The first time that I went to Japan, the first time I visited there I did the mistake

that probably most people make when they visit Japan for the first time. I went
there for a conference and the first Japanese person, the organizer that I met. I
met them, stretched out my hand to greet them. And clearly that's not how
greeting works in Japan. I knew that, I had prepared for
the trip, but my instinct was still to stretch out
my hand when I encounter someone. And to this day,
I do that even with my French in-laws. In Germany, when you greet family, you
often,
it's kind of a handshake hug combination. And that's why you kind of prepare for
when I meet my French in-laws,
that's what I wanna do. But that's not what
happens in France right? So I rely on 21 years of
living in Germany and going through that ritual of greeting,
always the same way. Kicking that habit, losing that is really tricky. Now you can
think of all other matters of situations that you encounter also in organizational
circumstances. You might be ask by a colleague for
feedback on something that they did. You might scan a business report for
what's the most relevant information. You might wanna, you know, you might
have to manage your emotions
in some situations and for all of these scenarios, you rely on cultural
scripts that you have learned over time. And you deploy them more or less
automatically, mindlessly if you want. One of the most famous cultural
researchers Geert Hofstede, called these scripts and culture in
that light software of the mind. It's basically mental programming
that runs in the background almost. You almost don't notice it,
it takes care of every day stuff. And the software metaphor I really
like because it's not hardware. It's not our biology. It's not our hard wiring that
determines
the differences in behavior between social groups or ethnic groups. It's really the
learned cultural
scripts that we have that make up the difference. So, let's think about culture,
this

mental programming, software of the mind, as something that is shared

amongst members of a social group. Something you've learned to pick it up
over time through imitating others and through active conceptualization
that you experience and of something that is enduring. Culture doesn't fluctuate
from one day to the next. It changes but it changes a little bit more slowly. Now
the cultural scripts that we have
are often the starting points for how we think about the world around us and
about problems that we encounter, how we
behave and how we interact with others. And clearly it's not the only
determinant of behavior. There is clearly our biology that
drives us to particular ways: The fight or flight instinct, for example. You could
call that our hardware. There is personality which is also part of our hardware to a
certain degree; so different chemical balances in peoples' brains make them
respond differently to different situations. And there are situational cues that
determine what you perceive to be the right course of action. But culture is an
important part of what
shapes our thinking, our behavior, and our interaction with others. Now, cultural
theorists really diverge in their views on how strong that culture influence is. On
the strongly cultural deterministic
side people would argue that culture is so deeply ingrained in our brain that it
is completely automatically deployed. We've internalized it so much that we are
not even
aware that it is an influence. We take it for granted. What our culture does is the
only way to think, to behave and to interact with others. On the other side of the
spectrum, people argue that there is an agency in
how we deploy what our culture teaches us. There culture becomes more of a
tool chest, where the individual cultural
scripts that we have are tools that we can use; that we can combine
to tackle problems that we encounter. There's more choice there. So here people
can actually maybe
imagine different ways of behaving and actually even adapt behaviors but they
are still falling back to kind of
their more comfortable tools. In either case culture does shape, to a large extent,
how we deal with everyday situations and how we
behave clearly in organizations as well. Culture's a really broad concept. You can
apply it to all manners of social groups, clearly national cultures,

ethnic cultures. There are professional cultures, organizational cultures,

departmental cultures, and even specific group cultures. In all those cases,
the function's essentially the same. It's rules and scripts for thinking,
behaving, and interacting with others. People sometimes like to make the
distinction between cultures and subcultures. You could think of the 1970s in
Britain for example: a time of some economic hardship but there was also middle
class that was rising. There was a little bit more consumerism that was
burgeoning in Britain at the time; and at that very period, in the mid 70s, you
have punk as a subculture, as a counter-culture that emphasizes
not clearly middle class consumerism, but proletarian values, antiauthoritarianism, non-conformity,
even anarchy to some degree. People have labeled that as a subculture.
Nowadays people actually talk about
this more as co-cultures, because the mainstream cultures and subcultures
can actually influence each other so they are coexisting to some degree. Now the
other distinction we can make,
is not just about the scope, how many people are part of a culture,
but how strong is that culture? How restrictive is it on behavior? How strongly are
norms actually enforced? So, my academic professional culture,
for example, is very permissive for
weirdnesses embraced. So different behaviors, different ways
of thinking, this is what we cherish. If you think about investment banking,
the culture's a lot more restrictive in terms of kind of conduct, dress,
language is a little bit more codified, and even standards of success are very,
very particular. If you ever think about
the effects of culture, they often think in terms
of overt behaviors Especially for social interaction,
for reading, for conversation, for eating together. Those are the kinds of things
that you
prepare for when you go for a trip abroad. But the effects of culture are more
profound, actually, they precede things that come before behavior even
becomes formatted or becomes observable. They impact cognition and emotions.
For cognition, I could show you an oval shape and ask you to guess what

kind of sport that is. Depending on where you come from in

the world you either have no idea or it's American football clearly or it's rugby.
Culture provides you with these
tools to interpret ambiguous cues. And it goes deeper than that not just
recognition but actually interpretation, what does it mean? Michael Morris has
this great experiment
where he shows people an image of a group of fish and then the head
of that group is a single fish. And he asked participants,
why is that fish ahead? And for the participants with
the American mindset their interpretation is that fish
is leading the other fish. But the Chinese mindset interpreted it as
the other fish are chasing the fish ahead. So that's an internal cause or
external cause attribution, depending on culture background. The other affect of
culture's on emotions. You look around you and
see other people respond emotionally to specific situations and that's what
shapes your interpretation of what is an appropriate emotional
response to a particular cues. Whether it is appropriate to show
emotions at all in the first place. So the way that you interpret
your own emotional states and you regulate your emotional expression
that's determined by culture. We can think about this as very constraining. The
cognitive constraints and emotional
constraints that culture that puts on us but I'd like to think about
it as an enabler as well. Innovation and entrepreneurship in the US. People have
often made the argument that that
really draws from the specific cultural environment that there is in the USA. And
the same argument can be made for
Kaizen and the equality revolution. That you can say that it can
only have happened in Japan, because of the cultural scripts
that are available there. At this point we can ask ourselves, where does culture
come from in the first place? The quick answer is almost from everywhere. There
are a myriad of influences
that shape a culture. Patterns of interaction

within a familiar unit, religions, larger social associations and

groupings like political factions. The education system. The media. All of these
spheres of social activity
generate their own scripts and norms of behavior. And they get diffused and
combined to make ultimately the mix
that makes a particular culture. And that's why cultures have
some extraordinarily complex thing to understand it. It's not easy to reduce it
to a few characteristics and it also explains cultural change. If you have these
different spheres of
social activity that influence culture, if you change one of them, it ultimately
changes the mix of the culture. If a country opens its media to
foreign media content for example. You would seize to some degree over
time an impact on the national culture. If you change the education system, over
time that would change the national culture. So sometimes those changes can
seem very,
very slow. They might seem glacial. But occasionally, we actually see these
watershed moments in history, where maybe change has built up over time to
some
degree and drastically cultures change. And I can think of the French
revolution as an example, or the Chinese cultural revolution, or
a few years later, the economic reforms, and their impact on the cultural
environment in the country. So we get that cultural complex, and especially in a
multi-cultural,
like in a cross-cultural team, that kind of complexity can
really make your head explode. To reduce that level of complexity, people have
developed frameworks to make
cultural complexity more manageable. One approach has been to actually dissect
culture and try to identity elements that exist in all cultures and allows us
to understand better how cultures operate. The other route that's been taken is
to
try to find differences between cultures and to then classify and dichotomize
those

