The globalization of business continues to challenge our ability to operate effectively across countries and cultures, which is why a global mindset is an essential professional trait. Professionals with a global mindset leverage all that they know about their culture and the cultures of other people to react to situations in the most productive ways, all without losing sight of who they are.
Even those with significant international experience benefit from taking time to refresh and train their brains to be more global. The following five-step cycle can help you develop a global mindset and improve the quality of your cross-cultural interactions. The cycle begins with discovering and analyzing your own values and biases, which are rooted in a variety of cultural influences that span your life. You might complete a cultural values assessment to not only get to know yourself but also see how you compare to other cultures across various dimensions like communication style and hierarchy.
Developing a strong self-awareness has shown to foster a non-judgmental perspective on differences, which is critical to developing a global mindset. There are five specific traits that affect your ability to interact effectively with different cultures:.
Ask yourself how open you are to different ways of managing a team. Are you flexible enough to attempt a different feedback style? How easy is it for you to strike up a conversation with people from foreign countries? While these traits are all important, curiosity is critical, because we can all find easy ways to be more curious, and curiosity is what leads us to ask questions, which lead to the insights we need to understand the idiosyncrasies of global work. The Psychological capital: is the ability to be open to differences and your ability to change and adapt.
It includes:. A few years ago, I had to teach a leadership skills class in Rosario, Argentina for John Deere, the tractor company. Rosario is the third biggest city in Argentina and is located miles from Buenos Aires. I was teaching this class at a plant that manufacture tractors and I have been doing this same program for the same company in the US, Mexico, and Brazil.
Most participants were men and engineers. During the presentation, I usually made a joke about how engineers saw everything black and white when they have to make decisions. I had done the joke many times and people would always have a good laugh. But this time a guy in his sixties stood up and started screaming at me, telling me how I had the audacity to make a joke like that, how my joke was an insult and kept going on and on about how I needed to be more respectful and sensitive in my comments.
I was surprised and speechless. I only was able to apologize. I told that my intention was just to make a joke and never thought that the joke would be consider an insult. I was going to tell him I had make that joke in the US, Mexico and Brazil but decide not to say anything else.
The room was in total silence. After I apologized for second time I decided to keep going with the class. I was very surprised by his reaction. I am always very careful of working with people from different cultures and backgrounds. Who would say that I will be misunderstood in my own country of origin?
During the break a few participants came to me to tell me the guy had some mental health issues and not to take too personally his comments. But it was late, I felt really awful. Do you think I made the joke again? The learning from this story is that I am very careful when making jokes to avoid misunderstandings. Applying my intellectual capital I was able to understand that he may have a different interpretation o my intentions. I apologize, applying my social capital helped me to empathize with the person, clarify my intentions and move on.
I was attending a coaching conference in Orlando, Florida with people from all over the world. I volunteered to facilitate a group discussion and there were 15 tables with one facilitator at each table to discuss some questions after a key note speaker presented on the issue of coaching and diversity. Our job was to facilitate and take notes to make a report at the end of the session. We ended we less participants that expected and some tables were empty so the facilitators moved to other tables with more people.
When explaining how the Walkman was conceived, the Chairman of Sony, Mr. Morita, stated that he loves classical music and wanted to have a way of listening to it on his way to work without bothering fellow commuters. The Walkman was a way of him doing so without imposing on the outside world, but of being in harmony with it. Contrast that to the way most Westerners think about using the device: "I can listen to music without being disturbed by other people".
As we can observe from this example, cultural norms can lead to people having very different mindsets towards the same subject matter. Without an understanding of these cultural differences, the effectiveness of negotiations has the potential to be maximised or diminished.
To minimise the risk of cultural misunderstandings and to better understand that there is more than one way to achieve the same outcome, skilled negotiators give careful thought to the behaviours and negotiation process that make the other side feel respected and genuinely understood. While it is inevitable that a social group will influence our beliefs, behaviours and values, it is also worth noting that in the modern world a single culture rarely shapes us.
For negotiators, the upside of these wider experiences and conditioning mean our cultural identities are often broad enough to find common ground with those we might initially misunderstand. Examples might include belonging to the same nationality, religion, race, generation, gender, socioeconomic class or political affiliation. Avoiding Buyer's Remorse: Knowing when to close. Breaking deadlocks: AFL resolves stalemate. Changing Perceptions: Shane Warne recalls advice.
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