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Global Presentations: Do you and your Message Travel Well?
During a layover at Kuala Lumpur Airport en route from Sydney to London, I browsed the terminal bookstore. Interestingly fiction was shelved at the back while the rest of the store was stocked with business, self help, management skills and how-to books of all varieties. Even at 1:30 a.m. the store was filled with Indians, Malays, Singaporeans, Chinese and Burmese loading themselves with books. One young man left with at least ten. Assistants were constantly bringing out new stock; it was a hive of industry, a fount of knowledge.
We are told that it is not money that mankind craves, but the knowledge with which to make choices. At a guess, there are something like 5 billion people, give or take a few million, who crave the wisdom to make the choices our world offers in so many different forms. Technology, even for the most underprivileged, has provided the tools to satisfy much of that need. The community cell phone, the village TV or the church’s connection to the Internet, offers glimpses of life on the other side of the poverty ditch. Access to information will be the easiest process in the near future. Gaining knowledge is now at the fingertips of millions, but understanding how to use it is the greatest challenge and the most difficult problem. What the world needs now are Educators.
The European Conference circuit is like an academic showcase. Professors and lecturers with alphabet soup credentials crowd the programs. Speakers are respected first, for their credentials; second, for their content; third, for their delivery. But this is changing. Meeting organizers realize that audience satisfaction is vital and that wisdom is not necessarily the prerogative of the academic classes. The cultural mix of the new European business meeting, the cross-frontier companies, and the constant push to the east means that emerging young, energetic and competitive young executives, not particularly impressed with the past, are fast emerging in Europe ready to learn everything they can. European managers tend to be more globally savvy than their American counterpart. Their travel experience and foreign language exposure give them a head start in cross-culture communication but in the process of getting there, they must round-out their wisdom and learn all they can from educators who have honed their knowledge on the cutting edge of American competition.
Asia has long been receptive to American educators because they are familiar with the ravenous need of many Asian executives to scoop up the wisdom of others whenever and wherever they can. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand are frequent destinations for NSA speakers. South Korea and Japan are currently being eyed as potential markets for speaking opportunities.
Many Australian speakers are well traveled, having done the mandatory world trip as student backpackers. Like their countrymen they see Southeast Asia as within their sphere of influence and are well received in convention circles in Manila, Singapore and Bangkok. Australia regularly invites well-known speakers from the United States to its shores. It has a mature meeting and speaking industry with some excellent local bureaus offering their clients opportunities to engage American experts whenever their Australian talent list cannot meet the need.
The next ten years offer huge possibilities for educators to spread their offerings into China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India and Pakistan. Africa waits like a sleeping giant. Russia and the Middle East sit there like mysterious tempting enigmas waiting for entrepreneurs to bring their wisdom to the people. During a recent visit to Siberia, I was able to create an alliance between Houston Community College System and Tomsk State University, one of the oldest learning establishments in Russia.
One of the big complaints we hear about the phenomenon of Globalization is that the world is becoming westernized. The rampant McDonaldization of cultures across the planet is seen as a dilution of national identity. Some protesters have even ripped down the golden arches in disgust at the onward march of hamburger heaven through cuisine Francais.
There is valid objection to the international growth of some American culture. The young seem to pick it up with alacrity, but it is often regarded as intrusive by older and more conservative generations. Presenters who presently speak to business audiences will be addressing the latter group. It is important therefore to realize that the American Way does not necessarily fit all. It is not just a question of vocabulary, although most audiences will forgive that, in fact they may expect it and even enjoy it. It is very much a question of a deep and sincere understanding of how the audience culture thinks and acts and how the advice of the speaker will impact that culture.
Before I felt capable of speaking to a group of 250 Indian entrepreneurs I had to visit Varanasi, the Holy City of Hindu India. I had to stand at the Ganges shore at sunrise with thousands of others and let my nostrils flare at the whiff of burning sandalwood coming off the cremation ghats. Even the slightest appreciation of that 3,000-year old religion/culture was important if I was to try and relate my topic of global negotiation skills to the Indian mind. Added to that was my substantial reading of Indian history, newspapers and making frequent visits to museums and sites of interest.
