Managing People Across Different Cultures
During my time with the REA Group we grew the business from operating in just one culture – Australia – to one operating across many different cultures – from Australia and New Zealand through to the English and European cultures. When we started a small office in Shanghai and acquired Squarefoot in Hong Kong, we further enriched the cultural mix.
Now the challenge i always had was do i change my style to adopt to the various cultures or do i maintain, as much as possible, my approach to doing business and help move the operating cultures in each of the countries to a more common culture. I made the choice that i would, where possible, adopt the second approach as i felt it was more important that we had a unique REA Group culture rather than half a dozen different cultures.
“How did you make this happen”, i hear you ask. Well first and foremost i lived the cultural values that i have written about before http://myceolife.com/2008/06/what-makes-great-culture/.
Some of the things we did were:
Every time i visited one of the offices, i ensured that i dressed casually (rather than suit and tie) to give the team confidence that it was ok for them to dress the same. In many of the European and Asian countries the staff take big clues as to what is acceptable from the senior management therefore you have to be very careful what you did.
When i was in the office i would go out of my way to meet with everyone and say hi. I tried to remember something about them so that i came across as relaxed and approachable. In Italy for example, they were very used to the CEO being in their own office and really only talking to the team on a transaction basis. I purposely sat with the teams often sitting in different places each time i was in the office and i made it a point to have a laugh with the team.
Another thing i did was to have team meetings when i visited an office. The reason for this is that i wanted the local team to know what was happening globally and i wanted them to have a chance to ask me questions – any questions at all.
Finally, i always went for a drink and dinner with the team when i was travelling and i made sure that every one was asked along – not just the local management team. Having equality in a business is very important to me as it gives people the confidence to speak their mind and to contribute to the successful growth of the business.
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In previous posts you mention a lot of really important components to a successful company culture. To name a few: candor, respect, openness, honesty, integrity and FUN. All very important and instrumental to building a tight-nit team and a sound company. One thing that I have found very challenging in doing business across countries is specific culture differences. Granted there are a lot of things that humans connect on regardless of our country of origin (like what is mentioned above) there still arises complex cultural idiosyncrasies that when understood can be advantageous to know. One particular example that took some time for me to understand (a few years) is how things are communicated in different cultures. Miguel Gomez Winebrenner, senior consultant, Cheskin sums it up really well,
Think of American (or Australian) culture and language as an upright triangle. When asked a question like “what is your favorite color?” most Americans tend to then work down from that question and explain the reasoning behind the answer. So, a typical answer would be “my favorite color is blue, and this is why…” Latin Americans, on the other hand, deal with questions in a totally different way- more like an inverted triangle. When asked the same question, Latin Americans would answer something along the lines of “when I was a kid I preferred yellow because the flag of my favorite sports team was yellow, but then I started to like black because of the color of my first girlfriend’s eyes…etc” until after a rather long and personal dialogue they answer “so my favorite color is blue.”
I remember myself becoming impatient in meetings because I felt like people were beating around the bush (and I prefer direct and to the point communication), but then I realized that the communication style is different. In a meeting with a senior level person in my office we talked about this concept and it really helped us to understand the differences we have. We both agreed that it is true and identifying the differences allows you to adapt your style to the other creating a more common ground. Instead of people seeing my communication as short or dry, they look at it from a different perspective. Regardless of cultural differences all the things you mention on your blog about respect, being human and having an environment where people feel comfortable applies on any continent. Great post on!