Tag: intercultural competence

Social Networking and Cross-Cultural Competence

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If you look at the stats below, you get a sense of understanding how important social networks have become in our lives. Interestingly, even more ‘private’ topics such as politics and religion are being discussed, even more so in countries like Tunisia, Jordan or Egypt.

Social Media use - PEW

Knowing how to build communities and to nurture them; more importantly, how to communicate across cultures and borders becomes an essential skill in today’s connected world. Relationships are becoming more complex as often people communicating with each other don’t necessarily have the opportunity to see themselves.

But: as I wrote in an earlier post about the components of communication, 55% of the non-verbal aspects actually contribute to the understanding of what your counterpart is saying and 38% of the paraverbal. Hence, when communicating in social networks where usually you cannot see your discussion partner, the tone of your message, character fonts, drawings, diagrams, colours, italics or highlights are extremely important.

Understanding your target audience and their culture plus choosing the right tone and message is a must when building relationships in the business world but also privately.

I am extremely happy to be able to speak about this exciting subject in London on the 21st of February. Looking forward to seeing you there and if not, please stay tuned as we will be setting up tailored webinars to follow-up on the conference around three major topics:

  1. Social networking across cultures and platforms
  2. How to use social media effectively across cultures for Internationalization, Marketing and Strategic Communication
  3. Using Social Media for Community Management

Jenny

Doing Business Across Cultures

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Intercultural CommunicationsIs the title of the conference I am going to speak at in February in London, UK. More specifically, my topic touches on building a relationship remotely and what cultural etiquette you should employ when using email, LinkedIn and other social networks to build relationships internationally.

Have you ever thought about how you communicate in the online world? As body language, facial expression or tone of voice from your counterparts are missing, how would you know if your message was understood? And more importantly, which rules should you be following when you are using online tools, be it so commonly used ones like e-mail? Not much research has been done to my knowledge on how different cultures are communicating through different online channels.

There is data on the Internet use across the population (click here for more info on Europe for example: ); there is also data on social media use by enterprises (click here for stats in Europe). Precise information on how written language and images are used online analyzing the data by culture and differentiating between the various social media channels are rare. Usually research focuses on the comparison of one culture and one medium to another.

During our workshop in London, Dr. Pari Namazi and myself are going to touch on some interesting aspects, working on concrete examples and speaking about our own multicultural and international experience.

Being mindful about how online communication can be perceived in different cultures is indispensable for multinational companies, governments, charities, NGOs and in fact, for any organization operating in today’s global marketplace.

Avoiding cultural mistakes whilst demonstrating respect and openness for another culture will pave the way to successful interpersonal relationships…

Interested? Register here to get at 20% discount. All you need to do is to click on the speaker button and use the discount code: Jenny3 .

Speakers include:

Andrew Kain, Founding Chairman, AKE Ltd.
Richard D. Lewis, Chairman, Richard Lewis Communications Ltd
Pari Namazie, PhD, Managing Partner, Atieh International GmbH
Nick Hurst Founding Director Burts Potato Chips
Peter C. Pang  US China Counsel Dickinson Wright
Jenny Ebermann Freelance Consultant
Bobby D. Butler, Jr., Senior Vice President Global Partnership Management, Universal Weather & Aviation, Inc.
John Smart, Partner, Head of Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, Ernst & Young LLP
Nigel R Brahams, Head of Legal, EMEA, GFI Group

Looking forward to seeing you there and if you know of interesting research on the subject matter, please let me know!

Jenny

 

Bruxelles, Belgique

Brussels – A Cultural Potpourri

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During this holiday season, I had the pleasure of going home again. To those of you who are following this blog on a regular basis, you might know that ‘home’ for me is quite an interesting term. Usually, I use it for Brussels, the town where I grew up in and where I still feel very attached to.

