Intercultural training – not a pill against everything
Intercultural cooperation – easier said than done
Some time ago, a Dutch company gave its employees a small guide to what English people say and what they really mean. “I hear what you say” is understood as “He accepts my point of view”. According to the guide, however, the English want to say: “I don’t agree at all and don’t want to discuss the issue any further.”
Now, the Netherlands and England have been trading with each other for centuries and are practically neighbors. Nevertheless, the Dutch thought it was a good idea to draw up this guide. So we can easily imagine what it means when additional intercultural complexity arises. While we are well aware of our own culture, it is all too easy for misunderstandings to arise across cultural boundaries. According to a Siemens study, such intercultural friction losses result in additional costs of around 20 to 25% in international projects. In addition, experience has shown that such projects often lose time or are even discontinued. Intercultural project support can save up to 2/3 of these costs, but above all it can harness synergies that have a positive impact on international cooperation beyond the end of the project.
Cogito ergo sum – It all starts with creating awareness
Cultures are like onions. There is the outer skin that is visible to everyone and many layers underneath, right down to the inner values. But there is not only the onion of others, there is also one’s own onion. It is therefore important to peel both “intercultural onions”. This reveals the factors that have shaped a culture and its values, such as history, religion and geography. However, in order to understand another culture, it is equally essential to become aware of one’s own culture, which is generally taken for granted and therefore not actively questioned. The development of intercultural competence as a basis for successful international cooperation is therefore not a one-way street, but a process that cannot be beaten to death by “a few training sessions” in which you learn “how to hold a knife and fork”. The scope of this process does not only depend on whether employees are seconded, go on business trips or even only work virtually with foreign colleagues or partners. How the employees themselves are “knitted” also plays a major role. In all cases, however, it is virtually unavoidable to expand your “comfort zone” and break through firmly anchored behavior patterns. You also have to do your actual job. This takes time and a lot of extra energy. Professional preparation and support helps to make this challenge easier to overcome and can be a decisive success factor.
I’m ok, you’re ok – How do you promote acceptance and intercultural competence?
Acceptance in the intercultural sense is generally understood to mean that different approaches based on different cultural values are recognized. A prominent example is the conduct of negotiations in Japan. The Japanese are consensus-oriented and do everything they can to save face. The direct German negotiation style with quick decisions contradicts the Japanese understanding of reaching a consensus. Ultimately, both paths lead to the goal, just in different ways. Understanding and accepting this is the prerequisite for expanding one’s own behavioral repertoire with new ways of behaving so that one can also move adequately in a foreign culture.
Of course, one’s own attitudes and behaviors are also crucial for mastering this process. The more flexible your own behavior and judgment are, the easier it is to adapt to intercultural challenges. Stress resistance is also a factor that should not be underestimated, as people tend to fall back into old patterns of behavior in such situations. This list could be supplemented by other factors such as an open communication style, language skills and resilience. Cultural and business coaching is an important tool for developing these qualities.
This makes it clear that the purely cultural level is only part of the process. It is essential to understand and internalize cultural differences. However, country specifics are only one of several levels of intercultural understanding. Knowing why you shouldn’t eat with your left hand in India, for example, is certainly useful, but it won’t get you anywhere in contract negotiations. Another important factor is recognizing and reflecting on your own behaviour. At this individual level, you have to recognize how you affect other people in other cultures and how this influences the efficiency and success of your work in an intercultural environment. Last but not least, the corporate level plays an important role. If a company has not established the necessary structures for successful cooperation, intercultural success is jeopardized despite all other efforts. A prominent example of this is matrix organizations, which are successfully established in Western Europe and the USA, but often lead to problems in other countries with a strongly hierarchical understanding of management, such as Asian countries.
Yes, we can – What makes daily collaboration easier?
By far the most important factor in intercultural cooperation is mutual appreciation. Mind you, this is not “rehearsed” appreciation, activated at the push of a button. However, if appreciation is perceived as authentic, even small mistakes are forgiven and you can easily pick up your foreign partners where they stand. Even behavior that may seem strange at first glance should be seen as having a positive intention. For example, Russians often interrupt their conversation partners. While this is considered impolite in Germany, Russians want to signal their interest in the conversation. Openness and stating intentions are simple ways of clearing up misunderstandings.
However, companies themselves also have a duty to contribute to successful intercultural cooperation. This begins with the careful selection of employees for key international positions. The best soccer player is not the best coach. Jürgen Klopp never played a game for the national team and Diego Maradona will soon be studying under Pep Guardiola. Therefore, the smartest engineer is not necessarily the best suited to lead foreign employees. TIP© (The International Profiler) – a self-assessment tool that enables managers and employees to recognize what they should focus on when working in an international context – offers significant support for the targeted selection of employees for international positions by management. It helps those involved to identify potential development needs and contains suggestions for concrete action steps.
Furthermore, poorly defined processes, structures and communication channels lead to conflicts and clashes of interest. Trust in projects and the organization is damaged and the causes of problems are not sought in the structures, but wrongly in cultural differences. Suddenly, some people are lazy and others are stubborn. Or to put it in the words of Carl Jung: “If you don’t understand someone else, you tend to think they’re an idiot.”
To ensure that everyone involved is enthusiastic about following the path and seeing it through to the end, it is therefore a key task of management to involve everyone involved and communicate results and expectations clearly. Management is not alone in this. International organizational development makes a decisive contribution to establishing stable and successful structures and supports management in implementing corporate goals and successfully overcoming intercultural challenges.
“In the end, only what we have done and lived counts – and not what we have longed for.” – Arthur Schnitzler
We do business with people, not cultures, and everyone is different. For example, Germans are generally considered to be punctual, but I also know Germans who are very unpunctual. It is therefore crucial to know which personality we are dealing with and which structural framework we are operating within. We like to focus on dos and don’ts in order to reduce complexity. Unfortunately, the world is not as simple as in most western movies of the 50s. We don’t become interculturally competent if we know that you shouldn’t put chopsticks in rice in China (symbolizing death). Developing intercultural competence is a process that must involve all those involved at various levels – and is one of the best investments a company can make. This is because interculturally competent employees can concentrate on what they are actually there for during their international assignments: On their business tasks.
