Show All Employees a Wider World

Some years ago, Nina E. Woodard, SPHR, GPHR, was working in the New York offices of Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), helping her company acquire a bank in Thailand. That was when she first discovered how quickly a single word could cause business procedures to falter if communication fails to bridge the divide between two cultures.

Woodard’s role was to lead the employee communications activities before, during and after the acquisition. “There was a significant change in the way that employees at the Thai bank would receive information—using the SCB ‘cascade’ methodology. A message starts with the president and moves down to his direct reports, to their direct reports and so on, until every employee has received the message, usually in a single day.”

With the help of a translator, Woodard prepared a communication informing the newly acquired management team about their role in the process and how to let employees know what to expect. But when she asked one of her Thai HR colleagues to read back the document in English, the message declared that SCB provided communications “on a waterfall.”

“There is no word for ‘cascade’ in the Thai language, but ‘waterfall,’ which was probably the closest to it in their dictionary, really didn’t convey the same meaning,” Woodard says. From that point, she adds, “I started explaining the intent of my messages” to translators, rather than relying on word-for-word translation. “And I always have them translated back to English for proofreading.”

Woodard, now director of business development for Strategic Human Resource Management India (a subsidiary of the Society for Human Resource Management), recalls that experience as a reminder of how important it is to be careful and clear in intercultural communications. In fact, such clarity could affect a company’s prospects for growth.

The Business Imperative

Increasingly, companies will find that to grow, they will have to expand into international markets and be able to function effectively in cultures that may be little-known to them. Such companies will have to elevate their familiarity with other customs and languages, and their newfound cross-cultural awareness will have to permeate not only corporate ranks but all the levels below—down to the employees who carry on the enterprise day after day, dealing with counterparts in other countries without even visiting those places.

As barriers to trade and telecommunications diminish, expansion into international markets will become imperative for many U.S. companies. A 2006 survey of 420 senior executives from companies of various sizes and in various industries in the United States, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia underscores the global dimensions of business growth. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said their most recent acquisition was cross-border, and 26 percent said overseas acquisitions were necessary simply to survive. In the survey, conducted by global management consulting firm Accenture, U.S. companies were found to be top targets for mergers and acquisitions. Regardless of whether they intend to expand into overseas markets, U.S. companies are sure to feel the effects of globalism as their colleagues and clients become more internationally diverse.

Diversity Through the Ranks

Cultural diversity isn’t just for expatriates or frequent-flying executives. Cube dwellers increasingly need to work, often virtually, across borders with people whose first language is not English, who don’t have the same cultural touch points as U.S. employees do, and who don’t approach business in the same ways that Americans do. Typically, these U.S. workers have not had formal international education, have never worked overseas and may not have even traveled abroad.

As a result, Americans can misunderstand how their words and actions are construed in other countries. Although the United States is making strides in awareness of cultural diversity, Americans “do sort of run the show,” Woodard says. “So much of our office jargon is colloquial, and we don’t even realize it. Comments like ‘cover all the bases’ or ‘three strikes and you’re out’ don’t have any contextual value here [in India] at all. People just don’t know what we are talking about.”

Another difference that Americans discover when they set out to do business in South Asia, Woodard notes, is that “in this part of the world, relationships are everything. As Americans, we are very direct in business and get straight to the bottom line. But here, it is important to be sociable and to discuss something more personal before getting to the business.”

Training employees throughout an organization can expose them to the rules of global business and can help them understand different cultures and how to work better with people from other countries. But it’s more than a matter of drilling down into particular nationalities and learning their language and culture, Woodard says. “I know this is going to sound too simple, but it is really about communication skills. These days, the requirement [for global communication] is excellence: purposeful, intelligent selection of words, and alignment of those words with actions, make all the difference in the world in the way we are understood and even considered.”

The Education Question

Choosing to train workers across the board is not a matter of company size, industry or breadth of global operations, says Gwen Crider, executive director of the nonprofit National Multicultural Institute (NMCI) in Washington, D.C. It’s a matter of “whether you are looking to grow your business. You can’t just consider whether you are in the import-export business. At one point that made sense, but today you must consider your entire network—from those working at your company to who’s in your circle of external stakeholders: customers, suppliers and potential customers. This is for any company looking to thrive in the coming years.”

Woodard agrees: “I think every organization should have in its training and development programming some international business classes or programs, even if your company doesn’t do business globally—yet.”

Business today often involves outsourcing and offshoring processes to other countries, says Pamela Leri, director of global partnerships for Aperian Global, a consulting and training firm with U.S. offices in Boston and San Francisco. “Intercultural communication is going on at all levels of the company. Increasingly, work is being reorganized around product lines or projects, forcing people at every level to interact across borders. Everyone—even very junior people—needs to know if transactions are being done appropriately and if processes are working.”

In addition, today’s American companies have become more structurally “flat,” utilizing a lot of individual contributors with discrete skills, “and organizational goals have changed to push work down as far as it will go. We aren’t siloed anymore,” she points out.

