Intercultural Awareness – Build Bridges Not Walls
2018, May 7th
“Why do we need different key visuals for the Consumer Health Marketing campaign in Sweden and Spain?” asked the new Global Head of Marketing our EU Consumer Marketing team. He just came over for the yearly Business Review from the US Headquarter.
Seriously?! – I was speechless about the question…
That was over 15 years ago, when I started my international Marketing career. In the meantime I learned a lot about international business and even give trainings on cross-cultural competencies. I will come back to that example later in this article.
Fons Trompenaars once said about cultures: “A fish only discovers its need for water when it is no longer in it. Our own culture is like water for the fish. It sustains us. We live and breathe through it.”
You may have already discovered the beauty and the need to adjust to different “waters” while travelling. For doing international business around the world or living in a foreign country intercultural awareness has become a crucial skill.
Recently I read an article, in which the author was asking, if globalization has come to an end through the imposition of punitive tariffs. My opinion is clearly – NO. It would be neither wise nor feasible to try and turn back the clock. We are far too connected commercially, financially and of course through the internet and social media.
What is the solution?
We need to develop our intercultural awareness and competencies rather than putting up walls:
- It enables us to communicate effectively or even avoid conflict in an increasingly complex global business environment.
- International Manager or International Project Leaders often work in multicultural teams and interact with customers or suppliers from diverse countries.Thereby they face different perspectives, opinions, world views and cultural beliefs. It’s important to invest in the intercultural understanding at the beginning of a project or a new international role to avoid misinterpretation of your actions or the actions of others.
- It’s key to understand the most important cultural codes of countries you are doing business with. This includes mindsets, values and behaviors of the different cultures without falling into the trap of pre-judging cultural stereotypes.
- We don’t only need to learn how to deal with the challenges, but to turn it into a source of innovation and high performance vitality. I give you a lively example in my follow-up article on intercultural awareness.
- By developing these skills international manager can leverage diversity, build solid business relationships and avoid costly mistakes.
In intercultural awareness1 there are different stages people go through. Understanding which stage you and your team members are in, will help to develop further and reflect cultural differences in new ways.
Parochial stage - My way is the only way: This stage is also called “blissful ignorance”. People are aware of their way of doing things, ignoring the impact of cultural differences. They might be stepping on other people’s toes without recognizing it.
Ethnocentric stage - I know their way, but my way is better: At the second level, people are aware of other ways of doing things, but still judge their own way of higher importance and credibility. In this stage, cultural differences are perceived as source of problems and people tend to ignore them or reduce their significance.
Synergistic stage - My Way and Their Way: At this stage people are aware of their own way of doing things and others’ ways of doing things, and they choose the best way according to the situation. At this stage people realize that cultural differences can lead to both to problems and benefits. People are ready to make adjustments that indicate they are considering others' opinions. Cultural diversity is leveraged to create new solutions.
Participatory Third culture stage - Our Way: This fourth and final level brings people from different cultures together and create a common culture of shared meanings. People dialogue repeatedly with others, create new meanings and new rules to meet the challenges of any situation or topic.
Coming back to the example from the beginning of the article:
From continents outside Europe the European countries are sometimes viewed as one unit, but this is not the case at all. Surprisingly ;-) it consists of 47 countries with currently 28 states in the European Union EU2 and many different cultures. Sometimes people are even very proud of the specialties of their own culture. By ignoring this fact you can easily step on people’s toes without recognizing it.
And of course people look differently in Northern Europe and Southern Europe. Therefore visuals and testimonials like in our above Consumer Health example need to be adapted to the local culture and needs. This process is also call “Glocalization: Think globally, act locally!”
The objective of intercultural awareness & competencies is that international managers can leverage diversity for successful outcomes, build solid business relationships and avoid costly mistakes. On higher levels of collaboration and co-creation the cultural diversity can even be deployed as a source of ideas and innovation. Reforming Teams interact on this level.
In my follow-up article I will describe, what helps international managers to grow through all the four mentioned stages and how they learn to create bridges between people despite their differences.
Wishing you curiosity and fun with exploring the cultural differences,
Annette Freund
FREUND INSPIRED MOVE
Annette Freund ist Gründerin und Managing Director der Unternehmensberatung FREUND INSPIRED MOVE in der Schweiz. Sie begeistert sich für Veränderungsprozesse: Strong Individuals! Reforming Teams! Transforming Organizations!
Sie ist im deutsch- und englisch-sprachigen Raum tätig.
www.inspiredmove.ch
Inspired by:
1 Quappe & Cantatore – What is Cultural Awareness, anyway? How do I build it?
2 www.wikipedia.org
Picture: © © Alexmax / Dreamstime.com