Introduction

Language is what we hear. Culture is how we understand.

Dr Deborah Swallow

The global business environment demands a new skill set and the willingness to push ourselves into uncomfortable and uncertain situations. It has also created a group of businesspeople who are willing to seek out new experiences in new international contexts and who gain a competitive career advantage over their stay-at-home colleagues.

These people are no longer just expats assigned to one country but real global managers: leading global teams within multinational organizations, launching innovative global products, managing supply chains and processes worldwide, all together with juggling more traditional managerial roles at base. Whatever and wherever they do it, they need to be able to switch their approach rapidly between different peoples and different cultures, and live with multiple world views.

We used to experience culture shock (‘Oh, did they really do/say that?’) when we travelled between countries. Now we experience culture shock just sitting at our desks as we engage with people in the workplace who come from all around the world. Trouble is, if we don’t understand the context behind what has been said, it is all too easy to take offence. If we don’t understand how to manage people from diverse backgrounds, productivity suffers and relationships deteriorate. Life being what it is, not all people communicate in the same way. However, just like you, everyone wants to be treated with understanding and respect.

The most ordinary thing in the world is to see things through your own eyes. The most extraordinary thing is to see things through the eyes of others.

Eilidh Milnes

The Diversity Dashboard: a manager’s guide to navigating in cross-cultural turbulence will improve your understanding of how different people think, work and feel. It will help you break down cultural barriers and guide you to a more effective, cooperative and harmonious workplace. This book is aimed at those who work in global corporations where English is the primary language, where staff are multicultural, and who are either at head office or connected virtually across the world. Based on more than twenty years’ experience, as authors we wanted to turn this complex topic into simple insights, and turn true-life case studies into short ‘culture crashes’. Uniquely, we’ll give both sides of the story and turn each incident into a ‘culture tip’.

Reading this book will help you to:

1.   Gain insight into the lives of others in similar situations – how they think, feel and behave,

2.   Acquire essential knowledge to help you feel more confident when dealing with people from different countries,

3.   Learn how to overcome problems and challenges arising from cultural diversity,

4.   Handle awkward colleagues and clients – giving tips and techniques for cultural awareness, and most importantly,

5.   Think differently: give you the understanding to make sense of cultural experiences – past, present and future.

The difference between this and other cross-cultural awareness books is its simplicity. This new book contains the essential theory and research which underpins cross-cultural communication in an easy to grasp and jargon-busting way. It is a quick reference guide for people in a hurry, on the move or, as we like to say, ‘flying from their desks’.

As a manual to apply to everyday conflict issues and cultural misunderstandings, The Diversity Dashboard will enlighten and entertain. It will help you become more tolerant and less judgemental – in fact, become more creative. That’s because solving cross-cultural issues requires imagination, reconciliation and optimization, not compromise.

Successful international managers reconcile dilemmas daily and see cross-cultural differences as an opportunity to get the best of both worlds. This means creating new ways of looking at and dealing with our differences. Not fighting each other about how we are, or are not, going to behave, but combining our strengths and avoiding compromise because that often leads to mediocre solutions.

Whether you are flying from your desk or from a train, boat or plane, The Diversity Dashboard will help you be more confident, interculturally competent and competitive in this rapidly changing globalized world.

Background: a note from the authors

Culture is a kind of unchained dark force undermining internationally operating firms at every turn.

Nigel Holden

Why this topic?

Unfortunately, most English-speaking nations have little concept of cross-cultural differences. The world speaks English and big business is constructed in our own image. We do, we act and we think business in our cultural mode, and expect the world to do the same. Therefore, when things go wrong – and they repeatedly do – we tend to throw business solutions at these business problems and never solve the real issue.

When confronted with cross-cultural differences, organizations expect their middle managers to miraculously obtain instant multicultural management skills. Everything is reduced to an operational management issue. The result is that cross-cultural differences and issues are managed, even marginalized, without ever building more trust between ourselves.

Compounding the problem, most firms consider diversity and inclusion as being more of a compliance issue than a sound strategy for developing business growth. When competition for both talent and customers is so fierce, taking a compliance-issue approach will seriously inhibit your competitive edge at home and abroad. Helping your people develop cultural intelligence will reap dividends: building on brand reputation, increasing customer and staff retention and adding to your bottom line.

Companies can no longer assume that all the smart people in the world are born within a twenty-mile radius of their headquarters...

Christopher A. Bartlett

Why now?

Until recently, globalization for businesses generally meant taking the ways of the West to the East. Eastern leaders were invited to learn Western leadership principles at our business schools. But things have changed. The reverse is happening. Now, Chinese and Indian companies are introducing new business philosophies on how to manage to the West, adding to the influence already exercised by the Japanese.

Also, corporates are recruiting from a much larger pool of diverse people with culturally different backgrounds. You will easily find, in any financial firm in the City of London, employees who come from Bulgaria, Bangalore and Brazil. No longer do employees only suffer from culture shock as they travel to a new host country, but they experience, along with their organizations, daily multicultural shocks from the numerous different employees that come and work for them.

Why cultural intelligence?

We are all internationalists now. We are dealing with foreigners in our own community, travelling abroad more, dealing at a distance with people from other places through outsourcing or email, phone and videoconferencing. For a long time it has been assumed that with everyone using English as a lingua franca we can readily understand each other. This isn’t true. And performance at work suffers. Those who dismiss cultural differences as insignificant because ‘we all know our objectives, goals and deadlines’ miss the fact that these have been fashioned in our own North American and Northern European image.

We need to develop the mindset and techniques to adapt our ways to learn about, understand and appreciate the values, ways of doing things and unique qualities of other cultures. It’s time to develop the intercultural skills that will serve us through our adult working life. This covers how we create cultural awareness, what qualities we need to deal successfully with other cultures, and how to operate successfully within the ‘rules’ of people from other cultures. Not only is this cultural intelligence a business skill for adults, but it is also a life skill for our families.

But it has advantages for organizations too!

Confidence plus cultural awareness with cultural intelligence makes for a serious competitive advantage.

•   97 per cent of British bosses think they should make a greater effort to learn about the business etiquette of other cultures.

•   96 per cent rely on the fact that most people in business can speak English.

•   62 per cent admit they find themselves ‘playing it by ear’ and taking the lead from those they are meeting or travelling with when they are abroad on business.

Why you need this book

Leaders at all levels need to be able to deal effectively with the cultural differences that can hinder successful working relationships and promote those that enhance business performance. The ability to connect with people and build successful teams in cross-cultural environments is a crucial competency. And building a culturally competent organization should be the focus of all global managers and HR executives. But how do modern leaders create effective collaboration between people who, sometimes literally, come from different worlds? How do they build trust, instil a sense of belonging and create a sense of relatedness? Actively creating cross-cultural understanding in a company is not just an operational issue; it takes a proactive engagement from leaders at all levels to commit.

Over many years we have worked with leadership teams of different companies and nationalities, and there is a clear distinction between the organizations that enjoy and embrace cultural diversity and those that don’t. Between those that see it as a challenge which motivates them, and those that try to avoid it. Between those that experience the tangible benefits it brings and the positive impact it has on business performance, and those that don’t ... yet.

What we do know is those organizations that align their people and their culture by creating a sense of relatedness and belonging, team spirit and mutual trust, outperform those that don’t. And that takes cultural intelligence. So, take to the skies with us and let the ‘Little Pilot’ start you on a journey of discovery about the world of cultural differences in the workplace so you can become more culturally sensitive. Throughout, you’ll find helpful quotes from colleagues and clients.

Enjoy flying from your desk!

Debby Swallow and Eilidh Milnes