For the first time in a while, I noticed something new when listening to the people in the streets, restaurants and other locations where crowds meet: even more languages than ever before. More worrying for me: I was not even able to recognize some of them, hence would not be able to say from which country the people speaking them would come from.

Since I lived there, many things have indeed changed in Europe’s capital. Not only have the member states passed from 12 at the time to 28 today which means a huge organization when it comes to elections; We now also have a single currency in 18 member states meaning that you don’t need to change money anymore when crossing the border… I still remember the times and even the exchange rates between the countries when this was not the case: what a complicated undertaking! I also remember having to show passports at borders and the need to explain what my different grades were worth in various countries to have the right to study there as no credit system existed at the time…. Wow, either I am getting old or things change fast 😉

What also struck me over the holidays was the fact that all these different people with different habits, worldviews, behaviors are living and working together in one city, bringing their own traditions, norms and values with them. What a colorful potpourri of people and truly something making the heart of a European Intercultural Chameleon like me beat faster. How enriching those encounters are but how full of problems and misunderstandings they can be if not lived and accepted with patience and a non-judging and open attitude.

2014 begins in the heart of Europe for me and who knows where my intercultural and mindful path will lead me this year. Maybe to you! Don’t hesitate to contact me if your teams are not working well together or you need to understand what motivates people from a different culture to become more efficient. My up-bringing and years of experience coupled with various languages and other skills will surely be able to bring you further on your path. Looking very much forward to it!

Jenny

Culture: a primarily physical experience

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Do you know the feeling? You are traveling to a foreign country where the people speak a language that you don’t understand. You have come a long way to be where you are now, i.e. you traveled through time and covered many miles/Km. You feel tired and need some sleep to adjust to the time difference. The food you have eaten doesn’t taste the same and you feel somewhat uncomfortable, as you don’t really know how your body will react to the different spices and ingredients. You hear some really strange noises from the street, again very unfamiliar, which you cannot identify. And more and foremost, you cannot understand what people are saying although you are here to negotiate and your business partners already came to greet you at the airport.

I am pretty sure that you know what I mean and have already experienced it in one way or the other!

What is really important here though, is to be able to decipher these feelings so that the learning experience in the new culture can take place. Following Ida Castiglioni, “cultural experience is primarily physical”, hence “(…) by learning from the emotion of the body, one can have a deeper experience of ‘opening’ to an alternative.”[1]

The above has direct implications when working with Dr. Bennett’s DMIS in the field of intercultural training, teaching, coaching and consulting: the body should not be forgotten when striving towards enthnorelativism (acceptance, adaption and integration).

During the “Embodied Culture” course led by Dott. Ida Castiglioni that I attended last week in Milan, the participants had the opportunity to experience for themselves what this actually means and how to leverage the findings for building up competence while working with others. In fact, following Dott. Castiglioni, there are three main areas of intervention where working with the awareness of self and body in the cultural context makes sense:

  1. Developing Empathy
  2. Acquiring the ability to shift into a different category, to shift ‘frames’ and
  3. Constructing an integrated multicultural identity.

For our example at the beginning of this post, this means that once you are aware of your perceptions and feelings and once you attend to them, exploring and integrating them into your cognitive processes you are constructing the experience holistically. The felt experience allows a person to adapt his or her own feelings to a new situation and thus gives way to appropriate behavior in a new context.

If this post has made you curious about the reactions of your own body when dealing with difference, try to look inside yourself next time you are in an unfamiliar situation. What do you feel? How does your body react? What can you learn from it?

Jenny


[1] Castiglioni I. (2013). Constructing Intercultural Competence in Italian Social Service and Healthcare Organizations. Research Series published by the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Pages 1-6.

