How to Thrive in an Intercultural Environment: 3 Key Factors
Thriving in an intercultural environment requires a completely different mind-set than thriving surrounded by people from our own cultural background.
Where previously our experience has been our most valuable tool helping us to make intuitive judgments about how to act, following the same strategy in an intercultural environment will most likely lead to failure.
Our intuition about how to act is a result of the behavioral patterns that we have learned throughout our lifetime
The problem is that when we are exposed to new cultural environments, we will not be able to judge the new behaviors correctly if we are looking at them on the basis of the behavioral patterns we have learned in our past.
It is interesting to note here that often the people who are the most successful in achieving their desired outcomes in any given negotiation in their own cultural environments, are also often the people who are struggling the most in adjusting their behavioral style to a new cultural environment.
The reason is simple: they have trained their mind to analyse any given communication situation quickly and make immediate judgments about their best potential response on the basis of the behavioral patterns they have internalized. Then they execute on these judgments quickly and effectively.
Thriving in an intercultural environment requires much more deliberate and conscious behavior
The first key to becoming an effective intercultural communicator is to observe, observe and observe.
We need to put ourselves into the perspective of ethnographers, who are going out to different communities around the world to observe their behavior, take notes and try to make sense of it through processes of conscious analysis.
While we certainly do not have the time to study a culture for several years or even for months before engaging with it business-wise, we can put ourselves into the same mind-set of first observing and being conscious about analyzing the behavioral patterns that we notice.
If we don’t do this, then the danger of misjudging the behavior of the people from other cultural environments is simply too high.
Let’s just assume that you are an HR professional and you’ve been sent to Japan to help the subsidiaries’ growth processes.
While you are interviewing new candidates for the company, you notice that they mostly do not look you directly in the eye. Instead, they look slightly down. Also, they do not ask questions of their own accord, but rather expect you to ask questions of them.
The first few times, you perceive this as a lack of self-confidence and a lack of initiative on their part, as this is the meaning that you would attach to these behaviors in your own culture.
But then you start to notice that it is a pattern. The majority of job candidates are behaving in this particular way.
Sooner or later, everybody will notice that this pattern exists. But how we are behaving from the first time we are exposed to this behavior makes large differences on the outcomes of our stay abroad.
If you had dismissed the job candidates’ behavior as a lack of confidence and initiative, by the time you had realized that this pattern exists, you would’ve already lost the opportunity to hire several great candidates.
For every behavior that seems unusual to our us, we should ask ourselves the question: is this behavior personal or cultural?
In asking this question, we remain open-minded to discover a new behavioral pattern, which has a dramatic impact in which direction our attention is being guided. It influences whether we are dismissing a behavior quickly, or whether we remain open to understand more about its underlying beliefs.
The second key to thriving in an intercultural environment is to remain reflective of the observations you make and your responses to them.
There is no way that you will be able to understand a new cultural behavior right away at the time that you are exposed to it.
Understanding new cultural behaviors takes time, personal reflection, repeated exposure, and feedback.
Personal reflection: once you have been exposed to a new behavior, in the optimal case you will actually write it down. And with that, I do not mean a simple description of the behavior itself.
You can write down what exactly the behavior was, what was new about it for you, how you have felt being exposed to it, what you think the other person’s motivation was for using this behavior, and which beliefs you think might be underlying it.
Repeated exposure: Whether you do it as a written exercise or not, the important point here is that you are trying to see patterns of new behavior, and that you use your analytical mind to understand its meaning.
The key to understanding a new belief system is to look at patterns of new behavior without judging them, and instead to using our analytic capabilities to understand which different beliefs are underlying these behaviors and how they are interrelated with one another.
Feedback: without getting feedback from people who understand the new cultural environment better than you, it will be incredibly difficult for you to make correct guesses about the meaning behind a behavior.
Understanding a culture is like understanding the structure of a house. If we want to know how this house is still standing, we need to have a look at the different elements that are holding it together like its mainstays and the foundation on which it is built.
Looking at every single element on its own is never going to be enough to get a real sense of how the culture is operating. And even if we come up with a seemingly “logical” explanation for a behavior, we can never be sure whether or not this makes sense in the cultural context as a whole.
Consequently, we urgently need feedback either from people who have been living in the country longer than us, or from local people who can help us to understand why people are using a specific behavior.
The third key to thriving in an intercultural environment is developing our ability to notice, understand and control our emotions.
One of the biggest problems that expatriates are facing is the fact that they will inevitably be confronted with situations that trigger negative emotions within them on a regular basis.
For example, one of the things that I know will inevitably make me angry is the fact that people in Iran have a completely different sense when it comes to the balance between personal life and life as a collective family unit.
In Germany, although we certainly do spend a lot of time together as a family, we all also have significant degrees of our own personal freedom.
For instance, family members in Germany will inevitably understand that if you are locking yourself into your own room, that you want your own private time, whether that is for work, simply being on your own or any other reason.
In Iran, however, finding an extended period of time of being in your own room without getting interrupted in one way or another is extremely difficult.
Cultural insight: For Iranian families it is clear that they are a collective unit, and therefore the majority of the time should also be spent together in one way or another.
Since I usually come to my partners family in order to spend time with them, I do not have a problem with spending all my spare time with the family once I am there. I do, however, still need to do my work even while I am on a family visit, but it is incredibly difficult for me to create an uninterrupted block of time to do just that.
If I was to really give in to my emotions in that regard, it would probably cause a significant degree of discomfort between me and my family in law.
The first step in solving a situation like these is to actually notice that you are becoming emotional. If you are emotional and you simply keep going with the interaction the way it is, it is most likely to lead to negative consequences.
Secondly, you need to understand your emotions. Ask yourself questions like these:
- Why am I feeling emotional in this situation?
- What are the beliefs of me and the other party which are causing these emotions to surface?
- Which of my own needs are in conflict with those of the other party?
- How can I react to the other side in a way that is going in line with my own needs, while at the same time not offending the other party?
Thirdly, you need to be able to control your emotions. If you are not able to take a step back during a situation that causes you to feel emotional, you will simply not be able to go through an active process of reflection.
Without active reflection, you will simply not be able to understand why you feel the way you do, which behaviors and beliefs from the other side are difficult for you to process, and what you can do to resolve this situation.
What are the next steps?
Now, I want you to reflect on the question where your own personal weaknesses lie in terms of dealing with intercultural environments.
Are you really observing the behaviors in the new cultural environment without judging them early on? Are you reflective of these observations and do you really take serious steps to understand the behavior of the local people? And, how good are you at noticing, understanding and controlling your emotions?
Lastly, I would like to hear from you. What do you think are the keys to thriving in an intercultural environment? Do you have example situations of intercultural encounters that you would like to discuss here? Let me know in the comments below!
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