cultures to highlight those differences. The framework that I like best for
the dissecting of cultures finding these elements is Edgar Shein's model,
the Onion Model of Culture. And it's been developed originally in the
context of organizational cultures, but it looks great for natural cultures and any
other scope that you want to apply it to. So I'm going to explain it with
my own experience here in Italy. We'll talk about the Italian onion,
if you will. When I moved here to Italy,
what I immediately encountered and what I noticed is how people talk,
how people dress, how they eat. There's a lot of art, and design,
and fashion here in Milan, and great restaurants of course. So this is the visible
layer of culture. The cultural artifacts that you
immediately encounter when you are in a culture. Especially you'll notice of
course if
you're not familiar with that culture. Now how do we interpret those artifacts?
What do they mean? I could have been tempted to
look at this through, you know, more traditional German lens. And said that, this
is a complete waste
of resources that people make and buy, all these frivolous luxury items and
services. It is not useful, right? So, I'm being hard on my own culture here, but
there is a tendency that we have
to actually interpret other cultures, artifacts from other cultures, based on
our own values and our own assumptions. And you want to avoid that, right? You
want to actually understand
a culture based on its own premises. So you want to understand values and the
assumptions that have given rise
to the artifacts you encounter. The Italian values that can help us
understand those artifacts are these ideas of dolce vita, sweet life, a life well
lived and the idea of bella figura. Both of this are really prevalent in
any time society but there are espoused values that people are aware of and
they can actually be critically discussed. So Italians at times very critically
examine what the importance of these values really are, and

whether they're useful for society. Now this is the second layer of culture. The
question is where do
those values come from? That brings us to the third
level of culture and that is the hidden assumptions. It's difficult to articulate.
That's why they are called
hidden assumptions. Even members of a culture can't really
articulate where that comes from. Now people have tried to do it. So there are
accounts that try to account
for where particular values come from. And a good argument can be made that
there
is a basic assumption in Italian society that to live happy and harmonious lives,
people need creative expression. They need to live in the moment and
enjoy life to some degree. That they need to have a pride in what
they do and what they accomplish. And only then can they actually
live in stable social relations and contribute towards a harmonious society
and a prosperous society on the end. Ultimately, the third level right,
the hidden assumptions get back at really fundamental assumptions about
human
nature, about what makes societies work. Okay, so that's the Onion Model. Right?
We experience it from the outside in and we wanna make sure that we really dig
deeper, understand the values and the assumptions, and
cultures generate from the inside out. Right?
From the hidden assumptions, how values are generated,
how artifacts are generated. This is across all kinds of cultures. The other
approach to making
culture more manageable and easier to analyze is to find key
differences that exist among cultures. And to then dichotomize cultures
to highlight those differences. One of the first studies that
established that intellectual school of thought if you
like is by Edward Hall. And he identified as one dimension in
which cultures really differ strongly is the degree to which context plays

a role in interaction and communication. So, he identified low context cultures,

where people assume that they have to really make explicit what they want to
communicate, and explain what they mean. In high context cultures where
people
assume that a lot of the meaning is already inherent in a particular situation
or in a relationship or even in a person, so they have to make things less explicit
and have to explain less, all right? So a fundamental difference in
how we interact with each other, that that hall highlighted and
that really sparked a lot of research. And it provided the template for a lot of
other studies that identified
other dimensions of culture. The most famous and the most widely used
study in that tradition of identifying cultural dimensions to classify
cultures is Hofstede's study and his four dimensions, right? So he identified high
and
low power distance. High and low uncertainty avoidance,
individualism and collectivism, femininity or masculinity in a culture
as is important dimensions, right? So those four dimensions were the original
ones, he later added short term and long term orientation, and indulgence or
restraint as additional dimensions and these have been sparking a tremendous
amount of research that use this dichotomization and have been
used in teaching very, very broadly. And clearly, then others have followed and
have identified additional dimensions. So Franz Trompenaars'
identified six dimensions that are kind of slightly overlapping,
but also add some really helpful new perspectives that can be illuminating
as you try to understand culture. Then there has been the global value
survey; the Schwartz value survey. And then there's been the Globe study,
which has been interesting for leadership contexts, because it asks people
specifically about leadership issues. And there is a very relatively novel
one which is human dynamics framework. Now all of these are very
documented online already. So there's a lot of good

material out there. That explains those things in more detail. We put it in the
notes, so,
you know, knock yourself out, and really dig into the details
of those frameworks. What I'm more interested in, though,
is not the individual dimensions, but it is more the overall approach
of classifying cultures that way. Because that is, if you think about it, already a
culturally very particular
way of dealing with culture. And what I'm interested in exploring in
this session is what that actually does to how we encounter,
how we engage with other cultures, if we have those dimensions in our mind.
What other ways can we find to
actually make sense of cultures that we interact with? That are more helpful
maybe. And how can we develop ultimately
a sense of cultural intelligence that really gives us a solid, a comprehensive
understanding of
the cultures that we're interacting with?

How did you get hooked on the challenges and complexities of intercultural
management originally? It was very much different my own experiences, my own
culture shock events; and working in a lot in international management, I saw
there's a big need. People crossing borders and there's a beginning to understand
more about how to manage cross culture situations. What was your first culture
shock? Being a German. Having been educated in Germany and in Anglo-Saxon
countries, arriving in Italy had been a bit of culture shock in the beginning. So I
learned on my own skin what it means to adapt to a different culture. Well, now,
it's your professional life. You're teaching here at the university. Yeah. Off campus
as well. I think it is particular because we have more and more international
students in our university. to whom we see that we have to adopt our teaching,
learning, and management style to the diversities we have in class and simple
explanations are not enough anymore to respond to the global challenges culture
puts on us. I guess here on campus and also with clients I encounter through
consulting, the first thing that often they think of and that they are familiar with,
the simple answer, if you like, is the Hofstede framework. You have done this for
a while, you must have gone over Hofstede a billion times already. Is that
something that you use? Yes and no. In the sense that we have to be very
thankful to Hofstede because culture and international management has always
been a very fuzzy thing. It is thanks to the seminal work of Hofstede that we have
today, not a single book or textbook on international management which is does
not mention the impact on culture, management, and/or organizational decision