The Details

There seem to be as many types of intercultural training available for employees as there are companies that need it. Training might be narrowly targeted on specific cultures or countries with which employees interact. Or it might cover more-expansive communication skills designed for interacting with multiple cultures. Or it may transfer basic knowledge in diversity and cultural competence that can be applied broadly in any workplace.

Generally, training is offered in one- or two-day seminars, or through web-based modules or real-time “webinars.” Costs vary according to the depth and length of the instruction—from a few hundred dollars for licensing a web-based training module, to several thousand dollars for a two-day seminar.

NMCI hosts two major training institutes a year and provides consulting and training for individual clients. Crider has seen a major increase in the number of clients who are including it in basic employee orientation.

“These concepts can be introduced in a one-day workshop,” Crider says, “but we believe cultural competence is a process—not something you can get to the end of. Companies need to be constantly updating and growing their skill set.” This can be accomplished, she notes, not only through continual formal training but also through company- sponsored initiatives such as hosting employee intercultural dialogues, forming diversity committees or even watching international films together.

Leri tailors training to her clients’ professional needs. “Some spend two days in a ‘working globally’ session, sometimes focusing on certain countries,” she says. Sessions can include case studies, role-playing and practice teleconferences. The company has also developed a two-hour webinar that tackles awareness issues more generally.

“Some clients have told us that all they want is to get trainees to do two to five things differently,” Leri says. “They are only looking to give employees some framework so they can identify when differences arise, and understand whether a communication problem is a matter of culture or simply competence. After all, some problems may be attributed to the other person’s or company’s capabilities, organizational structure or corporate culture.”

Cross-Cultural Issues

Successful intercultural communication involves much more than eliminating colloquialisms and cultural references. It must also recognize deeper cultural differences.

For example, Leri offers the phrase “hit the ground running” as both a colloquialism and a mind-set that causes confusion. “To us,” she says, “it means getting a fast start; to other nationalities, it might mean falling on your face and then running away.” But the two contrasting interpretations of this cliché also expose deep differences in how business relationships are viewed. “Project management doesn’t look the same in Europe, the United States and China,” Leri says. “There are totally different frames of reference.”

Leri continues: “American managers tend to assume and trust in their new partners’ capabilities at the outset, and are looking for immediate results. But then they lose that trust over time when the results aren’t delivered right away.” In other cultures, however, trust is built over time, after a period of testing and evaluation. So international participants “won’t ask questions or raise problems, as they are trying to prove themselves. But the Americans have already given up on them.” One side is looking for results, while the other is looking for direction. “I see this happening a lot with my clients,” Leri says.

Another fundamental cross-cultural issue is the concept of risk, Leri says. “When an Asian, for example, hears the word, the thought bubble that comes to mind is, ‘This is going to cost too much.’ But an American will see risk as a danger to quality.” For example, “Say American and Chinese product designers are working together to develop some medical equipment widget, and the project runs into trouble. The guys in China will start thinking about cost, but the Americans are going to be worried about the integrity of the widget. This can open up all kinds of miscommunication on where the problems are.”

When Leri runs sessions that center on the concept of risk, “it’s clear that the two sides are focusing on two different concepts.” Once they realize these differences, breakthroughs occur.

Yet another loaded concept is “partnership,” Leri says. Often in these situations, individuals on global teams don’t see themselves as equal partners. “It’s related to different ideas of hierarchy,” she says, and this can affect everything from brainstorming to prioritizing projects. “American business tends to value individualism and egalitarianism, while other cultures—especially in Asia—value very strict hierarchies.”

Imagine an American-style brainstorming session, where all participants are throwing out sometimes very abstract ideas, Leri says: “Say the most senior American manager tosses out a thought. Her American colleagues may think, ‘Oh, that’s just Sara, she’s always coming up with wild ideas to get us thinking. We can ignore her even though she’s the boss.’”

For non-U.S. participants, that idea may carry more weight because of Sara’s position. They may see it as a request—something that needs to be delivered, so they start doing it. “It’s amazing how many companies I know that have had that experience,” Leri says.

Non-Americans may use the same cultural context when evaluating a project’s sense of urgency. “In relationship- oriented countries like Mexico, India and China, people tend to prioritize projects based on the hierarchy of the person who owns it,” Leri explains. “But in the United States, you may have a relatively low-level person, a content specialist, whose project is the most urgent,” but that may not get the attention it deserves from employees from another culture because of perceptions of how important that team member is on the organizational chart.

“In the United States,” Leri continues, “we all tend to think of most partnerships as equal. If I approach someone as my peer, he or she should be able to respond to me very comfortably. Yet even among relatively low-level peer relationships, an overseas employee may treat his or her American counterpart as a higher-up, simply because that person works at headquarters.”

Training that Pays Off

Although Leri has found that “soft” issues related to cross-cultural awareness can negatively impact performance and productivity, she also has seen that exposing employees to them through training can create true converts in the workforce.

“It often turns out to be simple things people know they should be doing, yet they don’t know the ground rules,” Leri says. But they find that when they all receive the same training, “they will come up with better business decisions—that’s how the return on investment is really demonstrated. They find they can do more, and it spreads like wildfire in the company.”

Martha Frase is a freelance writer in Martinsburg, W.V.