Working Across Cultures!

Over last few months I have been in midst of culturally immersive experiences. I have been working with stakeholders from Germany and from a few Latin American (LATAM) countries.

I thought I was well prepared for working across cultures. I have had a deep interest in knowing how things work across cultures and have put in my discretionary time and effort over last few years in increasing my knowledge/skills around this area.

So yes, I was not overwhelmed by the things that I saw happening.  But I can´t say that I was not taken by surprise. There were quite a few times when I had to improvise my way through.

I am increasingly realizing that what is important in working across cultures are answers to:

• What do you communicate?

• When do you communicate?

• With whom do you communicate?

• How do you communicate?

Here are a few dilemmas I recently faced:

• LATAM– Who do I contact? – I hear hierarchy is respected and followed.  But what do you do when in trying to figure out the correct authority figure to be contacted, you are losing out on valuable time?  Well! I chose to write to the most relevant person I could get through to. Have I managed to make progress in my discussions subsequently? Yes, I do experience progress.

• LATAM – should I speak/write in Spanish? – Most LATAM countries, except Brazil, are Spanish speaking. I know Spanish and I can write to my LATAM counterparts in Spanish. But should I or should I not? I hear they appreciate it if I an outsider were even to make an attempt to speak in Spanish. But in initial few meetings, it is better to be safe than to be sorry. My communication with them till now has been exclusively in English.

• There was atleast once where I realized that the LATAM counterpart I was speaking to did probably not comprehend completely what I was saying. I had to make an extra effort to speak very slowly and ask a lot of clarifying questions – that seemed to work.

• LATAM – do people across LATAM countries behave similarly or differently? I am sure there must be differences but I feel I am just scratching the surface in figuring out the differences in way they have responded to me.

• Germany & LATAM – I hear building rapport/working relations is important in LATAM while in Germany interactions are more business-like. Well! I managed to translate this to an actionable item. I wrote emails to LATAM counterparts with ´how are you doing?´ introductions and ´Look forward to working with you´ endings . With German counterparts, on other hand,  I got straight to the point.

• Regards, Best, or nothing –

o   I find American counterparts signing off their emails by writing Best. In India, we write Regards. I prefer writing nothing. 

o   Some emails marked to me start off with Dear while I prefer writing HI.

What is correct way to star/end emails when I write to counterparts in Germany/LATAM? I don´t have a well formed answer yet.

• Who adapts - you or your counterpart? I don’t think there is a one right answer to this question. You must make an attempt to understand and be sensitive – probably that would make the other person be understanding and sensitive too. Well, to be frank. I am not completely surely how I have been perceived by my German/LATAM counterparts till now.

• What works – emails or phones? Well! First communication will have to over emails. Emails are necessary to ensure that there is a common acceptance of what has been communicated. But I do feel that with LATAM counterparts, communication over the phone helps more than communication over email.  I sense that response time to emails might be similar across both LATAM and Germany – not necessarily the quickest.  But then I realize that my definition of quick and theirs might be different.

• Pre-meeting agendas- I am scheduled to have a meeting with a German counterpart in next few days. I was reminded of fact that they prefer detailed pre-meeting notes. So I modified my Indian way of ´we´ll figure it out in the meeting´ and sent him as pre-meeting material, all the notes we will refer to during the meeting.  I feel he will have read through all material before our meeting.  I hear this is not necessarily the case for LATAM. A detailed introductory email note may be a necessity to a LATAM counterpart (given that you are communicating across different time zones) but expect to do a lot of explaining during the first telephonic call.

This is the first in series of my learning´s working with people from different cultures. I will post more soon.

What have been your experiences in working with people from different cultures?

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Sourav

Equivalence of Goals & Rewards!

What´s most important step in performance Management? Goal setting – obviously!  You get goal setting process wrong, and all subsequent process steps possibly can´t correct damage done.

Should incumbents of similar jobs have equivalent difficulty of goals? 

Well! This situation might lead to one employee having a better chance of making an impact compared to another employee, & consequently get a better rating.

So what do we do? We have to be fair to employees!

I see 2 possible ways of addressing such a situation.

•  We could have a manager playing moderator role – ensuring equivalent (comparable) jobs having equivalent difficulty of goals.   
• We could also let imbalance in goals exist.

o  But then we have to ensure that the process is not deemed unfair. A significant portion of fairness/unfairness lies in allocation of rewards on basis of performance -  what is the rating used for  - how it impacts compensation/next year´s assignments/career moves also needs to be taken care of.  Since goals are for year, hence differentiation of rewards on basis of performance should also be short term (e.g. – bonus for the year, merit increase for the year, etc) and not long term (e.g. –career moves, succession plans,  etc).

But then,  I feel that non-equivalence of goals can be a by-product (something that happens because of changes in environmental conditions in year).  

At goal setting stage, equivalence of goals should be attempted, and that is a managerial prerogative.  This is important, because as humans we always strive for an equal chance to be unequals- and we trust our managers to provide that equal chance.

It is possible that even after this equal chance, the results across equivalent level employees vary dramatically (in terms of business impact) for equal levels of effort.  Environmental changes might significantly tilt the playing ground towards one/some employees.

Again, as managers, we can either moderate the results (factoring in environmental difficulty) or rewards in terms of business impact.

In later case, linkage of rewards system to performance system has to be tweaked. Since the performance is for the year, we should also reward (on basis of performance) for the year – a reward that at most has an impact for a year´s time!

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Sourav

An Inclusive Difficult Conversation!

How do we handle difficult conversations? How do they make us feel? Do we as HR/Managers unintentionally make a conversation tougher than it usually should be?

I had written a post exploring some of the question above. The post was published last week by Kaleel Jamison Consulting on their blog site. Do give it a read and share your thoughts.

(http://blog.kjcg.com/index.php/2012/09/an-inclusive-difficult-conversation)

 

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Sourav

Communities at work!

This year I am working on creating 2 communities – horizontal grouping of employees who come from different teams but are characterized by some similarity (e.g. – role, past experiences, gender, etc).

Why am I attempting to form a community? Well, there are changes that I am attempting in these 2 horizontal employee groupings. The attempt is to make the members of these communities far more effective at work and in their careers.

I have option of rolling out initiatives for them or to make them involved in entire ´upping the bar´ process (from design to execution).

Again  I have option of forming having a representative committee working on changes, or to involve the entire community – let them even own formation of representative committee (if that´s the path they want to choose).

So in essence, i am trying to create an impact on the 2 communities by working through community itself.

I am grappling with a few further questions.

• What makes community members come together and do something beyond their own self interest? 
•  If community has to work and make an impact, what is my role?

Would a community be different than a group?

I think word community has a much more involved sense – there is a sense of informality and also of belongingness/identity.

What are principles I can use to create a community from group of individuals who don´t necessarily work with each other/come across each other infrequently?

Well, I see 2 possibilities.

• Goals that inspire members to action (at times there may be no immediate self-benefit associated). 
• Goals pursuing which would further the self-benefit of members too.

I also see a possible hindrance- the need to show a green scorecard in a quarter (bane of stock market registered companies) is an opposing force to need to act today on something that needn´t necessarily yield results in short term.

How will these communities span out? I am not sure. There still are questions I don´t have answers to. 

I would share more as I create.

What have been your experiences in creating a community?

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Sourav