Finishing Touches

 

                                                            By Susan Shea

You gifted me with a fragrance

called Wild Rose, stirring me

to find I can fully inhale myself

wanting more and more…

 

After years of standing

alone at a perfume counter

trying so many drops

of mismatch up and down

my arms

ran out of extensions

until finding you.

 

Now

I have become a rejoicing

balm in your private garden

finding full sun with

vines entwined.

About the author: Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist, who was raised in New York City and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania. She has had a little over 100 poems accepted by publications including, Across the Margin, Ekstasis, Feminine Collective, Triggerfish Critical Review, Amethyst Review, Litbreak Magazine, A Time of Singing, Invisible City and others. 

Challenges to Expect in a Multicultural Environment

 

Multicultural Environment: the Emerging Reality in the Current World

The global village we are living in as the representing civilization of 21^st century does not allow physical distances of different parts of the world to be staying apart from others. In one way the so called chauvinistic nationalism finding its way through extinction, the other way people are having more access to different countries under diverse cultural umbrella. You like it or not, it has been a demand of time to acclimatize yourself to the changing trends leading to the ultimate fusion of multicultural environment.

Challenges to Brace for in a Multicultural Environment

Under the sky of a diverse culture an individual or an institute face certain challenges in carrying on a successful communication, building trust, developing relationship or mutual understanding with others. The challenges that we all encounter might appear in a dual nature: one relates to the personal traits or ability of an individual while the other, more elaborated one, correlates to the cultural dimensions influencing the living style and behaviorism of the individual. The most striking challenges of both two natures are as follow:

Bridging between Communication Gaps: 

This is probably the most crucial one in developing relationship and establishing trust in a multicultural environment. In a successful communication both the verbal language skill and the non-verbal signs, expressions, gestures or body language matter to a great extent. In verbal communication skill, it is very likely that a non- native user of a language will find troubles in understanding the accent, pronunciation, dialect, idiomatic expressions and some social languages of the native users. Again, communication through the non-verbal channels like certain body movements may vary from culture to culture and thus paving way to misinterpretation of an expression carrying a message. 

Understanding Personality Traits: 

Every individual can be identified with one or more personality traits that they are motivated by in each of their actions. Even in a same cultural exposure, people may differ from each other with their personality traits understanding which will be very important in approaching them. People around you might be introvert, extrovert, ambivert, altruist or even egoist; and you can not think of treating each and everybody in the same manner as long as you want a success in managing them.

Understanding Cultural Dimensions: 

We can leave behind the soil we brought up in, the air we breathed in, the people we know by our souls and the community we had been exposed to, but while crossing the borders, cultural identities are the things we can never ever abandon. One must understand the various cultural dimensions as a must thing to ensure success in a diverse culture. Cultural dimensions as illustrated by Geert Hofstede may prove efficacious in understanding cultures that differ on the dimensions of individualism versus collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and achievement versus quality of life orientations. Fons Trompenaars’ model of cultural dimensions illustrating universalism versus particularism, achievement versus ascription, affective versus neutral may also of great help in determining challenges in a multicultural environment.

Opportunities to Develop Relationship in a Multicultural Environment

Though there are many challenges in pursuing success in a diverse culture, you have your chances too. There are lots of opportunities you may find to develop relationship with your fellows from another culture; all you need to do is to just pick them. First thing is of course, your personal assessment of you: know your personality traits, cultural components mattering your behavior and make a balance between these things to stay simple, approach honestly, welcome others in your arena warmly and to show positive attitude toward other cultures in a friendly manner.

This article along with others on cultural diversity & challenges is available in eBook or paperback in Amazon.  

Communication Skill: The Real Challenge in a Multicultural Environment

 

Among all the challenges in a multicultural environment undoubtedly the most difficult one to handle is the communication skill as it is how we express ourselves, share information, develop relationships, establish trusts and above all build a multicultural environment even with the establishment of a Creole language. Even the native users of a language have trouble with the proper understanding of certain expressions- either verbal or non-verbal, accents, or dialects of sub-cultural groups in a country.

 Verbal Communication Skills in a multicultural Environment:

Apparently, to its basic level communication is quite easy with a limited knowledge of a different language; however a successful communication in a working environment requires a high level of expertise. For example, English, the most widely spoken language, can put a native user of this language in difficulties while talking to a person from another English speaking nation as the accents, word usage, and dialects varied to a great extent in the UK English, US English or in Australian English. So, the verbal skill involves your ability to understand different accents, to use it in an internationally recognizable pronunciation and to master the word-craft-ship in the better correlation with the signifier and signified.

