This One Trait is Critical for Effectiveness When Working Across Cultures

AMERICANS JEFF AND Kyle were in Kuala Lumpur to finalise negotiations for setting up a regional distribution centre for medical equipment manufactured in the United States. Their Malaysian-based colleagues had completed due diligence and had selected a preferred partner and Jeff and Kyle had travelled from head office in New York to settle the terms of the arrangement. After a 30-hour transit, they were keen to get down to business and finalise the terms of the deal so that they could return to the States and attend to other outstanding matters before the weekend.

The Americans were relieved to be welcomed at the airport by company representatives. They interpreted their host’s assistance to get them quickly to the office as indicative of their shared desire to swiftly conclude the terms of the distribution proposal and sign the contract. At the distribution centre, they were met upon arrival by the CEO of their potential Malaysian business partner and were ushered into a formal dining room where a lavish breakfast was laid out for the negotiating parties. “Perfect! Super-efficient!”, thought Jeff and Kyle. “We can get down to business immediately over breakfast.”

But it soon became apparent to the Americans that their Malaysian hosts didn’t share their urgency to conduct business. Breakfast topics were varied but not business-related—and when Jeff and Kyle attempted to raise the distribution deal, their Malaysian hosts paused for a while, before changing the subject. Jeff and Kyle assumed that once the breakfast plates had been cleared, the business negotiations would start. Instead, their Malaysian hosts suggested that their guests freshen up in their hotel room after such a long trip and they should all meet in the lobby just before lunchtime.

Slightly confused, but glad they had an opportunity to revise their notes before the next meeting, the Americans checked into their hotel and spent an hour together reviewing the terms of their proposal. At twelve, they were met in the lobby by a representative of their Malaysian hosts and driven to a local restaurant where they were again joined by key senior employees of their potential Malaysian partner.

Similar to when they were at breakfast, the Malaysians were reluctant to discuss business. Annoyed by the apparent stalling, Jeff suggested that they should go through the proposal and reach agreement on the terms. “I’d like to reach agreement on the deal this afternoon. We are on a tight deadline and are keen to wrap this up so that we can make the evening flight back to New York tomorrow. We’ve travelled a long way and, to be honest, we are frustrated that we haven’t had an opportunity to present our proposal to you.”

The Malaysian CEO laughed but nodded for the Americans to continue and the discussion finally turned to business. To Kyle and Jeff, all seemed to go well. Although a couple of questions were raised regarding their suggested terms, no opposition was expressed and the Americans believed that an agreement had been reached.

The next morning, the Americans took their luggage with them to the office. They had intended on quickly signing the deal that they believed they had agreed with the Malaysians the previous afternoon, before heading directly to the airport. To their surprise, the CEO’s assistant delivered them a message that the CEO was not able to sign the agreement. Instead, he thanked the Americans for coming and wished them good luck in finding a suitable partner.

Kyle and Jeff had failed to understand the difference between task-based and relationship-based cultures. America is a task-based culture. In task-based cultures, transactions come before relationships. In those cultures, business is conducted on the basis of cognitive trust. Cognitive trust involves confidence in one’s competence, abilities and experience. You enter into business relationships when you trust that person has the skills and knowledge to do a good job. In task-based cultures, business decisions occur quickly on the basis of assessments of competence and reliability. Task-based cultures are more concerned with what you do than who you are.

In relationship-based cultures like the Malaysian culture, relationships come before transactions. In relationship-based cultures, affective trust plays a significant role in business decisions. Affective trust involves how emotionally secure you feel that the other party has your interests at heart. Affective trust develops from warm relationships and friendships. In relationship-based cultures, many meetings might be needed before business is transacted. In initial meetings, business issues may not be addressed at all. Discussion is focused on assessing the character and intentions of the potential business partner. In relationship-based cultures, business decisions are formulated slowly as the parties get to know each other personally. Relationship-based cultures are more concerned with who you are rather than what you do.

Building relationships can seem tedious for members of task-based cultures. In those cultures, deadlines and punctuality are valued. It can be particularly difficult for members of task-based cultures who are travelling for business and are struggling with jet-lag and time-zone differences to cope with the social demands of relationship-based cultures. Members of relationship-based cultures, on the other hand, can feel rushed and pressured by members of task-based cultures. The eagerness of task-based cultures to conduct business before relationships have had a chance to develop can breed distrust and suspicion.

CQ DRIVE

In the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) four-competency model of intercultural effectiveness developed by Professor Soon Ang and colleagues, CQ Drive is your willingness to work with diverse others.

Cultural knowledge is largely tacit—‘know-how’, judgment, insights, beliefs and perspectives as well as memories, attitudes and emotions that reside within a person’s mind and are difficult to document and communicate to others. You do not develop high levels of intercultural competency by reading textbooks or formal training. You acquire tacit cultural knowledge socially as you engage in authentic exchanges with individuals from different cultural backgrounds.