making and leadership styles. We have to recognize that we have a lot of

knowledge also today on cross culture leadership thanks to Hofstede. Is it
because he made it concrete and focused attention on it? Yet, I think the
approach has its limitations. Tell me about the limitations you find. We are in
Italy, so let us take the Hofstede results on Italy. He is focused on mapping the
Italians on his dimension individualism and collectivism as being very
individualistic. Everybody can relate to this, Italians are very entrepreneurable,
very individualistic. Certainly, this is true, But if you know Italy very well, you will
understand that they are also very collectivistic. If we look at the family
businesses, the networks that are important, and think about the industrial
districts, they are all representations of a very strong collectivism. This is a
paradox. With these simple dichotomies we are not capturing this complexity,
and I think this is certainly a big limitation of these value dimensions posing one
or the other. Reality is more complex and these frameworks do not capture the
paradoxes existing in all cultures. If these dichotomies or the Hofstede
dismentionalizations do not provide the best guidance for managers and leaders
to navigate a kind of a culture that they are not very well familiar with. What
other guidance do they have? Since people usually cling to it because they may
be the one concrete thing they have to provide them orientation. I tend to call
them sophisticated stereotypes, which is useful as a first kickoff. This is useful to
a certain extent. The Hofstede dimensions? The Hofstede dimensions, but in a
globalized world, for instance, we can learn different approaches also from China.
There is very interesting research done in China. Chinese researchers, for
instance, Professor Tony Fang. He used the Yin and Yang approach. I can put on
the picture now. It is this very ancient Chinese philosophical way of thinking and
the way Tony Fang is conceptualizing cultures is very different than Hofstede. He
says, cultures inherently have these paradoxes within them. They are coexisting
and with this way, obviously, we have a completely different view. So he says, all
cultures have paradoxes, and Only the way they express is different. This is an
approach which mirrors our global complexities much better. Think about
countries like India, with a very hybrid culture and this also shows us that these
paradoxes in cultures are in tension, particularly in emerging countries and it is
up to us to understand them, it is like value trump. It is like playing cards, we all
have the value cards in our hands and it is according to the situation, to your
experience, the play you played before, that determines which card you are
pulling out. All cultures have this, that is what Tony Fang is arguing, the same
culture values. They just co-exist in different ways. They are probably triggered in
different situations. I like his idea of balancing and/or of keeping in mind that
there are these different elements that situationally you might come into play.
Yes, we have to become aware that we all use implicit theories. Whenever you try
to understand across culture, you cannot. We are using an implicit theory to
analyze this. Mainly we are mostly not aware that we are doing so, and this is
also a little bit short of the mainstream textbooks. Even though there is long
standing scientific research to see culture differences and so probably it is a good
occasion to speak about it and we should speak much more about it. Which
scientific orientations would you highlight saying it is a useful orientation for
leaders? There are two very simple categories. You are dichotomizing again, no,

I'm just joking. They are actually useful and very longstanding scientific
approaches; that is to speak about emic and etic research. Explain that to me. It
is been a while for me since I have revisited that. Etic research is basically that
you as a researcher are from the outside and you try to find standard, predefined
categories, how to classify the culture differences. Hofstede is certainly one of
the dominant representatives of this. Whereas on the other hand, if you do emic
research, it is basically that you are doing research from inside of the culture. You
are more like an ethnographer, who is trying to understand how people think in
this discussion, respective to cultures and try to think and pattern, what their
ideas are. So they are two different approaches. You impose or you actually kind
of grow with them. It's very useful to keep this in mind when you read about
culture studies because sometimes also, these etic studies, like Hofstede, or
another one like GLOBE. Come also, studying this same phenomenon, come to
different results. Hofstede-Hungary is a very nice example because in
Hofstedes research, Hungary is very low on power distance. If you take the
results on power distance from the GLOBE study, Hungary is very high on power
distance. How do we make sense of all? What should we believe? What I'm saying
is that it is not a question of belief but to understand what is underlying and how
we also construct culture questions but most over, I think by using the Yin & Yang
approach, that both of these things exist in Hungarian culture and here we see
that interpretive studies are very important because they give us an explanation,
which is that Hungary has a socialist past and has been very familiar also with
dictatorships. That is why people are very delicate towards power distance issues
and like low power distance and all the more participative democratic work
structure. On the same side, they are still very familiar with Marxist terms of
thinking, believing that capitalism is exploiting employees. There is a lot of
empirical research which shows that there is a lot of mistrust in Hungarian
organizations and this is the reason why you will also find this high power
distance category. This is a very nice example. Which very clearly shows how an
interpretive study is helping very much to give sense to etic studies. That is why I
am saying let us use it complimentarily. Especially because both extremes barely
come out of the same political ideology to some degree. So, or a different
branches there of. It shows you that you cannot just say communist countries
behave like this. There is actually a lot of complexity based on that ideology that
comes out of it. Yes. Both the high and the low power distance, for example. Yes.
When we are using different methodologies together you see that you come to a
much richer result and also interpretive culture analysis explaining the positivist
research results and I think we are far too few aware about the regular implicit
theories we are always using. That is why culture is a very fuzzy concept and if
we want to make it more clear we also need more clarity about the
methodologies in analyzing this. Do not be led astray. As in the example that you
gave. Which scientific approaches then would you recommend as a useful
orientation or important insight for leaders? I quite like very long standing
scientific views to see culture, which is that the emic and the etic perception. This
is a little scientific of a theory but it can be very useful to introduce this
terminology because etic approaches look at culture from an outside perspective
trying to define a priori predefined categories and dimensions in order to make

culture comparable across a lot of countries. They impose order? Is that the idea?
Yes, they try to look for what is universal about the different cultures and create
categories in what makes cultures comparable. Very important. Emic research on
the other hand, takes a more inside view. The view of an ethnographer, who
really tries to understand the culture on its own terms and it is very clear that
these interpretive emic researchers are extremely important for a leader because
you as a leader in an international environment, want to understand how your
employees think. Yes That is why these interpretive studies are extremely
important. We have to be more aware of what we are using and consciously also
using to complement etic and emic studies. Okay. When we use both, is it that
etic provides the general framework and emic just gives us more details? Or are
they fundamentally different? I personally see them as very complimentary. Okay.
To give you an example to where this complimentary analysis can help us make
more sense of existing research. Okay, so what I hear you say is that there are
different scientific approaches but they are not just helpful for scientists but they
help us question our own way of thinking about cultures. In fact, I think these
things have an extremely practical implication because it influences the
discourse, how we speak about culture and culture differences and it also has a
very practical implication because it is an influence in our way to analyze a crossculture conflict. If we just rely on one approach you do not get the whole picture.
There is always another story. True, and that is why these interpretive
approached are so extremely important to foster and for managers to learn much
more about how to incorporate this
into their everyday management life. Okay. There is a very beautiful quote from
James March who says that leadership involves a delicate combination of
plumbing and poetry. I like this very much because there is important plumbing
for an organization to function. These are the tools the processes and so on but
particularly in multicultural leadership, the poetry part is very important. It is up
to you to find context, the lines, and find the right words. Find the right poetry.
Find the right poem how you want to pose it but actually, on leadership I think it
is about. Leadership is always contextual, so it is up to you to find and to
contextualize in a well balanced way.