For an effective communication even the underlying or implied meaning of a statement has to be known along with the linguistic one as in almost every culture idiomatic expressions are very common to be used widely. Additionally the cultural-bound terms may have the chance to bewilder you even if you are a native user of a language as these sorts of terms are identical to a particular location in a country. For instance, as the concept of a ‘knock, knock joke’ may not be understood by someone carrying another cultural traits. Some other culture-bound words as picked up by Chad Lewis are ‘pie chart’, ‘high five’, ‘get out of jail free card’, ‘touchdown’, ‘piggy bank etc. which are commonly used in the United States but may be hard to understand to people from different states.

Non-Verbal Communication Skills in a multicultural Environment

Chad Lewis, in his Successful Communication in Multi-cultural Environments, orchestrates how the non-verbal expressions matter to the successful communication under a diverse cultural rainbow. To him even the secondary channels like smell, movement (fidgeting), our body position (posture), facial expressions, yawning to convey a message are important to have a control over, though it not always possible to do so. For example, seeing a person riding a bi-cycle we can guess that the person is too poor to own a car, he or she has a low social status or perhaps the person had their driving license revoked, though the person might have used it just for being environmentally friendly.

Another challenge of the communication in a diverse setting lies in the fact that the secondary channel to convey an expression may be interpreted just opposite to people with other cultural identity. So learning the body language, personal space or distance in a conversation, and intonation being practiced in a particular community can be very crucial to have learned to develop your communication skill.

In communication, kinesics that refers to the usage of body language, gestures, eye-contacts etc. can be another issue to pose challenges in a diverse culture. In some places eye-contact is treated as a sign of paying attention or showing interest, but still there are communities that would rather readily take it as a sign of aggression. Again, head wobbling being used in India as a body language to answer a question can lead to misinterpretation to some other cultural context. One more example can be cited in this regard is a physical movement like giving a quick pat on the back to show support or encouragement to a colleague can put you in an awkward situation as there are places where touching of any kind especially between the opposite sexes is strictly prohibited.

Intonation conveying a non-verbal message can be another communication challenge for a diverse group as the meaning associated with it is not universal. For instance in the sentence, ‘you are going to party’, the accent on the word, ‘party’ would indicate a question for one group while some other groups may take it as an expression of anger or irritation.

This article along with others on cultural diversity & challenges is available in eBook or paperback in Amazon.  

Intercultural Ignorance: The Cost a Multinational Company Can Barely Afford.

 

Cultural Ignorance:

The world that we call now a global village has traveled a long to wipe out the physical distances and to pave way to greater opportunities for bigger organizations operating worldwide, yet under a unique multicultural umbrella. Globalization might have shrunk the world as much as to fit your need, but the undeniable fact is that the basic cultural traits identical to each and every community are too deeply imbedded in people’s soul to ignore. And undoubtedly the intercultural ignorance will cost you too much while operating a business in a multicultural environment. One of the most striking examples regarding this cultural ignorance can be Africa

 Africa: the Victim of Cultural Ignorance

Africa, now widely considered as the continent with most valuable gifts of nature, was once presented as the continent of darkness, especially in the 19^th century, thanks to the greatest writers like Joseph Conrad with celebrated pieces like Heart of Darkness or Lord Jim. Standing as an epitome to what cultural ignorance can cost you, they did indeed make an impression of the semi-human cannibal being worth to be hunted like ferocious animals for seeking some animal pleasures, to be caught by lasso, to be chained and whipped until tamed, and finally, if unfortunately escape death, to be sold as slaves. And the cultural ignorance worked well in the then time world, as long as it kept your guilty conscience slammed from peeping out. My point is that, for centuries, we, the common people had been in darkness about the cultural identity of the second largest continent, partly because of expanding business by ignoring their own culture and coercively instilling in the western culture in the process of colonization. And now we know the impacts of this so called cultural ignorance: the UK long ago lost their track in Africa, the USA is struggling hard to grab the hold of the market of the continent and China has found its way through boosting up its economy using Africa. Now we have pieces coming out of the heart of Africa, sweeping away the clouds once engulfed us; the writers like Chinua Achebe whose Things Fall Apart has been translated in more than 50 languages. And now the bigger organizations or business establishments have had their strategies deflated toward the culture as it is: after all, the marketing policy or the business theory that work in Europe or North America would definitely face an anti-climax in the third world countries like those in Africa.