But interactions with individuals from diverse backgrounds can be complex, stressful and tiring. They may involve communication barriers, misunderstandings and conflict. International travel across time zones can increase exhaustion and burnout, and virtual communication increases the complexity of exchanges. Those challenges can deter you from interacting with diverse others and threaten your ability to build trust and rapport with individuals from backgrounds different to your own. CQ Drive helps you to remain enthusiastic and focused in challenging intercultural settings.

Also, novel cultural settings can be confronting. Exposure to new values, beliefs and customs can trigger culture shock and ‘us vs them’ social categorisations and in-group bias, negative stereotypes and ethnocentrism. Overcoming negative bias requires deliberate effort. A genuine interest in learning about cultural differences helps you to transcend your prejudgments and respond with respect, openness and acceptance.

Individuals who perceive their cultural identity to be central to their overall identity experience greater adjustment problems in novel cultural settings. Cultural identity refers to your sense of belonging and affiliation to your cultural group. If your cultural identity is salient to your self-concept, when confronted with alternative cultural frameworks, you are more likely to experience a threat to your own identity and engage in defensive strategies, such as distancing yourself from or derogating the novel culture.

Your CQ Drive reflects your degree of enjoyment in dealing across cultures, your perception of the material benefits that flow from those interactions and your self-confidence in novel cultural settings.

YOUR NATURAL INCLINATION FOR DEALING ACROSS CULTURES

Some individuals are more open to intercultural interactions than others. Openness to experience is a personality characteristic involving a tendency to be broad-minded, curious, imaginative, creative and adventurous. Individuals who are open to new experiences are inquisitive and receptive to cultural variations. They are eager to learn about cultural differences and are willing to try new behaviours and consider alternative perspectives.

Extroversion has also been linked to cultural intelligence. Extroversion is the degree to which individuals are enthusiastic about what is going on outside themselves. Extroverts seek out and enjoy social interactions, including exchanges with individuals from backgrounds different from their own. Extroversion is associated with a learning- goal orientation. A learning-goal orientation involves a desire to learn new competencies, whereas a performance-goal orientation is associated with a desire to avoid or hide failures. Individuals with a learning-goal orientation persist with their cultural learning, even in the face of inevitable intercultural challenges, embarrassments and failures. Extroverts are also more likely to develop a broad support network in new cultural settings which helps to buffer the stress of culture shock.

Developing Your Cultural Curiosity

If you are not naturally open to new experiences or are introverted, you can improve your CQ Drive by cultivating curiosity. George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, suggests that curiosity results from focusing attention on the gaps in your knowledge. As you become aware of your knowledge gaps, this causes a feeling of deprivation that motivates you to search for the missing information in order to relieve your emotional discomfort.

You can increase awareness of your cultural knowledge gaps by mindfully seeking out new experiences, ideas and perspectives. Venturing outside of your normal routines highlights deficiencies in your understanding of the world and stimulates a craving to learn more. To cultivate curiosity, you should actively seek divergent viewpoints through the establishment of culturally diverse networks and consulting diverse sources of information, such as publications you do not normally read, news shows and documentaries that you do not often watch and literature from a diverse selection of authors. The further outside of your comfort zone you venture, the greater discomfort you will experience and the more motivated you will be to search for new information to explain what you do not understand.

Curiosity involves digging beneath the surface, and the best way to do that is by questioning. ‘Learner’ questions rather than ‘judger’ questions are best for cultivating a curious mind. Learner questions are orientated towards the discovery of new information and encourage you to approach even familiar events with a beginner’s mind. Penetrating “why?” and speculative “what if?” questions help you to uncover your assumptions, question the validity of your existing practices and prompt a search for alternatives. “Why did I react that way? What could I have done differently? What else could be going on here? What am I assuming? What responses will work best in this situation? What if I reacted in another way? What choices do I have?” Learner questions are optimistic and hopeful and allow for new possibilities. They encourage reflection, flexibility and connection with others. In contrast, judger questions are critical, assumptive and defensive. “What is wrong with that person? Why are they so stubborn or ignorant? How can I prove that I am correct?” Judger questions are accusatory and reinforce us-vs-them divisions.

As well as through better questioning, curiosity is cultivated through better listening. Active listening involves concentrating fully on what is being said rather than passively hearing the speaker’s message. Listening engages all the senses, not just hearing. Active listening involves a conscious intention to understand the meaning of messages in an open and non-judgmental manner, rather than making assumptions, forming an opinion or reaching a preliminary conclusion. Active listening helps you to transcend the automaticity of your own cultural frameworks and prejudgments, and uncovers gaps in your understanding. With learner-orientated questioning and active listening, every conversation becomes an opportunity to learn.

Letting go of the need to be right also fosters curiosity. Rather than accepting your beliefs, ideas and customs as true and valid, a willingness to question your assumptions and beliefs, and an openness to making mistakes or acknowledging flaws or gaps in your understanding, promotes inquisitiveness and the consideration of alternative worldviews.

Managing Bias

As bias can deter you from interacting with diverse others, techniques to reduce bias can also improve motivation for intercultural exchanges. Three effective strategies for reducing bias that you can incorporate in your day-to-day activities are: perspective-taking; making culturally appropriate attributions; and positive intergroup contact.