All right, folks. So we have talked about culture and seen how it influences how
we think, how we feel, how we behave and interact with each other. If you've got
an appreciation to some degree how complex culture is because there are so
many influences on culture. and culture can exist at a very broad scope: National
culture. But also very local. Group cultures, influence that leaders have on their
followers, so on so forth. It's a complex phenomena. We have talked a little bit
about how we can actually start analyzing cultures by dissecting them into these
layers, the three layers of the audience: artifacts, values, and assumptions. And
that we can categorize cultures Into these diametrically opposed poles.
Femininity and masculinity orientation, for example. Long-term, short-term
orientation. Things of that nature. Let us see how we can use some of those
insights to actually deal with a practical challenging situation where you have to

navigate a culture that you're not very familiar with. Okay? All right so I'm going
to give you a scenario. You are an engineer for Renault the french carmaker.
You've worked in Europe primarily, most recently in the Flans de Paris which is
one of the big plants. That means for you of course you came from Taiwan to
work in Europe and you did had a shorter trip from Italy to France. Now you're
being sent to Brazil to actually head a project over there for, for process
optimization in one of their plants there. Its the first time that you're in Brazil, its
the first time that you're in Latin America
actually, and your bosses know that so they generously offered you a one day
boot
camp style kind of cultural sensitivity training, where basically people are told,
you have to remember all this. You get a bunch of papers you know, that to
remember charts and pointers of how to behave. You sit on the plane. You are on
your way to Brazil. On the day after you arrive you will have a tour of the plant,
and people will expect some kind of a short
speech, an address from you because you're the project leader for this. So you sit
on the plane. You're trying to work out what that speech should be. My question
for you would be, how do you do it How would you approach this task of drafting
that speech? How would you approach that challenge? I think the first question
we need to ask ourselves is what is the national culture in Brazil? It is quite
important that you understand the national level. Okay, good. You want to know
what are the Brazilians like. You are in luck. In part of the training that you had,
you got these wonderful Hofstede maps of where different cultures are located
for power-distance and masculinity, and uncertainty bars, etc. You have got a
nice little survey of what Brazilian culture according to the Hofstede surveys is
like. You know that they have a high tendency towards high power distance. So
hierarchy is respected. You have to respect the elderly and the boss. There is a
strong tendency towards collectivism, so people are integrated into groups. The
group is important. You know that there's a tendency towards high uncertainty
avoidance which means that rules and standards are important to guide behavior
and to give people the security to know what happens. Also it means that they
really want to have safe spaces from work to some degree. Where they know that
they can relax. We also know that Brazil is a high indulgence culture. It's not a
criticism, just according to the categorization that Hofstede uses, people want to
enjoy life, and work, life balance is something that's important. You also know
that maybe the last thing that's important as you prepare; To understand that the
national context. Is that Brazilian's tend to be passionate, not all of them, but
often they express themselves very emotionally, passionately; and body
language is very demonstrative. Well, that makes this easier to an Italian.
Exactly, easy for you so that would be the the national context. Something that I
don't see here is do we know whether all people working there are actually from
Brazil? Yeah, that's a very good question. That might be the national context but
what do people bring? Let's say that the people that you're working with on the
project are Brazilian, But you also know that the boss the, the head production
engineer is actually an American. He has been working there for seven years

already. That means people there may be more open to an American style of
management. Maybe. Maybe they are. Right, or maybe that guy completely
adapted to Brazilian expectations. Right, so how would you find out which one
prevails: the Brazilian or the American leadership style? Since I am going to have
a tour with the company. I may try to meet the boss, or if I were to talk to him or
her a figure him or her out. Also from walking around observing people and
talking to them, I should be able to figure out what's the prevailing style. As you
encounter the local culture, even the organizational culture specifically there; as
you're observing the artifacts, how people talk, how they interact, what's the
cardinal rule? What do you not want to do? I shouldn't judge them or interact with
them biased by cultural perspective. Exactly, this ethnocentric interpretation of
what you see, at this surface level, is what you want to avoid. You want to dig
deeper, understand what values and hidden assumptions actually generated
those kinds of behaviors, those artifacts that you're encountering. Good. We have
the national influences. We have considerations of specific leader influences on
the culture at that site at that plant. Are there any other considerations that we
should be taking? I think another important factor is the organizational cultures
from our company. Yes, what kind of a company is Renault? Since it is a global
company there is a global culture. It's multinational. There are some standards
maybe that have been communicated and that people have been
exposed to to some degree. Knowing that being a multinational, how do you think
that would influence how you're thinking about the speech? Well I think we need
to stress the importance of integrated global cultures with the local cultures.
Right. Kind of bring that together. Make it fit. Okay, so any ideas? How do you do
it? What would you stress in terms of the global elements? I think we need to first
emphasize there's a global vision and that all the infrastructures are connected
on the global scale. Okay, so there's this kind of level of interdependence? Yeah,
so that also suggests that collaboration is really important. If everybody is
interdependent you have to collaborate across different boundaries and that
every part of that network and all the diverse skills and perspectives actually
have a positive contribution to make. You can even make that point personally,
because you are embodying that, you are a multinational, transnational, leader in
that sense as well. Yes.
You have experience that you can learn from these different contexts and you can
contribute to a cultural context that is not your own. You're trying to do that here
as well, in this specific project. Okay, that's the global side, what would you stress
from the local one? We can stress local achievements. Yes. That that would make
the CEO proud. And then also praise authority figures there. In that case it would
be the American boss the American boss So, so, he clearly has been
running this plan for a while. Showing some respect to the good work that he has
been done or overseen at least is, is probably going to be helpful. You also want
to sell the project that you are engaged in. I mean this efficiency optimization
project. Sell that as a local benefit It's not just something that comes from
headquarters because they, want to reduce the overall cost, it's something that
can have local benefits. It means that maybe if there's more efficiency, more

stress-free work, Theres less overtime; and less overtime means, you can
actually enjoy life. Enjoy life more, like spend more time with your friends, family,
so on and so forth. Really stress that this is a local relevance in a global context.
We have considered global strategy for the company. We hve considered local
issues local organization in your speech but you have not talked much about
yourself yet. People want to know what kind of person you are to be able to trust
you. What do you tell them? What kind of a leader you're going to be for this
project, how would you portray yourself? We should firstly understand what their
expectations for their leaders are. Some of that you might get out of observing
when you're doing your tour, talking to the head American engineer there. Let's
say, though, for now you're not quite sure exactly what the expectations are. We
also kind of know that you don't necessarily want to pander to those expectations
or go too far away from what you feel comfortable with. How would you approach
it? I would go for building trust and participate. You want to invite participation
and foster trust? Those are great instincts because those two things, fostering
trust and participation is actually something that works in most contexts Almost
regardless of culture those are seen almost universally as positive leadership
traits. If you focus on those, and there are a couple of others, clearly people also
like competence, and intelligence. So you've been around You have international
experience. You have worked in one of the most important facilities in Europe, so
you can really emphasize that you're very happy that you have a chance to
actually bring some of that experience with you. So the people want to know that
you're intelligent. People want to know that that you're honest about what you
are expecting and what you want from them. And that you're positive about the
whole thing as well so positivity is always something that we, that regardless of
culture, like in leaders. Again we see the opportunities in this project And clearly
it's also how you say it so that they see that you're a good communicator, that
you enjoy reaching out to them. I said that you honestly feel that this is great,
that you have a chance to actually talk to them to start a conversation about the
projects and so forth. So those are some of the universals and then clearly there
are also universals that you may want to avoid Any ideas of what people might
almost universally not like in leaders? Pushy? Being too pushy? Yes. Being too
dictatorial. That's one of the things that works almost nowhere. You can be
authoritative, but if you're pushing it too far, that's a problem. And people also
don't like leaders that are too egocentric, it's always me, me, me, me, me. Or if
they are too irritable. If you feel like you know that guy could explode any
moment, or that gal could explode any moment. That's bad too. Those are also
universals. Okay, so those are good things to stress. How would you
communicate it though. We talked about content. This is a largely Brazilian group
that you're talking to would you. communicate about who you are in a very
rationally way, or would you allow yourself some emotion? We need to express
our emotion a little bit. Yes, a little bit, why? Yes, because we know that Brazil are
quite blunt about their feelings. We need to get. You know communicating the
way we are used to. Lets say they are more honest about their emotions. You
want to allow yourself a little more leeway there, especially if it's an emotional
context where it's a little more controlled. Here you know you can let it go a little
bit more. Doesn't mean you go crazy emotional because that would be

