The one with the global athletes

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Alexandra Levit. I had not come across Alexandra before and it was a conversation with my friend Laurie Ruettimann that put us in touch. Given Alexandra is a very well regarded in the space of careers and the workplace I was curious to see where the conversation would go… it went global!

Alexandra is in the process of spending 4 months in the UK with her family for among other reasons, to experience a different culture and to expand her global competence (I think that’s the term she used). We shared a drink and exchanged stories and experiences (I shared some of my China and Hong Kong experiences amongst others).

In reflecting on the conversation afterwards a thought occurred to me and it reminded of an encounter I had a few years ago. I was on holiday in Cuba and being it’s one of the few places on Earth it’s really clear that people are Canadian and NOT American I was enjoying getting to know a few people from Canada. The first person I had chatted at length to was a female marine engineer from Newfoundland who was, to put it mildly, getting all she could from the all-inclusive bar and proceeded to power-drink for the 4 days I spent at this particular resort.

It was my third afternoon sat in the beautiful Caribbean sunshine when I was joined at a neighbouring bar stool by an older gentleman wearing a baseball cap from an exhibition in Toronto. We got to chatting and it turned out he was spending the twilight years of his career consulting in the government trade arena having worked from the Canadian Trade Department for over 35 years. In the course of the conversation he happened to mention that he had been fortunate to visit every country in Asia, at times spending weeks or months working on particular ‘missions’ or projects.

What a fascinating and modest man. We chatted for over 2 hours but the point he made that really stuck with me was that in order to understand a country you really needed to spend time there. He mentioned a few books and models that he referred to in assisting his understanding but mainly his research was arriving in advance of any particular assignment and spending a few days walking around, seeing people going about their daily lives and chatting to people in normal settings – not the enforced facade of government trade talks. He remarked how this real life understanding had on many occasions given him valuable insight that had facilitated progress in the ensuing formal sessions.

So I guess Alexandra has it sussed in that she is here, experiencing the UK first hand and meeting normal people (I AM normal!) and getting to understand the mentality of a nation in real life.

The piece of insight the older gentleman shared with me that has also stuck with me concerned the aforementioned marine engineer. During the course of our conversation she appeared at the bar several times with an insulated commuting mug to get it refilled with Mojito. On observing this my companion remarked “in Newfoundland drinking is more a sport than a pastime” and then he took a beat and added, “and she is quite the athlete”

P.S. Alexandra asked me for some examples of great British TV she should be watching (or watch from the past) and I blanked only coming up with BlackAdder (from series 2 onwards) and Yes, Minster – any other suggestions?

The one with the unconference part 2

During the freeform experience that was the ConnectingHR Unconference I was fortunate enough to run a session alongside the marvellous @floramarriot and despite the call for free flowing conversation and no structure we both gave into our L&D urges and put a little structure and facilitation into the session. It should be noted that we resisted the urge to use blu-tack and post-it notes…

Myself and Flora had gravitated together having respectively posed the following questions during the opening session:

“What does global mean to you?” (Me)

“What can we learn from business in other cultures?” (FM)

If you would like to read Flora’s comprehensive notes from the session check out the Unconference section on ConnectingHR but what follows is a little context on my question and some thoughts having reflected and digested the session.

I have been fortunate enough over the past 3 years to work in several different cultures and if you consider cultures in the context of Edward T. Hall’s Cultural Context I have worked in the polar opposites of China and the USA. China (a high context culture) values the collective and trusted relationships built over time whilst the US (a low context culture) values the individual and relationships are built on merit. One of the things that came through strongly in our session and certainly resonated with me was the admission of how little time we had spent truly learning about the “other” culture and whilst some great sources of information exist, whether you had the time or latitude to use them seemed to be another question. For the record, the UK is far more akin to the US and is considered also, a low context culture.

The frustration that came through from almost everyone was at the physical distance and the constraint presented by time differences and how this restricted the building of in-depth fully functioning relationships, and how key the relationship was to successfully working across cultures. As much as technology in the form of Skype and similar has advanced the ability to communicate across distance, it was agreed that there was no true replacement for spending real time sat across from someone (and I would had sharing a few drinks over dinner but that is not based on empiric data but user experimentation)

I must confess I have learnt the hard way (jet lag, 14 Chinese people and my attempt at humour remains one of the most uncomfortable hours of my life) and I would say to anyone working outside of their own cultural norm for the first time, there is no amount of preparation and reading that can beat the experience of standing there and doing it.

In the context of my Master’s degree (I feel I must mention it from time to time) what I’ve found interesting is that so much of what we use in terms of defining best practice and ‘the next big thing’ is often from “The West” with America as the dominant influence. The limitations of empiric data derived from studies carried out on groups of MBA students aside, there does appear a certain arrogance in assuming that “we” (the West) know better than the most populace country on the planet that has a culture dating back thousands of years. One of our group put this intellectual imperialism in the most straight forward way and his comment remains my favourite of the whole day…. “We need to remember we haven’t got a big d*ck and a gunboat anymore” – it never made it to the visual minutes….

I really enjoyed this session, both the challenge of pulling something together from a pair of questions, ensuring that I didn’t hog it all for “my” question and to trying to make sure everyone contributed if they wanted to. The take home for me was “we” are all struggling with this ever more significant challenge, we can learn from each other through sharing experiences and that investing the time in understanding and learning is the only way to truly achieve the value and results from your global relationships.

As an afterword, if you are interested in exploring the psychology of cultural relationships a great starting point is the work of Geert Hofstede who has published extensively on the subject.