 How Cultural Ignorance Affect an Organization

What cultural factors or, to speak more straightforward, cultural ignorance, can sometimes raise the cost of doing business can be found better orchestration in the Cdn Edition of the book, Global Business Today, by Hill & McKaig. With an example from the UK, the authors bring forth the historical class divisions which are strongly embedded in the British culture. For centuries, because of the failure in managing this cultural trait, a lot many firms operating in the Great Britain found it really difficult to achieve cooperation between management and labor, which eventually “led to a high level of industrial disputes... and raised the costs of doing business in Great Britain relative to the costs in other European countries. "

In fact, cultural ignorance is not the thing you can afford in running a multinational organization; nor can you avoid the driving force of culture in establishing business. For instance, in 1980’s Japanese companies was heard fingering at Canada's official bilingualism policy as one of the reasons they didn't want to set up operations in Canada. They moved instead to the USA where they thought would operate their business in English, only to realize later that to operate in the USA is to operate in English and Spanish, with the demographic changes remolded US in 1990’s.

How Does Emotional Intelligence Help You Face The Challenges of a Multicultural Environment?

 

Emotional Intelligence

Judging an individual by considering alone their cultural diversity may not be always fruitful in bringing a positive result in developing relationship in a multicultural environment, as every individual carries some identical personal traits that can easily set them apart from others belonging to the same community. Emotional intelligence is the kind of ability that can enable you to identify, asses, and control the emotions both of you and of others while letting you use it to get things going in your desired direction. In a multicultural environment, your extensive knowledge on the cultural dimension accompanied by the emotional intelligence can definitely lead you to success by making things appear as you wish for in a diverse culture.

Emotional Intelligence will assist you in almost all of its models illustrated as Ability EI, Mixed Model of EI and Trait EI.

 Ability EI to Make You Master the Emotions

With their continuous research on Emotional Intelligence, Salovey and Mayer paves way to ability based model of EI (Emotional Intelligence) partially redefining it as "The ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and to regulate emotions to promote personal growth." The four types of abilities as described in this model can help you become a perfect fit to a diverse culture:

1. Perceiving Emotions: as a basic aspect of EI, this ability can help you detect and decipher emotions in faces, pictures, voices to make a better approach.
2. Using Emotions: with this ability you can harness your emotions and easily capitalize your changing moods to best fit the situation demanded.
3. Understanding Emotions: the ability to understand emotion can help you to grab a hold of the secondary channel of communication used to convey messages through senses. Again this ability of EI can readily alert you about the slight variations of emotions or of shifting moods that matters to the behavioral pattern of an individual.
4. Managing Emotions: with this ability, an emotionally intelligent person can enjoy the total control to regulate emotions both in themselves and in others and thus manage it, even if it be a negative one, to achieve the desired goals.

 Mixed Model of Emotional Intelligence

 Taking for granted the model of EI introduced by Daniel Goleman, the emotional intelligence again ushers in the best possible solution to gain success in overcoming the challenges of a multicultural environment. As the model focuses on, your self-awareness, competency to control your emotion, social skill, that is managing relationships to move people in your desired direction, your empathy and motivation to reach the target can make you an emotionally intelligent person.

 

Trait Model of EI to Go Deep Down the Personality for a Better Understanding

Trait model of EI, as propagated by the Soviet-born British psychologist, Konstantin Vasily Petrides refers to the “constellation of emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of personality,” by which an individual can identify the drives shaping their personality and thus figure out the behavioral dispositions of others to make the best step in developing relationships under the umbrella of the diverse cultures.

This article along with others on cultural diversity & challenges is available in eBook or paperback in Amazon.  

How to Develop Strong Relationships in a Multicultural Environment?

 

In a decade-long desperate attempt to understand the true culture lying in the most diversified Indian subcontinent, E.M. Forster produced A Passage to India, but failed to bridge between the Indian and the UK nationals. Rudyard Kipling went far enough or to be fairer, envisioned too much in his famous poem, The Ballad of East and West, to declare:

“Oh, East is East and West is West and never shall the twain meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!”

So where we have traveled to in the ride of a century is nowhere but the vision of the 19^th century, the multicultural environment, as envisioned by the then time dreamers. With the wings of technological advancement, emergence of capitalism and open market economy, the world once polarized by distance, now has shrunk to a global village under a multicultural environment to which we do have no other option but to acclimatize.

