Bridging the Culture Gap by Penny Carté & Chris Fox

Author:Penny Carté & Chris Fox [CARTÉ, PENNY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749452742
Publisher: Kogan Page Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

All of us carry around very fixed images of other cultures. These stereotypes are often negative, and nearly always the result of measuring what foreigners do or say against our own cultural norms. When George’s client referred to the usual British bullshit, we knew exactly what he meant. On our cross-cultural workshops, we always ask the participants how they perceive other nationalities. And we have discovered that the image the Americans and British have of one another is remarkably consistent. For example, on one course we ran for the European head office of a major American company, the expatriate American managers said that, in their view, the British were:

always talking about problems, not solutions;

always focusing on what has happened, and not on what will happen;

gloomy (pessimistic) and depressing, even when they are giving good news;

rude and disrespectful;

badly prepared.

The trouble is, taking the kind of upbeat, positive attitude that impresses the Americans doesn’t come naturally to the British. As we saw in Chapter 4, our culture values understatement, irony and self-deprecation. Maybe that’s why the British managers on the course told us that, in their view, the Americans were:

always over-optimistic;

not prepared to analyse a problem properly in order to reach workable solutions;

boastful and superficial;

not prepared to disagree with superiors, even when they are wrong;

badly prepared.

Some years ago, Canning was considering the possibility of offering an e-learning service. We invited a number of software consultancies to present their proposals for a tailored solution. One of the consultancies was American and they flew two of their vice-presidents over to the United Kingdom to do some research and make their proposal. The presenters were friendly, dynamic and enthusiastic. They started their presentation something like this: It’s a real privilege for us to be here. And we’re very excited about the prospect of handling this project for you. They then spent what seemed like 20 minutes telling us, in glowing terms, about their personal experience and many successes. As they spoke, they showed us slide after slide, and animated graphic after animated graphic, taken from the e-learning programmes they had developed for other clients – few of whom seemed to be in the same business as Canning. When they finally started talking about us, it was immediately clear that they had little understanding of our training style or our clients’ needs. During the question and answer session at the end, we raised many objections to their proposals. Instead of trying to answer these objections, they simply said things like: We’ve got a lot of experience in this field. We’ll be able to work through that kind of issue when the project’s under way.

The audience were all international communication trainers who were more prepared than most to make an effort to bridge the culture gap. And if these presenters had been able to show us that they really understood our business, we would have forgiven them for the emphasis they had placed on their own achievements and successes. But because they weren’t prepared to engage with

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