A Nigerian client contacted me to express his willingness to connect with people from other cultures. His fledgling company is expanding to other countries in Africa and they are hiring people from all over the world.
His interest is to be more sensitive, aware of and to take into consideration any cultural differences so that the intercultural relationships can prosper. He asked me to elaborate on what to do in this situation.
I was faced with this myself in my work with global firms where I interact with people from all over the world. Here, I have two examples where I needed to find an effective way to facilitate relationship building.
One, I coached emerging leaders from the US Japanese Practice of a Big Four firm in leadership communication. While working on Physical Expression, it became apparent that there is a very different approach to eye contact in the Japanese culture than with current global business culture. How would I approach this practice? I had to rely on my instincts.
Ask the Question: “Tell me how eye contact works in your culture.?”
I was fascinated to learn that it’s down to hierarchy: Age, gender, rank (position). It’s about respect. It would not be so easy to be able to transcend these cultural norms to adapt to global business practices and yet this is what is necessary if you want to grow your career with a global firm. It took modelling and practice to gain comfort with this use of expression which in many cultures notates establishing trust and rapport.
Everything happens in conversation.
Second, I have a client company who merged with a Chinese company and there were questions about how best to meet and build relationship with one another.
I reached out to a friend of Chinese birth* and this was his advice:
“Well, you actually raised a very interesting question, and also a difficult one. As a Chinese, I would say some Chinese can be difficult to read and communicate as everyone comes from such different backgrounds.
The key to communicate with people who are Chinese is to do some small prep talks:
Ask them to get to know where they are from, what kind of family they come from, what kind of education they’ve achieved, what they have been through, and what level they are in the organization (as it is still a very hierarchical society).
You will find out that some people are very easy to approach, very personal, open and direct. Some of them are completely the opposite. At least that is my way of getting to know my own people.”
Sometimes we are surprised to find out that our values can be similar in many ways.
For me, what I had learned in my own discovery is to have the conversations. Be curious. Put your attention on them. Something like, “Here’s what it’s like in my culture or in this company; what’s it like for you in your culture?”
You can ask: “Here’s what we’ve set up as the process. Do you have any preferences that we could take into consideration?’
Human relations + Observation + Conversations + Questions + Attention + Listening + Rapport + Trust + Consideration. It all adds up to good business.
*My Chinese friend was someone I had coached in the Netherlands. He had left China for the first time in high school to study for two years in California. Then, he moved to the Netherlands to attend University there. Here is someone who had to learn much about different cultures on the ground in the moment.