In every aspects of our life be it academic, political or professional, we need to brace for the bigger challenges lying in a multicultural environment and to make it favorable by developing relationships we should give emphasis on some basic principles as described by Cherie Brown and George Mazza in their, Healing into Action, and avail some opportunities as follow:

1. Take the chance to welcome everyone in your world irrespective of their culture, age, nationalism, religion, language, social status or financial condition. Each person has to share the right of feeling secured in a diverse community with their personal beliefs and culture
2. In case of a cultural misinterpretation, do not blame others or make them feel ashamed: both ways lead things go awry instead of motivating. People are more likely to adapt a multicultural environment when they are appreciated, not condemned.
3. Give emphasis on the basic human nature instead of raising any controversial question regarding the historical background of a particular community, political situation or religious beliefs.
4. Treat everyone judging what personality they are guided by: altruist, egoist, extrovert, introvert, altruist or any other. You should not make an introvert asking him questions one after another or expect an extrovert to be a listener only.
5. Always try to work like a team involving each and everyone with their opinions while generating spirits and hopes in their hearts. Educate yourself with the cultural differences and make a balance in between, recognize the gaps, show positive attitudes toward it and come out with the desired goal.

It’s all simple in the end. We have crossed the borders, brought the farthest corners down to our doors. Now, what we must do is to conquer the cultural gaps just by changing our mind set of being critical to diverse cultural traits not belonged to us.

This article along with others on cultural diversity & challenges is available in eBook or paperback in Amazon.  

Cultural Challenges in Corporate America

 

Culture, the Indispensable Part:

In the broader sense, both from the view points of Empiricism and Rationalism, we, the Homo sapiens, are nothing other than cultural products, encompassing everything in the life we live. Locke, Berkeley or Hume would go with the empiricists pointing out that knowledge comes along experiences while all our experiences are shaped by the culture embedded in the society. On the contrary, Plato, G.W. Leibniz or Noam Chomsky would rather support rationalists with their respective views that forms, moral principles or language are innate which sprout in certain circumstances with a catalyst we may call culture. It is needless to say, our culture, such a deep rooted thing, and an indispensable part as well, can be hardly wiped out from our life, even after living so many years in a multicultural arena, even after showing thumb to the thousands-mile physical distances in the world, reducing it to a Global Village. So, it is no wonder, the cultural forces, too powerful to handle even by the mighty medieval imperialists, will impact the corporate world led by America.

Communication Tools as Cultural Challenges in Corporate America

The chapter, Communications across Cultures in Management across Cultures: Challenges & Strategies by Richard M. Steers, Carlos J. Sanchez-Runde and Luciara Nardon, begins with a stunning quote by Richard D. Lewis:

“Whatever the culture, there’s a tongue in our head. Some use it, some hold it, and some bite it. For the French it is a rapier, thrusting in attack; the English, using it defensively, mumble a vague and confusing reply; for Italians and Spaniards it is an instrument of eloquence; Finns and East Asians throw you with their constructive silence. Silence is a form of speech, so don’t interrupt it.”

The language, verbal or gesture, may stand as a barrier as one the most powerful challenges in the global business. English as the only language spoken in the USA helped it emerge as the world’s strongest economy but as a pioneering leader in the global business, it also faces huge problem in its way through bringing people from the farthest corner of the world with various cultures under one roof. We can use a common language, but still our ignorance with regards to some body languages or expressions can cause misinterpretation leading to a business failure. 

Individual Attitude Learnt from Culture as a Silent Danger to the Corporate World

Our aesthetic beliefs, moral principles, attitude towards life, religion, cast, or race are the powerful driving forces we learn from our cultures. In India, one of the greatest impedimenta in promoting business is their cast discrimination; in UK there had been a history of blood shed in the name of Catholicism and Protestantism. The racial conflict, though we pretend to ignore, sometimes spark off even in popular sports. So these sorts of individual attitudes imprinted deep down our heart by the culture undoubtedly matter to handle carefully as a big challenge in the corporate world.

Apart from the above-discussed cultural challenges, our importance in maintaining time, socio-economic environment, living standards, professionalism in handling contracts- either in deeds or in words, etc. can also matter to a large extent in reaching the ultimate goal of a corporate group.

This article along with others on cultural diversity & challenges is available in eBook or paperback in Amazon.  

How to Increase Performance and Productivity in a Multicultural Environment

 

Carrying out both a qualitative and ethnographic research, and studying over thousands of organizations in 11 countries for about 5 years, Christine Congdon and Catherine Gall have come out with their paper, Vision Statement: How Culture Shapes the Office, which mirrors the factors mattering the performance and productivity in a multicultural environment. Their study brings forth the six dimensions of culture which may help understand people’s expectations in a workplace and thus help an organization ensure the best performance from a group of people, diversified in their culture and united under a multicultural environment.