Neurocognitive studies have demonstrated that we all possess an ability to mimic automatically the emotions, thoughts and actions of others. From an evolutionary perspective, this ability to synchronise our intentions and behaviours with others enhances our social functioning that, in turn, increases our chances of survival.

Although we automatically simulate the mental and motor activity of in-group members, this process is much less responsive to out-group members. But with conscious effort, we can make up for this deficit in intergroup sensitivity. Perspective-taking refers to the ‘active contemplation of other’s psychological experiences’—that is, thinking and imagining the feelings and viewpoints of others. It is now well-established that perspective-taking has positive implications for intergroup relations including increased empathy, reduction of prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behaviours and decreased activation of negative stereotypes.

Perspective-taking works by enhancing ‘self-other overlap’—the merging of a person’s cognitive representations of their self-concept with out-group members. In this way, social category boundaries become blurred and 'they' become 'me'. Out-group members are now perceived to be more like the self, and are more likely to be afforded the positive favouritism usually reserved for in-group members. This effect can generalise to other out-group members because the individual is perceived as a prototype for the wider group.

While perspective-taking for empathy focuses on the emotions of the other person without reference to cultural differences, making culturally appropriate attributions focuses on understanding the other person’s perspective through their cultural frame of reference. Imagining the world from the perspectives of others helps you transcend the automaticity of your own cultural framework and to interpret their intentions and behaviours more accurately. Differences are less likely to be labelled as deviant, stereotyping, and bias is reduced, communication is enhanced, and suspicion and distrust are minimised.

Prompts can be useful for encouraging culturally appropriate attributions. For example:

“Before you decide how to respond in this interaction, write down a few sentences describing your counterpart’s interests and concerns as a person living within their culture. Now consider how your counterpart’s behaviours and decisions in this situation may be guided by his or her cultural values and beliefs.”

The formation of intergroup friendships can also help to dismantle social categorisations and decrease bias. Friendships encourage individuation of out-group members such that they come to be considered as individuals rather than as a member of a broader social category. Under this approach, the focus moves from ‘one of them’ to ‘you and me’. The positive effect of intergroup friendships on reducing bias transfers to other out-group members.

There is another mechanism by which the formation of intergroup relationships decreases the tendency for bias. Studies show that social categories become more inclusive by inducing a positive mood state. There are a couple of reasons why this occurs. Firstly, we are attracted to people who we associate with feeling good. Secondly, a positive mood enhances our cognitive flexibility and leads to broader and more inclusive social categorisations.

To overcome your biases, make an effort to diversify your social networks and activities. Enjoy the company of, and form positive relationships with, people with backgrounds different to your own.

THE MATERIAL BENEFITS THAT WILL FLOW TO YOU

Identifying the tangible rewards that will flow to you from effective intercultural exchanges can increase your willingness to work with diverse others—for example, the positive implications for your career advancement or business performance. But material gains alone are unlikely to counter the negative effects of unconscious bias. Building your natural cultural curiosity and actively employing the techniques above to mitigate bias are critical to improving your CQ. Focusing on the extrinsic rewards is helpful but not sufficient for improving your willingness to work across cultures.

YOUR INTERCULTURAL CONFIDENCE

You are more likely to engage with culturally diverse others if you believe that you can overcome intercultural challenges. People tend to avoid situations that they perceive will lead to failure. But when they expect their efforts to be successful, goal-directed behaviour is initiated. In addition to initiating effort, your belief in your ability to work effectively across cultures buffers discouragement and encourages sustained persistence in the face of negatively arousing setbacks.

The most effective means of increasing your resilience in diverse settings is practice. You are less discouraged by setbacks if you’ve been able to overcome problems in the past. Cumulative success builds resilience for coping with future challenges. Conversely, early failures threaten self-confidence. It is important to start with small and incremental opportunities for success. Don’t jump into the deep-end with a sink-or-swim approach.

Watching others successfully manage diversity can also increase your expectations of success. Find someone who works well with diverse others and learn from them.

Anxiety undermines resilience. When we have limited mental resources available for social perception—for example, because we are distracted by another cognitively taxing task, or we are under emotional or physiological stress—we rely more on stereotypes for our judgments and to guide our responses. Culture shock, communication problems, interpersonal conflict, prejudice and discrimination and stressful working conditions—for example, deadlines and jet lag—can increase anxiety in diverse settings. Be sure to take time out and get enough rest when working across cultures. Cultural intelligence coaching can also help to reduce your anxiety in new cultural settings. An intercultural coach or mentor can improve your resilience by providing encouragement and reassurance as you experiment with new skills. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Felicity Menzies is Principal at Culture Plus Consulting, a Sydney-based diversity and inclusion consultancy with expertise in cultural intelligence, unconscious bias, empowering women and global diversity management. Learn more about managing diversity globally at www.cultureplusconsulting.com.

CQ a registered trademark of the Cultural Intelligence Center, LLC.

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