Some of the social functions of communication are to share or discover new ideas. To test ideas perhaps. To try and integrate or refine knowledge and to persuade others. Different cultures have different patterns, different ways in how they do this. How they share unique information. How they try to integrate that. And I want to talk about these patterns a little bit and I want to do it in the context of decision making because that's clearly one of the priority areas for leaders is decision making. Let’s talk about the decision making process. All right, so organizations have to take decisions all the time. You have to take decisions all the time in a commercial context. The questions could be, “should we grow into a new market, should we launch a new product? What kind of innovation, what kind of knowledge is important for us to be relevant in the future as an organization?” Decision-making is something that happens every day in organizations, and there's a process that might be applied to that. What would the rational decision-making process look like in your mind? How do people go through making rational decisions? You have to focus on the objective you have to achieve. Yup. It's always good to know what you're trying to achieve in the first place. Then try to understand which people are you working with? so which kind of decision making process you. should undertake in order to communicate with other people. Sure, so stakeholders how are they involved, what can they share? So once you understand that's your context. What do you do then to actually make a decision? Probably I would take into account all the information provided by the staff and the resources within the corporation. What kind of information would that be? It could be new ideas for instance or the launching of a new product or to improve the process within the organization. People might have different ideas of what solutions could be, so you want to surface that and, you also want to get ideas about, not just the solutions, but also the problems. The problems. So they, you want to understand. Once you understand your objectives, and who is involved in this what is the problem exactly that we're trying to solve with the decision that we're trying to make. What are the solutions The alternative solutions. Try to evaluate, the problems and solutions. That's what a kind of traditional rational process looks like. Every step that characterizes that process is uncertainty. State uncertainty, what does the world look like? Effect uncertainty. How does it impact what we're doing? How, do we need to adjust then? That's kind of the response uncertainty. What are the right responses? What are the right solutions for a given setting. That is if you like the defining characteristic every leader has to deal with that level of uncertainty. Some people even go a step further and say it's actually not just a problem of uncertainty. Here it's also a matter of equivocality. Uncertainty is you don't know the likelihood of something to happen in the future. Tt's a problem of having too little information. Equivocality is the opposite right, it's too much information, too much conflicting information of what really is the case. And you try to deliberate what is the right way to read, or the better way to read that information That's the challenge, dealing with uncertainty, dealing with equivocality and that's something that leaders have to deal with right, as they make decisions. Now do they have to make all the decisions by themselves? Of course not. Of course not, because they won't have all the pieces of information so they always involved others. And they involve others in that uncertainty reduction equivocality reduction process. That's something I want to talk about with you. It is, how does this work in an intercultural context. The leader doesn't have to make all those decisions but the responsibility of you in a leadership position, is that you have to shepherd of the process. You have to make sure that people actually bring in the information that you need. That they process it in a way that is helpful to actually make the decision. then ultimately, find some kind of closure in the process. And actually make the decision. Or have the group make a decision. Okay. So there are two parts of the process: One is sharing information, surfacing information. You could think of this as basically a conversation that every person of your team has with themselves. What is important for me? How do I see the world, what meaning do I attach to it? They basically try to share that. That's one thing that you want to encourage. That’s the first step. The second step is then to actually, as a group, as a team, process that information, critically reexamine it. Now that we have that on the table so to speak, what do we make of it? How do we look at it? How do we make sense of it? Let's start with the first step. The starting point is sharing information. That's one of your responsibilities as a leader, to actually encourage others to share their unique pieces of information in an accessible way. That accessibility is important so that others get, if you share something, what do you mean by that? What I took away from this report is the following… I interpreted these numbers the following way… To share and shed light on on what your perception process is The information that you want people to share, you want that to be unique. That it makes a contribution That is not redundant. You want that uniqueness. And that uniqueness in an intercultural context is really valuable Because People literally see things, depending on their culture, in a unique way. Whatever your position is, your natural culture, your professional culture, your generational culture, whatever influence that is, that shapes how you see the world. In some cases actually it’s extremely restrictive what your culture does to you, how you see things. So in some cases it's a matter of vocabulary. So you've heard of this example right? That Inuit have have 15 different words for snow because that's what they experience all the time. They can really differentiate and see the little differences there. Others don't have that so they don't see the difference. It's just snowing. That's the thing, In German, for example, there is no word for understatement. All right, you know in understatement you subtlety trying to communicate something rather than directly. There's no word for that. There's no translation, and there is no concept for that either because you could say, Germans don't believe in that but they don't they don't