I was working with a team a while ago where I had mostly British people on the team, and then I had two people from China, and the British people were talking all the time and the Chinese were speaking seldom, and the British interpretation of that was that these Chinese individuals were shy and they didn’t have much to say. But surely that’s just knowledge of the country and should be common sense?Įrin Meyer: Well maybe with something like that, yes.
Another example, let’s stay with China for now, is when I think it was Tony Blair went to China and he wore a poppy which commemorated the war of course, but Chinese people took that as the opium war and took offence. I think that everyone today is open to cultural differences if we know about them.Įuropean CEO: Do you think a lot of it sometimes is common sense.
If you get off the phone and you recap that in writing and you send that in confirmation to me, that would be a clear sign to me that you don’t trust me.Įuropean CEO: So what should you do should you make a cultural faux pas?Įrin Meyer:The first point of course is knowing that you’ve made the cultural faux pas, and then afterwards laughing about it. I had an Indian student who said to me, you know Erin, in India if we have a telephone call and we make some decisions verbally, that would be enough for me. You get off the phone, you put it in writing, you recap it again. So in the US, where I was raised, we believe in clarity, clarity, clarity. The first point of course is knowing that you’ve made the cultural faux pas, and then afterwards laughing about itĮuropean CEO: So what kind of things are we looking at?Įrin Meyer: Like when you have a telephone call, whether you should put the findings in an email. Those things have a huge impact on business success when we’re working internationally. But surely you can’t really avoid this kind of thing?Įrin Meyer: Well everyone knows you shouldn’t give a clock to a Chinese person, but what I look at is not these superficial differences that are written down in a lot of to do and not do lists, but psychological differences, what leads us to feel that someone is trustworthy, how that differs from one part of the world to another, or how we give negative feedback constructively in different parts of the world. Now timepieces in China are renowned for being taboo because they signify time coming to an end.
For example, last week we saw the British Minister travel to Taipei, where she gave the mayor a watch. Globalisation means companies have employees working together from all around the world, yet many managers have little understanding of how local culture maps impact global interaction.Įuropean CEO: Erin, we see examples of how you can inadvertently offend people almost on a daily basis.
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