Global Readiness

At the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, March 2013

"To be successful in today's business world, you must be culturally aware."  It is a refrain heard often, both in business and in academia.  Is global readiness something that can be taught in a classroom, or is a cultural sensitivity that must be engendered through a more kinesthetic, experiential learning process?

I will not purport to argue either point here.  I would like to explore cultural barriers as it relates to organizational communication.

A common problem in cross-cultural communication is ethnocentrism, the tendency to believe one's culture and its values are superior to those of others.  It is often accompanied by an unwillingness to try to understand alternative points of view and to take the values they represent seriously.  Another problem in cross-cultural communication arises from parochialism--assuming that the ways of your culture are the only ways of doing things.  It is parochial for traveling American businesspeople to insist that all of their business contacts speak English, whereas it is ethnocentric for them to think that anyone who dines with a spoon rather than a knife and fork lacks proper table manners.   

Uhl-Bien, Mary; Schermerhorn, John R.; Osborn, Richard N. (2013-11-01). Organizational Behavior, 13th Edition (Page 241).

The employee who is not only sensitive to cultural differences between themselves and their peers but who can embrace those differences will serve their workplace well.  Fostering collaboration between different cultural groups will help unlock the full potential of a global organization.  Uhl-Bien, et. al. describe what happens when a joint project team at Corning comes together:

American engineer: “Something magical happens. Europeans are very creative thinkers; they take time to really reflect on a problem to come up with the very best theoretical solution. Americans are more tactical and practical—we want to get down to developing a working solution as soon as possible.” 

French teammate: “The French are more focused on ideas and concepts. If we get blocked in the execution of those ideas, we give up. Not the Americans. They pay more attention to details, processes, and time schedules. They make sure they are prepared and have involved everyone in the planning process so that they won’t get blocked. But it’s best if you mix the two approaches. In the end, you will achieve the best results.” 

Uhl-Bien, Mary; Schermerhorn, John R.; Osborn, Richard N. (2013-11-01). Organizational Behavior, 13th Edition (Page 218).

This lead me to ponder just how "globally ready" I am as an employee.  I consider myself to have a fairly diverse background: as a child, my family hosted au pairs from Denmark, England, and Germany, and we not only fostered mutual cultural exchange but also kept in touch and traveled to visit them years later.  As a Spanish student in high school, I participated in a 10-day trip to Costa Rica, where we were expected and required to speak and journal in only Spanish.  That immersion proved invaluable not only to my Spanish skills, which sadly have gotten a little rusty since then, but also to my comfort living amongst a different culture.  In college, I spent a semester studying abroad in London, and seized the opportunity to travel throughout continental Europe.  From Rome to Stockholm and points in between, spring break was a whirlwind 30 days of rapid-fire cultural shifts.  Finally, most recently, I visited friends who were on assignment for work in China, and traveled throughout the country both with them and on my own.  Nothing is quite as thrilling as setting out in a country where I could neither read nor speak the local language, where cultural differences loomed large, and everything seemed new and different.

I feel that all of these experiences, along with other factors of my own diversity profile (explained here), combine to make me more culturally sensitive and globally ready than many people.  But how could I know for sure? Thankfully, my Organizational Behavior textbook offered a Global Readiness assessment, which is also available for you to take here (courtesy of publisher John Wiley & Sons, developed from "Is Your Company Really Global," Business Week (December 1, 1997)).

I recommend taking the assessment before reading any further.

The goal is to score as close to a perfect "5" as possible on each of the three dimensions of global readiness.  Items 1, 2, 3, and 4 are totaled and then divided by 4 to determine your "Global Mindset" score.  Items 5, 6, and 7 are totaled and then divided by 3 to determine your "Global Knowledge" score.  And items 8, 9, and 10 are totaled and then divided by 3 to determine your "Global Work Skills" score. 

To be successful in the 21-st century work environment, you must be comfortable with the global economy and the cultural diversity that it holds.  This requires a global mindset that is receptive to and respectful of cultural differences, global knowledge that includes the continuing quest to know and learn more about other nations and cultures, and global work skills that allow you to work effectively across cultures. (Wiley Schermerhorn: Management)

Of course I would have liked to have scored a "perfect 5" in all 3 categories.  As it turns out, I scored 4.25 on Global Mindset, 3.66 on Global Knowledge, and 4.66 on Global Work Skills.  I expected that scoring myself as "only" "Good" on the statement "When someone presents me with a different point of view, I try to understand it rather than attack it" was my undoing, but it turns out that scoring myself "Good" on the statement "I have a good understanding of the attitudes and perceptions toward my culture as they are held by people from other cultures."  I am of course peripherally aware of anti-American sentiment, but I also think that I disregard those opinions to some extent because I do not consider myself to exhibit the tendencies people dislike when they express that sentiment.  Thus, despite priding myself on my knowledge of other government, political and economic systems around the world, I only scored a 3.66 out of a possible 5, or 73%, on Global Knowledge.  I suppose this means that if I want to work on improving my global readiness, I should focus on learning more about how the United States interacts with other nations and cultures.

If you're curious to read my epic travel blog Kbc Abroad, check it out here.