Cross-Cultural Communication to Understand a Diverse Workforce

Introduction

I was invited by Swedish Chamber of Commerce Singapore (SwedCham) to conduct a seminar on the topic of “Cross-Cultural Communication”. However, due to the Covid-19 situation, a webinar was conducted instead on May 14th.

Since I have carried out a reasonable amount of research and preparation for the webinar, I would like to share some of the webinar content with you.

We are shaped by our life experience

I started the webinar with an introduction about my life, which begins in Ipoh, Malaysia. I was born a third generation Hakka Chinese (my grandparents migrated with their parents to Malaysia in the 1930s). Chinese has been my mother tongue as my parents insisted of helping us to be fluent since a young age and my primary school education was conducted in Chinese, with Malay and English as the second and third languages in school. When I moved to secondary school, the primary language medium switched to Malay – Chinese and English remain as language courses over the five years.

I moved to Singapore for my A-Levels in 1999 and my education medium switched to English. Since then, English has been strongest language, even though Chinese is still my mother tongue. When I went to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for my Bachelor of Business studies, I met a professor who was Hong Kong and he became my mentor till today.

From his mentorship, I truly developed my Cantonese speaking skills and also started to learn about Hong Kong, which I was well exposed to its rich culture via movies, music and TV dramas. He also introduced me to Chinese students, which open me up to the new world of China.

My first trip to China was in 2004, after my graduation. I traveled to China every year since 2004 and I witnessed the tremendous growth of the country and I was deeply exposed to the rich culture. Interestingly, my curiosity about China led me to marry my wife who is from Harbin. She came to Singapore for her university education and we met in a community service organization. Like many Chinese family, her parents moved to Singapore to join us after we had our first child. We have three boys today and they have been staying with us for more than 8 years.

Thanks to my brother who moved to Germany for his education, I made my first trip to Germany in 2012 to attend his wedding. I had the chance to spend a few days in Berlin (I love the museums!) before I traveled to Münster to meet my family.

Joining Mercuri Urval in 2013 gave me the opportunity to learn about Europe. Since 2014, I have traveled to many of the major cities in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and England. My assignments in APAC also brought me to South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, and India. It was great to meet people from different countries, learn their language, enjoy their food, and be immersed in their rich culture and history.

I was also exposed to American culture since very young (thanks to Hollywood and pop music). My Masters education with George Washinton University (2007-09) gave me deeper insights and I finally made my first trip to U.S. in 2019. It was great to visit the major cities in West Coast, Mid-West and East Coast.

You can see that the introduction is rather long – but it is essential to illustrate that how we viewed the world is truly shape by our life experience.

My Personal and Professional Experience

I shared with the 15 participants on two personal experience and two professional experience.

My two personal experience were:

Caption: This was probably how I looked like when I was hugged. Photo credits: The Big Bang Theory. Source

1. When I was studying in NTU, an American girl (foreign exchange student) that I met the first time, came towards me and gave me a hug… I completely froze!
2. Later, during my Masters Programme, a Swiss lady classmate always insists of having 3x air kiss when we meet.

Both encounters above were truly “out of my culture”. It can be very awkward for an Asian man like me – and it took me a while to get used to hugging and air-kissing!

My two professional experience were:

1. In an Executive Search assignment, the client, a German Tier 1 Auto supplier wants a “Thai-looking/-speaking” German. When the client mentioned “fit to our corporate culture”, it actually means “behave like a German” (which is the dominant culture in the company.
2. When I was working with Swedish colleagues, there were discussions with many Swedes over multiple emails, that keep asking “What do you think?”. Every Swede, from the most senior to junior, have the chance to share their view. In my mind, I was asking “who is the leader?” and “who can decide?” – as I wanted decisions to be made quickly!

Many of us probably have more exciting or exotic or embarrassing cross-cultural experience. I asked the participants to share their experience and truly – many of them have experience of creating misunderstanding or not leading the team (in Asia) in the way that was expected.

Our own culture (regardless of Western or Asian) truly determines how we perceive others and act based on our common sense. 

Development Timeline of Cross-Cultural Communication

Next, I presented a development timeline of four major research studies on the cross-cultural communication topic.

Edward Hall is known as the Father of Intercultural Communication. His research which was started in the 1950s presented three dimensions:

1. Context: High vs. Low
2. Time (chronemics): Monochronic vs. Polychronic
3. Space (proxemics): High territoriality vs. Low territoriality

As an anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher, he laid the foundation for subsequent research to build on.

Geert Hofstede is perhaps the most well-known researcher among the four researchers that I selected. I remembered reading his material in my Organizational Behavior course during my Bachelor’s studies. His study uses an extremely large data set (>100,000) of surveys completed by IBM employees around the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Therefore, it has acquired a dominant position in the cross-cultural field. I used his six cultural dimensions when I need to discuss cross-cultural topics when I was conducting leadership development programs. 

The third study, The GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) Project, was introduced to me by Douglas O’Loughlin in a workshop a few years ago. Robert House and his colleagues conducted the study since 1991 and the findings were published in 2004. The GLOBE Project have involved 170 “country co-investigators” based in 62 countries. Together with his colleagues and associates, they have collected data from 17,300 middle managers in 951 organizations. Not as massive as Geert Hofstede, but certainly very impressive!

The research identified nine cultural competencies and grouped 62 countries into ten societal clusters. 

What I like about this study is that there is a clear distinction between two major Asian culture: Confucian Asia which is “result-driven, encourage group working together over individual goals” and Southern Asia which emphasizes “strong family & deep concern for their communities”.

