You got rhythm?
I wanted to address a topic that comes up a lot in my cross cultural training sessions as a real frustration for many people working internationally, or even when working domestically, but with an international group of employees. I’m calling this topic “Cultural Speech Rhythms” as that’s the simplest way to describe this cross-cultural difference.
I’d like to describe a situation that you may have witnessed: An Asian employee is asked to participate in a “brainstorming” session held in a training room. The employees involved are from a variety of different backgrounds – many Canadian-born, some recent arrivals from Eastern Europe, a few from Latin America, and a couple from Asia. The “brainstorming” session has been planned by leadership in order to facilitate the creation of a new employee handbook. Leadership sincerely wants to know what employees across the company feel strongly about in terms of employee/management interaction and they want employees’ comments and opinions captured and reflected in the creation of the new handbook. Most of the employees offer opinions, participate wholeheartedly, maybe even shouting out ideas and laughing along with their coworkers.
But rarely, if ever, will a Chinese, Japanese or Korean employee act this way in the same context.
Why? As the mostly-Canadian leadership team is not aware of differences regarding what’s appropriate to say, and when to say it, and at what volume for employees recently arrived from Asia, they don’t create an environment where Asian employees feel comfortable participating, and for that reason, these employees may not feel included.
So what’s happening? If you think of a conversation as a two-sided exchange of information where person A speaks, and then immediately person B responds, you probably have a North American or Western European idea of dialogue. This works for many of us, and we feel it’s efficient, and “right”. It usually is, and if you’re brought up inside this culture, it does work for you. “Speak up!” your parents told you, “If you don’t give your opinion, you aren’t participating!”
In most of Asia, brainstorming simply doesn’t work. Most employees are not comfortable shouting out ideas, battling for airtime, or talking over each other. It doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t sound right, and it certainly isn’t respectful. How does it help for everyone in a room to speak at the same time? This is how it appears to someone recently arrived from China, or Japan, or Korea. In fact, most Asian employees would feel more comfortable, and more respectful, if each idea were presented, then each participant given silent time for reflection, to mull over the idea, to prepare a reasonable answer that in no way can cause loss of face, then offer an answer in an unthreatening way, mindful always of etiquette, social position, and the impact of the answer on the rest of the team.
But have no fear, because here’s an easy solution: Next time you are setting up a brainstorming session involving many different cultures, provide different ways for all employees to participate:
- Keep an email address available for them to send messages at a low-profile.
- Allow them to submit hand written notes with suggestions
- Allow them an intermediary who will take their information and diplomatically worded suggestions to management on their behalf.
Asian employees have just as many ideas and passions as their Western counterparts – but different ideas about what’s appropriate communication can get in the way of real knowledge transfer. So make it easy for all employees to participate – and you may be surprised at what you hear!