 

 

Managing conflicts – an intercultural approach

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In the intercultural field, we all know about “high-context” and “low-context cultures”, theories defined by anthropologist Edward T. Hall who helps us to understand which powerful effect culture has on routine communication. According to him, “in a high-context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. Words and word choice become very important in higher-context communication, since a few words can communicate a complex message very effectively to an in-group (…), while in a lower-context culture, the communicator needs to be much more explicit and the value of a single word is less important.”[1]

High-context cultures would include Asia, Africa, South America and much of the Middle East; low-context cultures are more or less found in North America and Western Europe.[2]

Applied to conflicts or simply “dealing with difference” it becomes very obvious how different the negotiation and mediation styles and skills have to be when addressing issues in one context versus the other. “High-context communication tends to be more indirect and more formal.  Flowery language, humility, and elaborate apologies are typical.” Whereas in the low-context culture, “(…) people value logic, facts, and directness.  Solving a problem means lining up the facts and evaluating one after another.  Decisions are based on fact rather than intuition.”

Interestingly, very often even with people from the ‘same’ context, meaning Western Europe and North America for example (low-context), huge differences appear as to how conflicts and difficult situations are dealt with and managed. It becomes even more tricky, when the people around the table speak one language (English for example) but have in fact different mother tongues and own different passports (or residencies in different countries). Even though these people might be in a similar context, their “(…) communication style difference of intellectual and relational engagement provides a rich area for misinterpretation (…)” and their level of intercultural sensitivity, meaning “(…) the ability to experience cultural difference (…)” might also be a complete different one.[3]

An interesting study from 2008, entitled “Workplace conflict and how businesses can harness it to thrive” whereby workers attitude about conflict were analyzed questioning 5,000 full-time employees in nine countries around Europe and the Americas (Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States), found out that conflict “(…) has a bounty of positive potential, which if harnessed correctly, can stimulate progress in ways harmony often cannot.”

Interesting thoughts indeed… It shows once again how intercultural competence, sensitivity and related skills are necessary in order to address the issues of the 21st century where people are more connected, mobile and dependent on each other than ever!


[2] Compare also with http://www2.pacific.edu/sis/culture/pub/Context_Cultures_High_and_Lo.htm

[3] http://www.idrinstitute.org/allegati/IDRI_t_Pubblicazioni/4/FILE_Documento.pdf

 

Intercultural Competence – Can it be measured?

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While in Tallinn I had the pleasure of attending Dr. Milton Bennett’s speech: “Culture is not like an Iceberg, and Competence is not like Intelligence: The Ravages of Reification in Intercultural Theory & Research”[1]. As expected the temperature in the room directly rose and animated discussions followed the presentation. What sparked so many reactions was the fact that Dr. Bennett pointed towards the idea that intercultural competence is not a ‘thing’  – and therefore cannot be measured and/or ranked – as one cannot assume that it is normally distributed within a given population.

In his recent Blog post: “The Mismeasure of Intercultural Competence” he even goes a little further drawing a parallel between intelligence (IQ) and Intercultural Competence (IC). He says: “IQ was (…) devised as a system to rank people in terms of how much g[2] they had, and it is still with us today. The point here is that g (and consequently IQ) has no identifiable existence outside of our measurement.” When originally observing Intercultural Competence in behavior, whereby some people obviously had more of it than others, we directly assumed that the ones “(…) more competent had some set of measurable inherent qualities and characteristics that accounted for their competence”, hence something that could be measured.

One can easily understand why these statements cause so many reactions… it leaves HR professionals, trainers, coaches, consultants etc. with a big ‘question mark’, meaning a gap where the traditional measurement tools normally would have been situated. Exactly as in other domains – like communications for example – if you cannot prove in numbers how the situation was before your intervention and where it stands after, how can you show the ROI and show your value to the organization?

Concerning IQ, it is generally assumed that it is not the only factor determining how well a person will function in international or national teams, with employees or as a manager/supervisor. Whereas technical skills are important, different ways are found nowadays to express a persons’ skill levels; emotional intelligence with its different aspects for instance, well described by Daniel Goleman, is one example of a ‘new’ way of analyzing people’s competences when working together.

