's the Bible,' he said. I caught the eye of Massimo from Rome. He shook his head and, making his hands form a grille in front of his face, said, with passion: 'A contract is a prison.'

One of the Frenchmen shrugged his shoulders and spoke for a couple of minutes. In summary, he said: 'You have lots of clauses that can be interpreted in different ways.' The lone Swede said he was still thinking about an answer. Meanwhile the three Dutch guys had been discussing the point among themselves. One of them said: 'We would call it an insurance document. You only point to it if you have to.'

The British looked relieved at not having to provide their own answer and said they agreed with the Dutch. Same ages, same jobs, same company, but different cultures and different assumptions, in this case about the nature of a contract.

Around the world, people of similar age doing similar jobs differ in their idea of what is normal behavior. Crucially, too many people assume that what is normal for them - such as how to make decisions, manage people, negotiate contracts, make presentations, pitch for business, or run meetings - is normal for others from different countries and cultures. And yet those who have to lead international teams or manage overseas subsidiaries or outsourcing relationships know that the reality is very different. If we pretend cultural differences do not exist, those cross-border deals and relationships often fail.

Educating staff

An increasing number of companies are taking this issue seriously. They are investing a large amount of time and money to enable staff to have a better understanding of how to bridge these differences in our understanding of normal business behaviour. This goes way beyond having a two-hour cultural etiquette course for employees who are about to go abroad. These are usually a complete waste of money. The true investment costs some companies millions of pounds and years of employee time. Yet it pays off in improved productivity and competitiveness.

There is one type of phone call I hate taking. The caller will say how his company set up a new international project team a few months ago.  It had all started so well. They had a kick-off meeting to agree objectives and an awayday to bond. But it had all gone horribly wrong: the objectives were still out of sight and the bonds had come unstuck. Sergio is seething at Dirk's brutally direct communication style and baffled by John's ironic comments and rapid-fire English. Tina has upset Ashok by openly accusing him of not being able to do his job. His accent is so strong she cannot understand his English anyway. Toshiyuki seldom speaks and when he does, Pin humiliates him by rejecting his ideas as unworkable. Markus complains that Marie-Claire is never adequately prepared for meetings and does not listen, while she asserts that she can never get hold of him because he goes home so early. The walls of prejudice have been raised and the team members are seldom willing to break them down.

A successful kick-off

What can be done to avoid this failure in teamwork? One approach is to change the nature of the kickoff meeting. Get people to reveal their own values and behavioural norms. Ask them to agree on what the standard operating procedures will be.

Take decision making for example. Anyone who has worked in India will know how difficult it can be to encourage Indian subordinates to question proposals or decisions by their senior Indian colleagues. Junior staff will allow the wrong decision to be taken even though they know it is wrong. But they do not want you to lose face by disagreeing with you in public. Anyway, you are the boss and you should know what the right answer is. If you asked them in private, they would be much more willing to give their real opinion.

In turn, you may come from a culture that assumes that if someone disagrees with you  they will tell you so, in public if necessary. So you interpret the nodding heads and silence from your Indian team as acquiescence. Add to that the confusion for Westerners when they shake their heads if they agree, as that is the conventional body language in India.

Imagine the team in your kick-off meeting contains a Dutch woman. She will probably believe that decision-making involves lots of consultation and open disagreement. But her Indian colleague graduated two years ago from the Indian Institute of Technology and never once questioned the views of his professors. Each culture assumes the right way to make a decision. Even near-neighbours, such as the French and the Dutch, can be different in their approach. But sometimes those far apart geographically, such as the Japanese and Indians, can be similar. Ask team members to discuss their approaches and seek a standard way for the team to make decisions.

Cultural training

Another solution is to give cross-cultural training on a specific culture to the team early on. This is the

approach adopted by firms such as Nortel and Capgemini, whose teams have to deal with partners in Eastern Europe, India and China. Not only do they learn about the target culture, they also learn about the norms and assumptions of the people from different cultures inside the team...French engineers are almost as intrigued by the attitudes of their Spanish, British or Mexican colleagues in the room as they are in those of the Japanese. As one French financial controller said after a course on Japanese culture he attended in the UK: 'Could I please now have one on working with the British?'

Offshore English

Native English speakers also need to learn to use 'offshore English', the true language of international business. This is a language that is grammatically correct but avoids complicated structures and colourful idioms, and is spoken slowly and clearly.

A few years ago Korean Airlines wanted to buy flight simulators. There were two firms on the shortlist; one was French, the other from the UK. The airline's pilots would have to be trained in English to use the simulators. The airlines' negotiators found the English used by the French supplier easier to understand than the English used by the UK company. This was a major reason why the French won the contract.

Pooley, R. 2006. Bridging the Cultural Divide. Computing Week. Retrieved from

http://www.vnunet.com/computing-business/features/2153953/bridging-cultural-divide.