even have something that they could reject as a concept in the first place. They don't think that understatement is a thing, so they couldn't see that happening, they couldn't interpret it. So in that sense culture really shapes in a very strong way often what you see. You want those differences to come out. You want to encourage people to bring that out. Once you have that diversity there's something you actually have to do to leverage it. You need to encourage people to share their unique views, and what you need to create essentially is a safe and encouraging environment. Just saying, let's put all our cards on the table. That might work in a German and American context but in other national contexts, it might not lead to people actually sharing anything. Wy is that so tricky sometimes? Why is it difficult for people to share the unique information that they have? Generally speaking we don't like to look stupid or weird or get into conflict. If you have a new piece of information that nobody else has maybe that makes you look weird. That you focus on something that nobody else has on their map. Maybe you're focused on something that others think is not important so you look weird. You might get into a conflict over why you focus on this and not the other thing. You might forget something because you have a particular view on the world. Maybe you think that what you don't see is very important, so you feel like if you don't articulate that you look stupid you don’t even make the attempt. So you'd rather not say anything. In an intercultural context that's even stronger. You're not only judged on the merits of what you're articulating, but there is the language barrier as well for what you're trying to encode and what others are decoding might really distort the message. That might make you look stupid, weird, or may get you into conflict. That's the problem that you often have to manage is to still encourage people despite those barriers despite those concerns to share the unique information that they have. There are a number of reasons why people might not share the information that they have. There’s the concern that you're being judged and all that. But when they share information, there might be some reasons why what they share is actually not very helpful to the group. Maybe they're sharing too little and, one problem that often happens in intercultural groups is what's called projected similarity. The idea here is that, subconsciously, You think that there is a subconscious parochialism. So you think that other cultures think exactly like your culture. Because how could anybody ever think any different way. Clearly, the way that I think is the normal way. When you do that, the problem is that, you make the assumption that whatever you say is easy to interpret by others. You might not make a big attempt of actually explaining what you are trying to communicate. You're trying to not build a bridge for others to actually connect with what you're saying. Because you think, “Hey, this is obvious, right?” This is trivial to some degree what I'm saying, and that clearly creates boundaries for others who really need to understand where you're coming from. That can be a problem. Now one of the things that you want to consider as you have your opening, trying to encourage others to share information is the fundamental differences in how communication occurs in different cultures. One distinction that people make is between high context and low context, those are terms that I'm sure you've heard about, so the idea is that in low context cultures, you basically get the meaning of what is being said from what is actually being said, from what is being communicated verbally or in writing. That is what the sender really tries to express. In a high context culture, on the other hand, The meaning of what is being communicated comes primarily not from what is being said or what is being written, But from the context, The situation, the environment. That could be the setting in which the conversation takes place. Who is attending it, the existing relationships between people, the status of the person that is saying something. Or the status of the person that they are saying it to. All those issues give clues to what is actually being meant. All those issues give clues to what is actually being meant. You don't get that from the words per se. You get that from the contextual factors. Clearly nonverbal so gesticulation, facial expressions, intonation, can also contribute to giving context to a message. So what happens if there's a discrepancy? What happens if a low context culture communicates with a high context culture? What likely happens is that the low context person comes across as rude and too direct, they're saying things out loud that otherwise would be put into much more indirect terms in the high context culture. Conversely, high context to low context. The member from the low context culture might miss a lot of the cues from the situation and not even aware that they should pay attention to that. Or if they do try to see what the context is like they might not have the tools to really interpret what all those clues mean. A lot of the cues might get lost. What do you do in this situation where you have different cultures? What do you do in this situation where you have different cultures? Maybe high context and low context are mixed and they are supposed to share information. Clearly we want to create awareness for different ways of communicating: different communication styles so people don't take high context or low context styles in the wrong way. It gives them a way to interpret what is being said and how it's being said in the right way, in a more empathetic way. Channel choice is really important. If there are at least some members of the team to which you're a leader that come from a high context communication culture then you want to use face to face so that you can get all those cues; even for low context cultures in some cases there might still be subtle misunderstandings that occur if you don't really see the other person. A richer channel makes it easier to read and avoid misreading what the other person is saying. You need time for this. Other people need to understand the different communication style, and they're not going to do that in five minutes so you need a little patience to adjust to what is being said. That's the information sharing part, let's talk about the information processing: the critical assessment of what was shared and How we should look at that. This becomes a lot tricker because now you