I can relate well to both cultures as I have plenty of opportunities to interact with candidates in those two cultures. The way that they make a ‘job decision’ can be traced to their cultures. For example, it is very often in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand that candidates will consult their family before making a decision to change jobs or to relocate for a job. Unfortunately, for some of my European clients, this can be perceived as a weakness or lack of result-orientation.

I can understand very well that my clients from Germanic Europe culture, which “value competition and aggressiveness and are more result-oriented”, appreciates working with people from Confusion Asia more as there are similarities in their focus of result orientation. 

Source: Adapted from Robert House & Co., Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies (2004).

The final study that I discussed is the popular book “The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer. What I like about her book and material is that she made a complex subject rather accessible to most people who needs to work in a cross-cultural environment. She also designed a few simple tools that can help people to profile their make comparisons between different countries, profile themselves and create a team map. 

She expanded some of the cultural dimensions created by earlier researchers and also added a few of her own scales. The 8 scales that she presented can be easily understood, as follows:

1. Communicating – Are they low-context (simple, verbose and clear), or high-context (rich deep meaning in interactions)?
2. Evaluating – When giving negative feedback does one give it directly, or prefer being indirect and discreet?
3. Leading – Are people in groups egalitarian, or do they prefer hierarchy?
4. Deciding – Are decisions made in consensus, or made top-down?
5. Trusting – Do people base trust on how well they know each other, or how well they do work together?
6. Disagreeing – Are disagreements tackled directly, or do people prefer to avoid confrontations?
7. Scheduling – Do they perceive time as absolute linear points, or consider it a flexible range?
8. Persuading – Do they like to hear specific cases and examples, or prefer holistic detailed explanations?

When I look at how different countries are spread across one of the scales, I can easily relate adjust my style to fit to the cultural preference. 

For example, on the Communicating scale, most of the Western cultures are low-context and explicit, while Asian culture are high-context and implicit. This means that communication by Westerners tend to be more direct and straightforward, while Asians are in general, less direct and tends to expect others to read between the lines or ‘read the air’ (Japanese).

Of course, we must be aware that every person is different. However, from my experience, the national culture very much determines the behaviour of the person. If I observe how an “indirect Dutch” communicate with a “direct Japanese”, there is still a big difference in their communication style!

If you look at the Evaluating scale, which describes how different cultures provide negative feedback, it is interesting to see how the Germans, French, Dutch and Danes are on one end, while the Americans and English are now in the middle. The Asians are still on the right hand side.

I often find it easier to understand the Dutch and Germans when they are unhappy or upset, while understanding an English person is more difficult for me. I have read long emails from my UK colleagues and couldn’t figure out whether the tone is positive or negative!

Erin Meyer is also clever in putting two scales together, e.g. communicating and evaluating scales, to create a clear understanding on communication styles.

My Swedish colleagues and clients probably need to put in some effort to communicate with Asians in order to really get the message across. 

If you are interested to read more about Erin Meyer, I recommend two Harvard Business Review (HBR) articles:

1. Navigating the Cultural Mindfield (May 2014)
2. Being the boss in Brussels, Boston and Beijing (July 2017)

Comparison Matrix

I tried to put all the dimensions and scales from the four research into one matrix and I came up with this table:

It's interesting to see the similarities among the different research and the additional dimensions that you can learn from different models. Context is obviously still very relevant in today's world, while the research by Edward on Space seems to not pick up much interest in the later research.

Best Practices (Four Rules and Four Suggestions)

I close the webinar by sharing the Four Rules by Erin Meyer and also Four Practical Suggestions from me.

Four Rules by Erin Meyer (from the May 2014 HBR article)

• Rule 1: Don’t Underestimate the Challenge. Respect that every country culture is different.
• Rule 2: Apply Multiple Perspectives. What matters is the position of one country relative to another.
• Rule 3: Find the Positive in Other Approaches. Don’t look down on unfamiliar cultures (e.g. Confucian concept of hierarchy).
• Rule 4: Adjust, and Readjust, Your Position. In a multi-cultural team, you need to keep adjusting your style.

Four Practical Suggestions by Ricky

1) Be curious

• Take interest to learn about other cultures
• Starting from ‘surface topics’: greetings, food, general stereotypes
• Go deeper into the history, geography, politics, sports, music, movies, etc.

2) Be respectful

• Don’t judge cultures as positive or negative
• If in doubt, take more precaution, don’t assume

3) Be humble

• Acknowledge your ignorance – there are too many things that we don’t know
• Ask others to guide you and show you the way

4) Every person is different

• Pay attention to the personality, get to know the individual, go beyond the “cultural stereotype”

Conclusion

The webinar was really interesting for me and it gave me the opportunity to research deeper into the cross-cultural topic that is very close to my heart. I often play the role as a “cultural ambassador” for my clients, candidates and colleagues. Misunderstanding and misinterpretation can easily occur between two distinct cultures, and it takes much patience, learning and understanding to communicate well with each other.

Over the years, I’ve made my own fair share of mistakes and I have many of my colleagues to thank – in patiently helping to navigate the different cultures in the world. My learning journey on cultures is still ongoing as I have yet to set foot on the continents of Latin America and Africa.

Please share with me your thoughts and comments as I’m curious to learn too.

If you are interested to discuss how to develop a successful cross-cultural team in Asia or Europe, drop me a note at [email protected] and we can start a discussion.