To increase both the performance and productivity in a multicultural environment, an organization or any globally operated business establishments must have a set a strategies based on the six cultural dimensions as follow: 

1. autocratic-consultative,
2. individualist-collectivist,
3. masculine-feminine,
4. tolerant of uncertainty-security oriented,
5. short term-long term, and
6. low context-high context

It’s no wonder, in a multinational company, you will meet people representing different cultural traits: people with the blue blood from Great Britain or the authoritarian trait being carried by the people from Germany might pose rather a conflicting environment with the people representing consultative, amicable or altruistic characteristics. You have to make a balance between these traits of binary opposition. People brought up in a dilapidated economy like those of in the third world countries usually have troubles with uncertainty about their future and feel comfortable with long-term secured jobs; on the other hand people from the countries with strengthened social securities can easily put aside things like future while giving emphasis on the present. Now you know how to approach to bring the best performance and productivity, judging the cultural background in terms with economic stability. Again, as a gift of industrialization of the 18^th century, there has been a rising conflict of feminism and anti-feminism, which developed to a cultural trait in certain communities. Still we can not ignore the negative attitude toward female bosses in many countries while in some Islamist countries there are some strictly maintained principles as to how you will deal with a female colleague especially if you are not an Arab.

For a better understanding regarding the performance and productivity in a multicultural environment, the essay, Meetings in Gulf Arab Countries, by Kemp and Williams can be taken for granted. As they realize from a closer observation, the Gulf Arab region offers an eclectic mix of different cross-cultural interactions and as for the business meetings, sense of timing, being late to be in the meeting place sometimes in an open space, regular disruptions, open doors, and haphazard seating- these all are treated rather flexibly in this cultural setting. For a successful business deal, you must not carry down your western-style meeting-culture when in an Arab-setting. Again the Arab culture is high context where communication is rather indirect with many interruptions and often dependent on external environment. So for designing a business operation in an Arab setting it’s worth considering these cultural dimensions to come out with the best performance and productivity.

This article along with others on cultural diversity & challenges is available in eBook or paperback in Amazon.  

Power Distance & Other Traits: Tools to Understand What Drives People from Different Cultures

 

Cultural Dimension, an Ultimate Challenge to Managerial Success in a Multinational Environment

A US businessman might feel intimidated with an Arab one standing so close to him in a conversation. After waiting for 30 minutes an annoyed German can even make a call or think otherwise about a scheduled meeting with a Mexican businessman to whom arriving at the just time is rather unusual. Again, a Canadian project leader, after outlining the parameters of a project may ask for any suggestion to his Indian project team, just to show his respect, but the members from the high power distance culture are likely to get surprised doubting on the leadership of the Canadian. These are all just the simple examples of how the ignorance of cultural dimension can lead to misinterpretation of a certain circumstance and thus propel a business prospect into a failure in a multicultural environment. So, the managerial success in this global village under diverse cultural traits can hardly escape to be on route to apprehend cultural dimensions.

As far as cultural dimension is concerned, the model provided by Geert Hofstede is probably the best known illustration of how cultures differ in determining the behaviorism of an individual. As Hofstede comes out with his exploration, cultures differ from each other on the dimensions of individualism versus collectivism, achievement versus quality of life orientations, uncertainty avoidance and power distance.

Power Distance Shaping the Behaviorism

Power distance refers to the way in which power is distributed and to the degree to which people accept large differences between the most and least powerful members of society in terms of privileges, wealth and well-being. In a high power distance culture, people readily accept a higher degree of unequally distributed power. In a low power distance society like that of Australia or Canada, the relationship between the bosses and subordinates is one of interdependence while in a high one social hierarchy are deeply embedded in people so much as to give leaders the inherent privilege in their position to give orders and to get the subordinates comfortable with solely depending on the decisions or directions given by their bosses. Management-by-objectives (MBO) system or other forms of participative goal setting is hardly seen or expected in a high power distance culture and the employees don not even think of arriving at their own solutions in dealing with a conflict, but in a low power distance culture, there is always a preference for consultation.

Cultural Traits Influencing the Drives

Sigmund Freud, one of the greatest psychoanalysts of all time, was probably the first one to show the clear-most orchestration of our mind, vivisecting it into three layers: unconscious level, subconscious level and the conscious level. As he points out, all our drives we aware or unaware of, derives out of the id in our unconscious layer. Our desires or drives than move up to the subconscious level and it is where the culture comes as a component to shape the safety bulb that determines which drive to pass into the conscious level or which one to be pushed back to the unconscious level. This is how all the drives undergo a censoring in the subconscious level and it is only then we come across knowing them from our conscious mind. So unconsciously we have our drives shaped by the cultural traits or norms we are exposed to and unconsciously every individual falls into separate cultural dimensions we need to apprehend for building a better relationship or forcing the best to spark off in a multicultural environment.

• This article along with others on cultural diversity & challenges is available in eBook or paperback in Amazon.