inauthentic you would feel uncomfortable you would see it. But, you also know
that you can allow yourself a little bit more room there. Even for you. Yes, sir. But
can we say that adapting our way of communicating to the other culture, is more
important than adapting rules or content in a way. This case we are more
emotional because they are emotional. It's kind of more important than being too
participative for instance. I like that. When we talk about needing to have this
global perspective as well this is basically what they should focus on. This is
basically the content of what you want to do as a leader is have this global
orientation, but how do you get it done? You can actually provide a little bit more,
adapt a little bit more to local expectations. And certainly in this context. You
could do that. I really liked that even though we started with the idea of specific
Brazilian characteristics that by and large, we try to avoid stereotyping by
considering these different cultural influences we have as well. The American
leader that was there, the organizational culture and all that and that you
suggested that we really kind of balance multiple things here right, balance the
global and local. We balance the emphasis on the competence of the leader. you
could be a good leader, good engineer for this project, with a little bit of
emotionality and warmth so you're more relatable. Which is important to build
trust with people there. I think that will give you kind of a good start in this, in
this scenario. And it might even help kind of the organization also to develop an
orientation towards, or a capacity for this transnational or leadership approach
That's not pandering to local specificities. But is really taking a more, kind of
transnational approach.
So you've seen that the cultures have
re-embedded and can have a very strong impact on our behavior,
our cognition, or on our emotions. And when we're dealing with cultures,
our own or others', it can be a very tangled web, even within
just one country or one organization. All these different subcultures or
co-cultures all influencing each other. It's all changing and evolving. It can really
make your head explode. At the very least, be mindful of all
this cultural complexity and dynamism. It will occupy a lot of your head space. So
it seems like you need a special
kind of intelligence for this. And it's not the logical,
mathematical kind of intelligence, the one that we're measuring as IQ, or the
one that basically the entire European and U.S. American education
system is based on and what we emphasize traditionally in
business and management education. There's this idea that there's different

kinds of intelligences that have been used to solve different kinds of problems.
That's an old one right? So Howard Gardner had proposed
that originally in the 1980s and he had proposed initially eight
distinct sets of intelligences and I'll get that people have different mixes,
different blends of these intelligences. And two those dimensions that he
identified, they are the intrapersonal and the interpersonal. Those were the basis
for Daniel Goldman's
concept of emotional intelligence, which has become very,
very popular in leadership circles. So that's what we call the EQ, not the IQ. Now
emotional intelligence is good, right? I'm not gonna argue with that. But what
international leadership
scholars have argued is that emotional intelligence, per se, is not
enough if you are international leader, if you operate in a multi-cultural,
cross-cultural setting. Because you might be very
emotionally competent, but if our emotions are also embedded in
the culture that we are a part of. Right, if our understanding
of our own emotions and others, if those understandings
are culturally contingent, then you might understand emotions
in your own cultural context but not necessarily emotional dynamics
in another cultural context. And that might lead you to actually
misinterpret emotional cues. And boy,
that can really go wrong if that happens. So ultimately, what you need then,
it's not just emotional intelligence, but you need, you guessed it,
cultural intelligence. So it's the cultural intelligence,
right, that allows you to be effective when you're dealing with
emotions and with relational issues. In an intercultural,
cross-cultural context. Now, Christopher Earley and
Elaine Mosakowski gave a really nice, simple framework for
thinking about cultural intelligence. And they are one of those scholars
that are actually interested in bringing together

the cultural perspective and the psychological perspective that

really focus on the individual. And they're the basic
conceders that we have a, what they call a cultural self-knowledge. So this is our
understanding of our
own cultural identity, both our ethnic national kind of belonging, but also,
the roles that we have in organizations, in our community, in our family,
so on and so forth. And this self-knowledge acts as a filter
through which we basically process our cultural experiences and
that forms how we react to them. So if my self-knowledge, my cultural
self-knowledge is that, I'm German, my parents are German, I was educated in
Germany, I have German business partners, and that mindset, right,
that orientation, that self-knowledge, that will be the filter through
which I will process all my new cultural experiences doing business
in Saudi Arabia, or China, or Brazil. If my self-knowledge,
my cultural self-knowledge is that I am a cosmopolitan, right, that I have lived
and worked in many different countries and I have friends in different countries,
business partners in many different countries, then that understanding,
that will inform how I process new cultural experiences and
how I respond to them as well. So it's my cultural self knowledge that
influences my condition of other cultures, my attitude towards and my motivation
to engage with other cultures and also my ability to actually
interact in another culture. And those are the three elements of
Christopher and Elaine's framework and I think it's really nice,
really catchy, very easy to remember. Their argument is that cultural
intelligence basically resides in the head, in the heart, and in the body. So the
head is all about thinking. So this is the basic cognitive tools and
processes that you employ to make sense of culture and this feeds from
your.understanding of general differences of commonalities across culture, but
also your specific knowledge of particular artifacts and concepts from the
particular

culture that you are interacting with. So you could, for example, if you look at this
symbol right here if
recognize that from an American context, or if you're understanding concepts
like [FOREIGN] in an Indian context and how that matters to leadership,
especially transformation leadership. That knowledge helps you
to relate to others and to be more effective as a leader
as you deal with those cultures. But it's still fairly basic head work,
right? So this is still about you cramming facts
about culture in your head, ultimately. So, a more advanced stage,
would actually be to develop, what you would call meta cognitive skills. So this is
a generalized learning ability,
for example, that you could learn quickly about
culture, any culture really. And that you are aware of the limits
of your own cultural understanding and limits of cultural models, for example. So
those things are more
advanced cognitive skills, cognitive tools, if you will. And that would mean kind
of,
in the model, a bigger, stronger head. So this is the head and
then we have the heart. The heart is energizing your body. This is about
energizing your actions
ultimately and this describes your confidence and your motivation to
actually engage with other cultures. And it's also to a certain
degree about resilience. As you encounter new culture there is going to be some
degree of
misunderstanding and frustration. Many of you have seen these
culture clash curves, right? We have this initial high of euphoria and
then a deep valley of frustration and despair and homesickness,
you're longing for your own culture. A strong heart,
that is what gets you through that low, right, that's why keeps you trying,
keeps you engages with the other culture. For me it's really a matter
of attitude right. So do you approach another culture