I guess in the case of Intercultural Competence, new ways have to be found to express how well a person adapts and others don’t. Certainly interesting new ground for research!

 

 

 


[1] You can find his slides here

[2] General Intelligence Factor

Research Findings: The Value of Intercultural Skills in the Workplace

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See on Scoop.it – Mindful Leadership & Intercultural Communication
Culture at Work: The value of intercultural skills in the workplace —A survey conducted by the British Council, Booz Allen Hamilton and Ipsos Public Affairs, of HR managers at 367 large employers i…

Jenny Ebermann‘s insight:

Not new but very relevant and interesting! Thanks Dianne for posting this!

See on blog.culturaldetective.com

On my Personal Leadership journey…

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Jenny Ebermann | Communications | Services

Here I am now. After having written a couple of times about ‘Personal Leadership‘ and how to create a vision for yourself following the 5 Ps, I have now embarked on the journey of becoming an associated facilitator of the method. It will take me some months of practice, virtual sessions, individual and partner work as well as a 5 days face-to-face session in October. But I have to say that I am very happy to be following that road so that I can not only add it to my portfolio of services to offer but also continue to practice it myself. Intercultural competence and being able to deal effectively with differences really begins with oneself. If you don’t know yourself, how are you supposed to understand what is happening to and with others?

Bear with me for more insights, online coaching sessions etc. and accompany me on my journey. Your comments, participation and precious insights will help me on the way, for sure!

Jenny

George Simons: «Persons are bigger than definitions» | Baltic Artek

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See on Scoop.it – Mindful Leadership & Intercultural Communication

Jenny Ebermann‘s insight:

Interesting workshop given by my colleague George with whom I will animate a LinkedIn lunch discussion in Tallinn, Estonia at the SIETAR conference in September. He produces the diversophy games, an interesting resource for organisations, trainers/coaches and teams alike: www.diversophy.com.

See on en.baltartek.ru

Intercultural experience in Italy

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Italy

During the holidays, I had the pleasure of spending some time in Italy. As some of you will know, at the seaside, you cannot bathe everywhere you want (you would have thought the sea is for free). You have the choice of either paying for a “bagni” or you desperately try to find a spot where you can plant your umbrella and sit (and swim) together with many other happy holiday makers.

Well, one day, I chose to pay for a bagni as I did not want to look around for something else (33 degrees Celsius is a bit too much for me for being adventurous). Normally, prices are indicated at the entrance, of course all in Italian with various exceptions and possibilities (like two chairs second row; or one cabin two chairs an umbrella and first row etc.). At this very bagni there were no prices written down but it looked nice, so I decided to try my luck. As I speak a little Italian, I thought that I should easily be able to get what I wanted… but no, I wasn’t as it turned out.

Here’s why: first, I met the “bagnino” or bath attendant. He told me that I had to pay 25 EUR for a day to be somewhere in the third or fourth row. He must have seen my incredulous face as I nearly swallowed what I was eating, as he then told me that the “capo” was coming… here I noticed that unfortunately there was a gap in my knowledge as I did not watch the “Godfather”, hence had no idea what “capo” meant. Quickly, I understood though, as another man was approaching who definitely looked like the boss of the bagni. He waved me in and made me wait in front of his little cabin, where he first had to take a phone call. Mindful as I am I decided not to run away but patiently waited for my interlocutor to come back to me. I then repeated my question and to my great astonishment, suddenly the price had dropped to 20 EUR. Being accustomed to travel and different cultures I then began to negotiate and finally got my spot for 18 EUR. Very proud of myself, I finally settled down at the beach…

And the moral of the story? Even as an intercultural communications expert you encounter situations that are not quite as you would have  expected them to be. Being open and mindful definitely helps overcoming obstacles and learning from the experience!

Thanks for reading and please follow me to learn more about mindful leadership & intercultural communications on a regular basis. Don’t hesitate to ask for online coaching as well, the digital age makes everything possible!

Jenny