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All Business is Global
How’s your Cross-Culture Competence?

Chef Franco Bresciani had learned his trade from the best. Born in Naples, his father had raised him in the family restaurant and sent him to train with Master Patissier Leonardo di Carlo at the Italian Institute for Culinary and Pastry Arts at Calabria in Southern Italy. After graduating as a Master Patissier himself, he wished to fulfill a lifetime ambition and work in the United States. He was elated when appointed Assistant Pastry Chef at the Fairmont, Kansas City.

Having never been outside his native Italy, Kansas City was a major culture shock. Franco’s innate expressive volubility contrasted to their almost silent communication and persistent punctuality, and commitment to strict agendas weighed heavily against his flexible ‘approximate’ time keeping and scheduling. A lot of adjustment and learning on both sides was necessary if culture collision was to be avoided.

From an early age we recognize the many differences of people on planet Earth. They look different; we speak different languages, and have different ways of doing things. We sense that we are more comfortable with people who are like us, so our exposure to people not like us is limited, and opportunities for interacting with them is minimal. When we do interact, we tend to look for the differences, rather than the similarities. It’s called cross-culture competence. Understanding why we all think and act the way we do.

The key to cross-culture competence is knowing the facts about culture types, understanding our own culture, and knowing how to react, relate, and work with others.

The world’s culture types can be divided into three groups: data-based, relationship-based, and group-based.

1. Data-Based Culture types include people living in North America, North and Northwest Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Dominated by schedules, timetables and projects, and a strong sense of individualism and personal responsibility, members of this group like to be punctual, factual, and get on with business. Data-based people like to do one thing at a time and work with pre-agreed agendas, follow-up memos, and confirmations. They love information and live by statistics, back-up material, and reference books. They follow correct procedures, work according to fixed hours, and respect officialdom. For them, social and business life is separate; they are less emotional and generally use limited body language. This group numbers around 600 million.
2. Relationship-Based people comprise the largest population group, numbering almost 3.9 billion, residing primarily in South America, the Mediterranean lands, Near East, Middle East, Africa and India. They are generally extroverts, talkative and gregarious, believing that relationships are more important than anything else. They often do several tasks at the same time and do not easily keep to timetables. Relationship cultures rarely write memos, follow up with correspondence, or prepare agendas, but they are often highly creative, artistic, poetic, and cultured. They relish excitement and colorful experiences. Plans are changed, strings are pulled, and facts are flexible to them. Business, pleasure, and social life are intermixed, and relations are often involved. They have people-oriented interactions where emotions, unrestricted body language, and interruptions are part of the behavior.
3. Group-based culture types tend to be introvert, patient, and silent. Their style is to be respectful listeners, exercising tolerant impartiality. Everything relates to the team, group, family and ancestors, corporate identity, or to others with whom they are temporarily in contact. They come mainly from Asia. Japan, China, Korea and the Southeast Asian countries and number almost 1.5 billion Issues are seen in the context of the group picture; how to work together, to assist each other, and to conform to the group philosophy. Group-based people are thoughtful of others, avoid confrontation, and save face on behalf of themselves and others. They delegate to reliable people and base their business relationships on trust and honesty. Group-based cultures like to mix business with social life and appreciate modesty, wisdom, and respect for the elderly.

It is always hazardous to classify or pigeonhole culture types because there are numerous exceptions to the rule. Yes, all these culture types overlap. Many of us see the characteristics of more than one group in others and in ourselves. However, for the benefit of managing our businesses, working with cross-culture teams, negotiating deals across cultural frontiers, or simply employing people from differing culture groups, it is important to be aware of the outline principles which contrast people across cultural boundaries. In other words …..understanding why people think and act the way they do.

We know the consequences of extreme culture collision; we should similarly know the consequences of culture clash in business by communication misunderstanding, failures in negotiation, and disruption of team work.

We are the way we are because of the combination of our history and geography and, to a lesser extent, climate, going deep into our past. Our Culture is learned from an early age. It instructs us how to survive in our community and teaches us what others expect of us in the same group. We learn how we ‘fit in’ to the collective. Our early desire to be a part of the group encourages us to conform and be included in the culture. It becomes part of our essential identity.

Understanding other global cultures and how to work with them is a crucial skill for our time. The acceptance that cultural differences are part of our world and that these differences are neither right nor wrong – are just part of the fabric of mankind.

Franco and his Kansas City colleagues had to learn these differences the hard way, by day-to-day practical experience. Such is the case the world over as globalization advances. This fact demonstrates to attentive management the advantage of cross-culture team training for awareness development, competence enrichment and comprehensive understanding of why others think and act the way they do.

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"Cross-cultural competence is the top critical skill of the 21^st century."
www.michaelhick.com
Sunday, September 05, 2010 at 7:00:50pm USA Central