with an openness, with a flexibility, willingness to adapt where

you see the necessity. Carlos Ghosn had this great statement
in one of the interviews that he gave, where he said that when he encounters
a new culture, he's not anxious about it, he's just curious. And I think that's really
a great,
great attitude. That's a great heart. Okay, so we had the head, the heart,
and then we have the body, and the body is all about your ability to act and
interact effectively in another culture. And clearly you might have a great head,
you think right about the culture,
you have a big heart, but if you're body is weak you can't really
execute as a leader in another culture. You can't be effective. So here we are
essentially talking
about skills, communication skills, motivation skills, being able to build
relationships and resolving conflict. So yeah, it's not a coincidence that we're
talking a exactly about those skill sets later on in the course. Now all three as
we've seen
depend on each other, right? If you have great communication skills but
you don't have cultural knowledge or the motivation to actually
direct those skills, to be adaptive to the needs of the other
culture in which you're operating. You're not gonna be very effective, right? So
you really wanna think systemically how
you can develop the head, the heart, and the body, right? To really boost your
cultural intelligence and this is ultimately what allows you
to transition from a moral cultural orientation where you're basically
denying or avoiding cultural differences. To a really multicultural orientation and
beyond that a trends cultural
orientation but you are embracing, you're adapting to cultural
differences and then trans cultural. You're transcending those differences. That's
how I think the framework helps. Now when I talk to Bocconi alumni, I want to get
a sense of how they develop
their own cultural intelligence, their CQ. What they told me shows me that
everybody really has a slightly

different path to that. Everybody finds their own way of

developing their cultural intelligence. >> I'm gonna crack a joke here,
but I was born prepared. [LAUGH] I'll be a bit more specific. When I was 10,
my father was expatriated to France, and that was, unfortunately 40 years ago.
So I had my first impact with
a different culture when I was ten. At 14, my father was expatriated
to the United States. And so and in France I went to
the Italian Lissez in Paris. In the states I went to normal
American public school. I didn't speak a word of English. The impact with the
American culture which
I had four years ago was very different. An hours in Italy. Now they're getting
closer obviously,
hour of media. So I have my impact on cultural
differences relatively young age. And to some extent that prepared me for
my adventures later in life. Look I don't know. >> Honestly, how you prepare in
theory,
in a sense that I had, all my life, I've been extremely curious. In sense of
curiosity,
it means you see things, whatever, it can be in your professional field,
it can be in any other fields. A classic example,
if I decided to go to bed but I switch on the Discovery Channel
going out, that's a bad thing because I'm gonna be stuck in front of
the television for next couple of hours. So I think there is a level of curiosity
which depends on each of us, and I always had this desire, very strong desire of
knowing
different places and different people. When I finished University I had no
idea what I was gonna do in terms of business function. I didn't have any theory
or
idea honestly but what I did want to is to have
an experience around the world and get exposed and
get lost if you wish in many situations. So I think to have the courage

of simply not knowing It's what puts you in the condition

to better understand. I believe leadership is all about
being yourself, being honest, open about your weaknesses. If you cannot open
your weakness
to the people around you it's gonna be very difficult for
people to trust you. It's just a matter of authenticity. I wouldn't stick around
somebody
that I don't feel is authentic. That works with all culture overall. I would say that
difference is there how,
I mean, I was in China many years. I was in Latin America many years. And you
may argue that people
are completely different or you may argue people
are amazingly similar. The package is different. I would say the how and
the when is different. That you know initial cultural conflict
is not something that you know is specifically appreciated and if you
actually get upset it's seen as a sign of weakness in certain cultures
where control is so important. So to me it's very important that first
of all you, when you look around and you have to operate in a position,
first of all you have to listen. Which is not something that this
Italian works that well with me, but I'm still learning. But normally when we hear
a question,
it's all about us answering. And actually the big effort should be to
understand the why the question is asked. That's the big difference because
in some situations when you have cultural differences
the why is very important. So that you relate to the person and
you can give. The person an answer while you're
learning in the mean time. >> Look the biggest challenge when
you move from place to place but you remain in a relatively homogeneous
cultural context which you were based. Which my perspective now having
now been an agent having seen the real difference it's really to,

that's the biggest challenge when you move at any level

is to know what you don't know. It's so easy to make
assumptions as to similarities. It's a lot more difficult to know what you
don't know, which are the differences. Differences in systems and
models and cultures, to some extent. Again. Difference in consumers and
as you deal with customers, depending on which business you enter. And to know
what you don't
know is really the trick. And to be very inquisitive, never to give anything for
granted or for similar. Because we do it one way in a particular
country or geography, it doesn't necessarily mean that even if the country
next door does it exactly the same. Again I found out that what I thought
were big differences between Italy, Switzerland, Spain, France,
and Portugal were actually not that big when I came in Asia which is of
course very, very different from Europe. But also, within itself,
very very diverse. My responsibility ranged from Pakistan,
to China, to Japan, to Australia. And I'd be hard pressed to find
similarities between Pakistanis and Japanese, from a cultural,
religious tradition point of view. So that's when you appreciate
how different the world is and you appreciate how little you know
about it and that's where your exercising and questioning comes in handy. Cuz
then you really have to
you really have to understand to get to know what you don't know and you
have to encourage people to let you know, and this is very important full
part that your about to make. You have to up front if you're
going to make them because of the cultural traditions and
so forth systems and consumer customers I think they
very often very different. You have to acknowledge that
you'll make some missteps but you have to do is encourage the people
around you to be open and tell you stop, boss that's the wrong direction

because and then you learn stuff. That's part of the necessary open
mindedness that one has to have, I believe. That's my personal opinion. >> I
mean I just to give you an idea. I moved from Latin America to China. >> Yeah.
>> Now that's kind of
a little bit extreme. I was used to a management committee
in Latin America where if you had a discussion, you had to come and
stop people because it was. I don't wanna say it was a fist fight. But I mean it was
that people didn't
need encouragement to express their own opinion. >> I can see that. >> So I
was used to people really
getting back into my face. Telling me simply, look,
I think that's good, or that's bad, you know, those are the reasons. And the
beginning was over, and that's it. Now, in China, when I arrived. And I was asking
questions. The answer was never a yes or no. Was always we'll see type
of thing you know because nobody really knew and
nobody wanted to lose face at the end. Chinese is very important
concept about not losing face saying someday that maybe I would have
decided that we were not going to do it. So the way I managed things
was really have a number of face-to-face meetings
to clear up things. And the meeting let's say
when it was all people, was at the beginning more together
alignment more than discussing it. >> Uh-huh. >> Now eventually you want to
create
a culture where disagreeing is fine. By next time. And we eventually actually got
there. But, I mean, is the level of the feedback. I had, when I was in China,
I was a very interesting thing. Cuz we had a joint venture at that point
in time when I was [INAUDIBLE] Johnson. There was a part of the company that
was
owned by the state owned enterprise. And the representative was
a member of the Communist party that I had in
the management committee. And was a very wise person by the way and
one day the guy looked at me and we were discussing a topic,

