What People Want by Terry R. Bacon

Author:Terry R. Bacon [Bacon, Terry R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780891063612
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2006-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

Respect for Other Cultures

We tend to prejudge people and respect or disrespect them for often spurious reasons—ones that have far more to do with us than with them. Twenty years ago some colleagues and I designed an interpersonal skills workshop for management consultants. To help the participants appreciate individual differences and the biases they take into relationships with people of various cultures, we created an exercise in which each person received a laminated card that described the typical behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs of his or her culture. We then had the participants pair with someone from a culture other than their own and conduct an initial meeting between a client and a consultant. To avoid assumptions based on real human cultures, we wrote role cards based on fictitious planetary cultures: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Neptune, Jupiter, Saturn, Xenon, Krypton, and Boc-Roc. Here, for example, were the instructions for people belonging to the Xenon and Neptune cultures:

Xenon

You are from the culture Xenon. In your culture, people greet one another enthusiastically. To do otherwise is considered an insult. You typically grasp the other person’s hands with both of yours and shake vigorously.

In your culture, it is impolite to discuss business without first asking about the other person’s family. When you do start talking about business, it is usually to structure the discussion around the overall goal and aspirations for the work in an inspiring way. Xenonites frequently synthesize the discussion by drawing analogies to the family (e.g., “We will work together closely like twins”).

Xenonites are very demonstrative, so you should use broad hand and arm gestures, exaggerate your facial expressions, and be animated when you talk. To do otherwise would imply that you are not interested in the other person.

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