are asking people to not just put it out there but to actually reexamine what they have shared as their interpretation. This carries the risk of getting a lot more personal to some degree, and to reexamine some of your preconceptions and some of your assumptions. The idea here for this reexamination is essentially that you only have a limited range of how you interpret the information that you are given. You're sharing that; you have your cultural background; you have your. field of experience that you have to interpret information from , but even if you're not quite sure of what the right answer is, even if you still have equivocality you're still kind of running out of options for, “How do to interpret this?” This is where an intercultural team can really be extremely helpful, because other people will have very different perspectives on what you you're sharing. It really increases the opportunities for alternative perspectives, cross pollination, and novel insights, that bring you to a satisfying point of interpretation of the data that's there. One of the people that researched this idea of sense making in organizations is Karl Weick. He had a great saying, “If you want to reduce equivocality you need equivocality.” That’s a very Weickian statement. You need people with very different conflicting perspectives to make sense of a situation that has very different conflicting perspectives. That’s where an intercultural team with very different cultural backgrounds can really come in handy. This diversity of perspectives that people bring in is something really to be cherished and something that needs to be protected to some degree. You've all experienced this. If you're in a group for a longer period of time, even a team, and you become more comfortable with each other, you become more used to each other; what usually happens? What sets in? Everybody feels more comfortable to act and to behave naturally Naturally, yeah…? No one is ashamed of his or her country, culture, and/or perspective. That's true. There's more comfort there, But also notice that over time what happens? The team becomes more aligned. It becomes more convergent. That's actually one of the reasons why people start trusting each other more because they feel, “Oh, there's this mutual adaptation process going on.” People make the effort try to understand each other, which on the one hand is great! They share more information, they're more willing to engage with each other if that's the group norm; but on the other hand, it really kills one of the key advantages that we have with different perspectives. So this convergence, this idea of we're all adapting to each other to find a middle point might actually lead to the value of diversity being lost. It's something that you've gotta cherish and cultivate in a team to retain some of these unique perspectives. If this mutual adaptation process happens where there are conversions in the team, a number of things happen to the communication in the team. So there is, for example, more of what people call illusion of transparency. I feel that what I'm saying is perfectly clear to everyone. I feel that what I'm saying is perfectly clear to everyone. Very often that's not the case. We know that there's more of this projected similarity. If I feel more comfortable, I feel others are thinking like I do. So again, I don't show my work as much, I do not make myself as transparent, necessarily. I'm not engaged as much in reinterpretation. There might even be a certain amount of “pluralistic ignorance,” which is to say I might not like where the discussion is going but I'm assuming everybody else does so I’ll just keep quiet. I’m assuming everybody else does so I’ll just keep quiet. I don't want to disturb the peace in the group. The peace of the team. We're not really leveraging all the ideas that are in the group. Those are reasons why I really want to maintain the unique voices that you have in the group. As you are examining those issues one thing to keep in mind is another key cultural distinction that we make between different national cultures, and that is the distinction between individualism and collectivism. It’s probably something that you've heard before: a key idea there is that in individualist countries people basically focus on whatever has to get done to be successful. That’s what they’re willing to do. That’s what they’re willing to discuss. In collectivist cultures, on the other hand, people focus on what should be done to together. What should be done together to maintain group harmony and to avoid conflict. That might lead you to very different conversational paths. Clearly that's something to keep in mind as you are asking people to reexamine some base considerations. Collectivist countries have a very hard time separating critique of an issue from the person that has provided that issue or that idea. To some degree critique is always seen as a personal critique. It might take a long time, and in some cases it might prove impossible to separate that out. You really need to emphasize this safe environment and this idea that you are really trying to get the best possible solution. To some degree it balances this idea of getting what makes us successful and maintaining harmony in the team, to not go too much one way or the other. That is one distinction to keep in mind. Clearly, you are pushing people pretty hard as you are asking them to reexamine their own preconceptions. Patience, again, is a virtue. It takes time to get there. We talked about many different aspects of decision making and how it is impacted by differences in intercultural communication styles. Let's try to put this together. Clearly, we have seen that having an effective way of communicating across cultural boundaries has an enormous potential benefit to decision making. If you can leverage the diverse views and diverse interpretations of reality for the decision making process you can get much better decisions. So. This process is not always smooth though, it can be a rocky road, it can take time, but that is what you want to enforce as a leader to some degree. You want people to make the effort to, give them, the opportunity to share information, to process that information. What you do as a leader goes a long way. You establish the norms of how information is shared and processed. If you give credence, if you give attention to diversion views, others will too. That becomes the group norm. So if you delay judgement and if you invite this kind of participation, that can really help improve decision making into a cultural context.