and he told me, you know Luca,

you shouldn't look at what is written. You should look what is not written. And I
think again, as Westerners,
we tend to [SOUND] you know? Okay, one, two, three, let's go and
that doesn't work in all culture. So, I think, those are examples where I
had to kinda do a reset of my Italian temperament and slow down a little bit. >>
[LAUGH]
>> With everyone, every market that I visited for
the first time of course I made my little introduction of myself or
yesterday who I was. And I immediately apologize for any
cultural mistake I was going to make or anything that I might have said that
will be offensive to the culture and I promised that I would take in some
advice from everybody to avoid that. I made myself very available. In the need of
that is that I found
important in a number of ways. Given that the Asian culture is very, in some
markets more than others,
it's very hierarchical. If you don't make yourself really open and really available
and
you should leave examples and actions, you're not gonna get a lot of
feedback, especially not initially. So the missteps and the mistakes, again, you're
trying to know what
you don't know, remember, and making yourself available to that
actually gets people to open to you and really help you, professionally and
also, personally. I've learned a great deal, personally. I'm not the same man I was
12 years ago, other than being 12 years older,
of course. I think I've acquired not just
professional experience, but a lot of personal enrichment, in knowing people. I
have friends of many nationalities and
I call them friends and not just professional friends from
Pakistan to Canada to Great Britain to Korea to Australia, Thailand, Indonesia. It's
really very enriching personally. Through their help you grow
in you avoid those mistakes. You try to understand the conflicts. Preparing for

conflicts is also extremely important. For you as a leader to run the business
properly but also to be a good leader for all the countries
that I happen to manage. Now whether I'm a good leader or
not that's for them to say but I try really hard. >> My point of view,
if I have to say, across culture, you have a lot of similarity. Everybody wants to
feel respected,
everybody wants to be successful, everybody wants to stick around
people they like to work with. So that's I think a lot of commonality and
I found a lot of commonality between the Italian and the Chinese for
example, or the connection with people. They call it. It's the connection part, the
relationship
part, it's pretty much through for Latinos, for Italians, for
Chinese, it's the same thing. How is different? So that our situation,
where you have to go for the one to one type of relationship,
you have to be more careful in a public situation or where you have
different signals around the table. So, I would say the situational
understanding is very critical. >> You have to be true to yourself and true to
somewhat the culture of
the company that you live in. So you have to find that light
balance between accepting the culture where you're going to operate, and
at the same time, in some cases, push gently to impose yourself,
impose what you wanna do, impose your company values and culture, has an
enriching layer on
top of the local culture. I'm not sure I've mastered that art,
but having survived 12 years. You operate in their country,
you operate in their culture. At the same time, you have to show how, by
overlaying and
not substituting a company culture. A company culture is not,
it's about business. It's not about what you do at home,
which religion you follow. It's about getting better professionally. And you have to
make sure that while

respecting the culture at the local level. The deep rooted culture. The overlay on
it, the culture of
the company, and your personality. At the end of the day,
a leader has to do that. You have to show the way you have to lead,
and therefore you have to,
sometimes, impose directions. That's your goal,
not sometimes, every time. And you are deciding that
direction you are leading the way, you are providing for resources, you
are doing what a leader should be doing. Lot of ink has been spent on leadership.
You have to do it in a way that it's
clear to people that it's creating better people. It's creating better professionally,
but it's on as a substrate over their belief. Their deeper rooted culture. That part
is much more
important to them than your. It's just a set of behaviors and values that we share
when
we come into the office.
In this part of the course we have taken a good close look at culture. We have
seen that it is pretty complex and pretty powerful. We have seen that it
influences our behavior, our cognition, and our emotions in many ways often very
subtly and almost unnoticeably. We have seen that we can try to analyze it in
different ways and we have discussed different ways to do that. We have talked
about cultural intelligence, and seen how practitioners actually go about
navigating and making sense of cultures in a real practical sense. To make this
complex beast of culture more manageable I proposed three relatively simple
frameworks to you. We talked about the culture onion with its three layers that
allows you to appreciate the depth of
culture, from the artifact level to the values and the hidden assumptions. We
have talked about the cultural dimensions models like Hofstede's
conceptualization or Trompenaars and GLOBE, and we have talked about this
model for cultural intelligence suggests that it resides in the head, the heart, and
in the body. Those are good tools to have, but they are not perfect; no tool ever
is. We have talked, for example, about the danger of over generalizing from these
cultural dimension models because human behavior is more complex than simple
dichotomies. But they are a starting point. That's how I would like you to regard
those frameworks: as a starting point not as an end point. They are not a solution
but they can be a guide to focus your attention on the issues that really matter,
that you want to be careful about as you operate in foreign cultures. As you deal
with multicultural teams or in a multicultural settings they also help you to
identify areas that you want to focus on as you develop your intercultural

competency: like head, heart, and/or body related competencies for example. I
also want to connect this discussion about culture to the orienting frame that we
introduced at the very beginning of the course. About the tensions that always
exist for international leaders, between local and global, and between supporting
and challenging. Most of the tools and frameworks that we have discussed this
week clearly point towards the local differences, and hopefully help you also
appreciate the uniqueness that you encounter in a particular culture. One of the
takeaways from this discussion about culture is that empathy is absolutely
critical. Try to see things form the perspective of others so try to overcome your
ethnocentric bias, Something that we are also subject to to some degree. if you
see things from the perspective of your followers, from their cultural vantage
point, so to speak. You will get an appreciation of what they expect of you as a
leader and how they evaluate what you do as a leader, ultimately and that is the
basis, also then, for you to adapt your practice. And this adaptation is something
that we have seen that the practitioners really stress is very important. This
adaptation is one of the key mechanisms by which you actually help support your
followers in a foreign culture as you're dealing with multi-cultural teams, for
example, trying to take a step towards them adapt your behavior to what the
expectations are. That's how you can support them, that's how you might make
them more effective might make their lives a little easier. If you will. That allows
them to to have the confidence to build on their unique local mindset and skill
sets. And contribute those towards the organization. You want to go one step
further than that. You want to go beyond adaptation, and that's the step towards
a global transcultural orientation. This is all about recognizing diversity, and
embracing it. That's really important. Transculturalism doesn't mean that we're
ignoring cultural differences that exists. It is not about suppressing differences or
suppressing cultural stereotypes that you might have. No it's having a very clear
conversation about what those differences are and embracing that cultural
diversity that realistically exists in the world Transculturalism can mean that it's
in your own head that you yourself transcend cultural boundaries. Your actions
help others to, to work on those barriers. That last part is the important one right.
You want to help others develop transcultural orientation so that they recognize
the value in the diversity that exists. That they can overcome barriers. This is one
of the most important ways in which international leaders challenge their
followers. To challenge them to step beyond their cultural and habitual ways of
thinking and doing and to embrace a more global perspective A global way of
working together. To embrace that diversity. It's very easy to say for me now. But
it's a tall order to get people to move beyond those habitual ways. That's the big
challenge, that you face. It's a challenge that you absolutely want to pose to your
followers as an international leader. Now one of those first steps in that direction
of getting people to embrace diversity. To embrace this transcultural,
transnational orientation, is communication. Because through open respectful
honest communication that's how we discover differences. That's how we also
discover synergies and discover how we can collaborate together. The
communication competence is one of the key competencies that you can develop
as a leader. That's why it is our next topic.

