Waldemar Pfoertsch - Going Abroad 2014

Although you think that the major obstacle in international business is to understand the foreigner, the greater difficulty involves becoming aware of your own cultural conditioning. As anthropologist Edward Hall has explained, “What is known least well, and is therefore in the poorest position to be studied, is what is closest to oneself.” You are generally least aware of your own cultural characteristics and are quite surprised when you hear foreigners’ descriptions of you. For example, many Germans are surprised to discover that they are seen by foreigners as well-educated, punctual, disciplined… A Newsweek survey reported the characteristics most and least frequently associated with Americans:

Another very revealing way to understand the norms and values of a culture involves listening to common sayings and proverbs. They tell you what a society recommends and what it avoids. For example does the American proverb Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy and wise indicate the values of diligence and work ethic whereas the proverb There’s more than one way to skin a cat indicates originality and determination.

To the extent that you can begin to see yourself clearly through the eyes of foreigners, you can begin to modify your behavior, emphasizing your most appropriate and effective characteristics and minimizing those least helpful. To the extent that you are culturally self-aware, you can begin to predict the effect your behavior will have on others.

1.4.5 Projected similarity

Projected similarity refers to the assumption that people are more similar to you than they actually are, or that a situation is more similar to yours when in fact it is not. Projected similarity particularly handicaps people in cross-cultural situations. For example, you assume that people from the orient who drink Coca-Cola and wear Levi’s jeans are more similar to you, Western people, than they actually are. When you act based on this assumed similarity, you often find that you act inappropriately and thus ineffectively. At the base of projected similarity is a subconscious parochialism (narrow-minded behavior). You automatically assume that there is only one way to be – your way. Therefore people often fall into an illusion of understanding while being unaware of their misunderstandings. “I understand you perfectly but you don’t understand me” is an expression typical for such a situation. The other possibility is that all communicating parties may wonder later why other parties do not live up to the “agreement” they had reached.

One of the best exercises for developing empathy and reducing parochialism and projected similarity is role reversal. For example, when dealing with a foreign businessman try to imagine the type of family he comes from, the number of siblings he has, the social and economic conditions he grew up with, his goals in working for his organization, his life goals and so on. Asking these questions forces you to see the other person as he or she really is, and not as a mere reflection of yourself. It forces you to see both the similarities and the differences. Moreover it encourages highly task-oriented businesspeople such as Americans or Germans, to see the foreigner as a whole person rather than someone with a position and a set of skills needed to accomplish a particular task.

Even more than perception and interpretation, cultural conditioning strongly affects evaluation. Evaluation involves judging whether someone or something is good or bad. Cross-culturally, you use your own culture as a standard of measurement, judging that which is like your own culture as normal and good and everything, which is different as abnormal and bad. Your own culture becomes a self-reference criterion: since no other culture is identical to your own, you tend to judge all other cultures as inferior. A common mistake made by Americans for example is that they affiliate with personnel or business contacts because they speak English. It is totally wrong to assume that speaking your language indicates intelligence, business know-how or local competence; it is only an indication of language skills. Evaluation rarely helps in trying to understand or communicate with people from another culture.

To sum it up, what you should consider to have an effective cross-cultural communication is to assume difference until similarity is proven rather than the reverse, instead of interpreting or evaluating a situation you should just observe what is actually said and done and try to see a foreign situation through the eyes of your foreign colleagues (role reversal) and last but not least once you develop an explanation for a situation, treat this explanation as a guess and not as a certainty and check it with other foreign and home country colleagues to find out whether it is plausible.

What are some basic cultural problems encountered in doing international business? To start off with, it is necessary to adopt the attitude that no point of view, especially one’s own, is the norm everywhere. The “cultural glasses” that were referred to earlier must be left on the table so that each situation can be approached without assumptions and expectations. International business people will be confronted with different kinds of thinking and behavior in all elements of work: communication, selling strategies, and marketing, to name a few. The clearer the view, the more effective results will be.

The first attitude that could become a problem to deal with is the concept of time in different cultures. Although time is universal, the way cultures manipulate it to fit their lifestyle (or vice versa) is very interesting to examine. Let’s take a look at some examples.

The American businessman is always in a hurry, rushing from one appointment to the next, constantly chasing the clock. Copeland and Griggs speak of an American clock that “runs” and a clock that “walks” in other countries. Time is a valuable good and is seen as a limited resource, therefore one has to try to save and not waste it - time is money. A relentless clock ticks in the American ear that is guaranteeing a constant awareness of how much time has already been spent. For this reason the typical American tries to work as productively as possible, strictly organizing all activities on a daily calendar and working by a structured agenda in each meeting. Punctuality considering meetings, job interviews or any kind of sales activity is therefore extremely important. The meaning of being “on time” is also to be underlined, because it can be a form of communication as well. Being early can leave the impression that the visitor is anxious or overly eager and has too much spare time. Being late or keeping someone waiting would be considered as lack of interest or disrespect. Wasting precious time with too much small talk in the beginning of a meeting is also something that an American would try to avoid. After a short period of introductions and exchange of small talk, the meeting will turn straight to the topic and purpose of the visit.

In Asia and the Middle East, the first step of a meeting is an extended social acquaintance. This period can take several hours or even days and consists of drinking tea or coffee together, while observing the business partner. The objective is often not even mentioned during this time. An American is likely to assess this as “doing nothing” or a “waste of time”, whereas an Arab would consider it as socializing and “doing something”. The lack of obvious progress towards the objective should not be misinterpreted, because often, important steps towards credibility and rapport are established during apparently meaningless conversations. Future business is often based on those foundations.