Cultural Resolution

Yesterday I spent the day at a workshop presented by the Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research (SIETAR), held at University of Westminster in London.  The event focused on coaching and culture, with particular focus on solution focused coaching.  I got the opportunity to do quick phonecast interviews with three of the speakers (utilizing my iPhone and the free app ipadio):

Dr. Mark McKergow is co-director of sfwork – The Centre for Solutions Focus at Work. He is an international consultant, speaker and author of several books, including “The Solutions Focus.”

Click here to listen to my interview with Dr. Mark McKergow

Philippe Rosinski is principal of Rosinski and Company and author of “Coaching Across Cultures.”

Click here to listen to my interview with Philippe Rosinski

Linda Aspey is an executive coach, counsellor/psychotherapist, trainer and HR strategist. She is founder and managing director of Aspey Associates.

Click here to listen to my interview with Linda Aspey

This was my first SIETAR UK event, and it was a great introduction to the organization.  I’m now a member, and plan to become active (in fact, Chair Matthew Hill has already roped me in as a volunteer), so you’ll no doubt be reading more about it here.

Doing so much reading, I keep coming across great quotes.  Thought I’d share a few from this week:

“Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.” — Archeologist Howard Winters

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.” — Maya Angelou

“Sympathy is based on cultural similarities….  Empathy is based on accepting differences and building on these in a positive manner.” — Richard D. Lewis (from When Cultures Collide.)

Surrounded by bilingual and multilingual people as I am on my Intercultural Communication course, I feel quite inadequate with my single language.  For me, it’s not about the arrogance of believing that English is the international language and that I don’t need to learn another.  It’s that I have no talent for languages.  I’ve tried, taken countless hours of classes in German, French and Spanish, listened to audio tapes, used interactive computer learning modules, all to no avail.  I still don’t even have much better than tourist-level proficiency in any language.  I consider it one of my greatest weaknesses, and it’s a source of shame for me.  Still, I haven’t let that stop me from exploring the world, learning about other cultures and developing close personal relationships with people around the globe.

Since beginning my studies, I’ve been confronted several times, in lectures, books and journal articles, with the opinion that you can’t truly understand a culture without learning the language.  I’m not sure I buy it.  Admittedly I haven’t delved deeper to see if anyone has backed up the opinion with proof, and maybe my own lack of language skills makes me biased, but I’m sceptical.  For one thing, I’ve known many many people who are fluent in a second language, and yet remain completely monocultural, keeping their minds closed, holding onto their cultural biases.  Their knowledge of the language doesn’t seem to have increased their cultural understanding at all.  They seem, instead, to simply be translating, substituting words but not ways of thinking.

However, I do agree with Wierzbicka that delving into key words in a language can provide cultural insights. In fact, just learning a bit about the Japanese word “enryo” provided insights for me that I’ve already been able to put to use in my ongoing work with a Japanese client.  It’s not being able to speak the words that are important, so much as it’s understanding what is behind the words.

So here’s my own theory: You can learn about and understand a culture without becoming fluent in the language, but not without developing insights into the emotions and beliefs that are central to it. Studying key words is one way to gain insights, but I suspect there are insights to be gained by examining other clues, including cultural icons, foods, customs and other behaviour. 

But I still wish I could speak additional languages. And I’ll keep taking classes and buying the latest language CD sets.  In fact, just last week I spent a day at The Language Show, and took my first lesson in Japanese.  I think optimism must be an American cultural trait.  

Probably it’s just a case of the old maxim “when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” I’m completely immersed in research and theories on intercultural differences at the moment, and everywhere I look, I see obvious examples that illustrate just how big a role culture plays in our lives, and how cultures within cultures often have opposing values.

A column on the Financial Times website FT.com by Lucy Kellaway, titled “Why ‘chillaxing’ isn’t cool,” seems to me to perfectly illuminate both the dominant national culture in the UK, and the different culture of some groups within it, in this case, youth.  Kellaway is appalled at her son’s apparent failure to embrace hard-driving ambition, the kind of live-to-work attitude that places Great Britain near the top on the Masculinity index (Hofstede, p 84).  She speaks with such certainty about these culturally embedded beliefs that no further proof is needed:

“But it is clearly true: even though to be chilled might be very zen, it does not lead to success. To succeed in corporate life – or in any competitive field – one must be driven, obsessive and hardworking.”

While it’s clearly true to her, and probably to most people in the UK, there’s no doubt that I could find successful people in other cultures who would look at her statement and believe it to be false.

I’m not arguing that she’s wrong (after all, I share her cultural traits), or that her son shouldn’t be taught to work hard.  I’m just finding the article a fascinating mini-case study in intercultural differences.  It also makes me want to look into the cultural differences between her and her son, to understand the reason he doesn’t share her values.  Is it indicative of a larger cultural rift, perhaps between the UK primary school culture (which is likely more feminine and nurturing) and secondary school culture (which has embraced the more masculine traits required for success in this country)?  My research-focused brain is swimming with ideas and questions and theories.

Now, where did I lay my hammer?

Anyone who has studied intercultural communication will be familiar with Geert Hofstede‘s Dimensions of Culture, a way of measuring cultural differences across five dimension, including Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance and Long-term Orientation (for more info, see his book Cultures & Organizations).

While not everyone agrees with all of Hofstede’s findings, every single one of the stack of books I’m currently plowing my way through as part of my doctoral studies references Hofstede in some way. So I was really interested when I received a tweet from @DR4WARD telling me about an iPhone app called CultureGPS.  There’s a free Lite version, and a Pro version that costs $24.99 (or €19.99).  I’m trying out the free version now, so thought I’d share it here in case anyone else is interested.  From what I’ve seen so far, it could be useful as a quick-reference tool, especially for students (like me).  Here are some screen shots:

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who is using either version.

I’ve been working in and with international companies for more than a decade, often specifically brought in to help solve cross-cultural communication or management challenges, or to fix disfunctional internal corporate cultures.  So my ear has become attuned to the “us versus they” clues.  They never listen. They just don’t understand. We are right, they are wrong.

British author and poet Rudyard Kipling summed it up nicely in this excerpt from his poem, “We and They”:

All good people agree,

And all good people say,

All nice people, like us, are We

And everyone else is They

Sure, cultural differences — whether between people from different countries or within an organization — can become barriers.  But it helps to realize that the biggest barrier is in our own heads, in the us-versus-them thinking. If we can set aside our own cultural biases, we may be able to see that they aren’t wrong after all, or find a common ground upon which to build understanding.  We might even find, as Kipling said, that we are only a sort of they.