Getting into the Indian consciousness was the only way to develop my message. Seeing negotiation techniques from the Indian perspective was the only way to help my audience. I presented my material in a structured, logical manner and loaded it with Indian examples allowing ample time for lively questions.
Taking our expertise and tailoring it to our audience is the mark of a master speaker. Tailoring it to the specific needs and understanding of the culture is the mark of a global speaker. McDonalds finally learned how to do this. McVin is on the menu in France, McRice is now served in Indonesia and McCafe is the coffee sold in Austria.
Best selling author Thomas Friedman says he has discovered that countries where McDonalds are located don’t go to war. People who do business together and educate each other have better things to do.
There are major lessons to be learned from September 11; the world is craving to understand why this happened. Cross-culture compromise has become cross-culture collision, a breakdown of understanding why other cultures think and act the way they do. One of the solutions is, of course, communication; delivering the understanding, experience and empathy inherent in professional speakers, opening minds and hearts to toleration and receptivity wherever audiences are found. A job of universal proportions in a world that, in the face of immense aggression, continual terrorist threat and cultural stereotyping, has in many cases retreated into an ethnocentric cocoon. A ‘safe haven’ of locked doors and locked minds. How vital for speakers to lead with, and encourage audiences to think with, a global mindset.
The “Financial Times” has reported that 21 global chief executives and researchers from 3 major business schools stated that ‘transcultural competence’, the capacity to integrate seemingly opposite values, was the most important management skill of the corporate leader.
Conversely cross-culture incompetence has crashed more good deals and lost more money than some national debts. Transcultural competence starts with becoming world savvy, getting a global mindset.
It sounds an oxymoron to say, “All of a sudden the World has gone Global”. The fact is that we operate in an environment where our audiences are well traveled and our neighbors are from a distant country or unfamiliar culture. The problem is that the ‘baby-boomers’ went to school in the post ‘sputnik’ era when math and science were king. Geography and history were not particularly popular subjects. Here we are today in the age of Globalization where the two most important subjects are world history and geography.
If you are born in Maastricht, Holland, likely you will grow up speaking four languages. Dutch, German, French and English. Frontier living Europeans are mostly bi or tri-lingual as a matter of course. If you are raised in Manchester, England or Manchester, New Hampshire, the languages do not come easy because the opportunity of deep interaction is not an option. English speaking presenters therefore are on the one hand fortunate in that the majority of the business world speaks the language or can understand it; but on the other hand have not found the need to speak other languages due to geographical isolation and the ubiquitous nature of English.
To understand the culture of our audiences it is important to know at least a little of their language, but most of all their history, geography and religion. Culture is defined as the “collective programming of the mind”, where from birth, we are deeply involved with this process through our parents, family, teachers, mentors and friends all under the influence of the history and geography of the region. As a transplanted Brit who has lived and worked in America for over two decades and married to an American with an American stepfamily, I am highly familiar with the American culture. However, I am still conscious of my Britishness and the culture that is my natural base. It will probably last my lifetime.
Travel makes the mind grow global. Nothing widens the horizons more than adventurous, intelligence- gathering sojourns to distant places. But most of us don’t have the luxury of time or money to do that, so we have to travel vicariously. Start by reading overseas newspapers, or at least visit their websites. Subscribe to the Financial Times, arguably the best global business newspaper in the world. Read the Economist for global coverage of the main news and its global editorials. Check out websites like TheGlobalist.com and Countrywatch.com. Answer questions from the world at AskMe.com. In other words by dint and effort make sure you are developing a global mindset, and in so doing, you and your message will travel well.
Parts of this article were first published in Professional Speaker Magazine June 2002
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