In this section you will find the full list of links mentioned in the video lectures, plus some
additional readings on the topic of this week.
LECTURES LINKS
1.

Managing Cultural Differences , High/Low Context by Prof. Robert Moran

2.

Dr. Fons Trompenaars on 7 Cultural Dimensions

3.

Daniel Goleman Introduces Emotional Intelligence

ADDITIONAL READINGS

1.

Great Leaders Who Make the Mix Work - Based on interviews with 24 CEOs from around
the globe, the article depicts the creation of inclusive company cultures as a journey with many
steps, and portrays what leaders can do to foster diversity and inclusion.

2.

The Dilemma Doctors - Culture researchers Fons Trompenaars and Charles HampdenTurner's practical advice for dealing with intercultural differences in multinational mergers.

3.

Bill George - A New Era for Global Leadership Development - This article provides a
practical overview of global/intercultural leadership development practices of leading
companies.

4.

The survivor's guide to cross cultural differences - An excellent video summary of the
Hofstede's framework of intercultural differences.

5.

Center for Creative Leadership - Summary of the GLOBE study - This CCL summary
outlines the research approach and findings of the GLOBE study.
You hear behind you, approaching, there's someone, walking towards you. You turn around and
see your boss, and he says, How are you? How would you respond to that? He says, How are
you? Fine. How are you? Fine, okay. Yes. Something short and simple. Something simple. That's
the American mode Keep it nice and light and positive. Yes Nice and light and positive Exactly,
right. In an American context that would be exactly what's happening. In a British context, maybe
it's not that different. When I was in Britain I experienced and even shorter more efficient ritual.
They would say, How do you do? No reply that contains any content at all, just a question back,
How do you do? I quite like that because it kind of keeps both sides honest nobody is making
any false declarations of positive feelings that might not exist. Mm-hm. I thought that was nice.
Sometimes we say, if someone asks you, How are you? we say, Yeah, how are you? Which if
you think about, Which if you think about, Yeah is not an answer to How are you? but
sometimes we say that. It is communicative. I mean you are disclosing quite a bit of information
that you don't want to say anything. I mean you are disclosing quite a bit of information that you
don't want to say anything. In Russia though, there was a fun piece in New York Times, there
seems to be a a strong tendency more towards the negative. That if you are asked How you
are? rather than proclaim your happiness, Im outstanding! the expectation would veer more
towards negative. the expectation would veer more towards negative. Is that something that

squares with your experience? I can talk about Hungary and Serbia not Russia but I think it's
quite similar that, when they ask us How are we doing? We give an honest reply, and I think,
when nothing very happy happened to you, usually you're saying something a little a more
negative than positive. Yes, it sucks, it's raining. I mean, I'm not too happy. Yeah. But here,
when they ask me in English, how am I doing, and when I actually want to give an honest reply, I
noticed that people just don't care, they just want me to say I'm fine. Yeah. Im well, and I can
move on with my life. There are many theories, There are many theories, on how you could
explain why different cultures go one way or the other. One that I like for the Russian or maybe its
a more general eastern European thing, the tendency toward the negative. Clearly there is a
higher value and honesty in the reply than there might be in a more ritualistic American version.
In the piece in the New York Times, the theory that was suggested is actually going back to
Dostoevsky, who is supposed to have, said that that's the nature of the Russian soul. They have
this unquenchable thirst for suffering and so on and so forth. And you have to express that, that's
how you express your Russianness, you're implying with the negative tale, when somebody asks
you about that, right. Ho do you deal with that kind of question in a Russian context when you
don't speak the great Russian? How do you communicate your anguish and anxiety without,
speaking eloquent Russian to describe your misery? You dont. Well you actually had a good
example earlier. Theres a lot that you can say with just a sound; as you would in an American
context, meh. How are you? How are you doing? Meh. The same works across cultures to
some degree. Or a long pause then a big sigh. *sigh* *sigh* *sigh* That could also work. There
are multiple ways to deal with that. Understanding the meaning of a phrase or even something as
simple as a greeting always relies on your understanding of social convention and cultural
context. In an intercultural setting that is the non-trivial issue because you might not understand
the context very well, even if you spent quite a number of years embedded in that culture. Some
of the deeper meaning of the information or the words that people exchange might elude you
and, that can lead to misunderstandings, that can lead to tensions; and that's something of
course, that stands in your way to be effective in those contexts as a leader. Let's look at what
happens when we communicate. When we communicate, we do what? We exchange
information. We exchange information. What could happen is that, I have an idea in my head that
I want to articulate, such as leadership communication is a fascinating topic. I have this beautiful
thought in my head. I try to encode that in what I say and I send that along to you, you try to
decode what I'm saying and then, it turns up in your head, hopefully somewhat intact. We have a
kind of particular channel in which that communication happens: Face-to-face. In this case,
there's relatively little noise. If we had different channels, some of the misunderstandings could
be more pronounced; if we were communicating through email or through a telephone, there
might be more disruptions and more difficulty actually understanding things. that's the basic
model that people have, and people use that all the time. In whatever you do as a leader, you rely
on communication. Whether you, try to articulate goals, try to align people, try to coordinate what
they're doing, you need to articulate very clearly and precisely what it is that you want people to
do? If you try to motivate people, you also need to be very careful on how you phrase that so that
you convey the right message. When you want to build or establish relationships its the same
thing, You want to be very careful in your choice of words. Why is that so critical? Well when you
talk to people, almost instinctively if, if you were in a leadership position, if you're leading a team

for example. They will immediately ask themselves, basic questions about who you are. The first
question is, and it's very
fundamental is, Is the person like me? Are they one of us? essentially Do you understand
us? is the second question Do you understand what we need? and the third question often is,
Are you going to work for us? Are you going to make things better for
us? Those are the basic assumptions people have when they face their leaders. Imagine you
have your first job at Green Peace. It's your first non-profit job and its your first day at the job,
you come in and maybe have a little speech prepared. You go there and talk to people. You talk
to your co-workers. Dear associates. Dear associates. I know that our top line and bottom line
performance is not in line with our projections. But I promise that we can jump start this
organization. And, that will allow us to leap frog the competition. We will penetrate our markets
more efficiently. And everyone, who will contribute to it will be rewarded. What do you think,
Green Peace? Are you the Manager position, er I don't understand. That could be, the first
concern. Maybe you're just a team member. Yes, exactly. And you make this speech. What are
you? You're putting yourself too high. That's a relationship problem. Where people interpret, what
is this? I'm not saying that I'm actually leading you, I'm just saying hey, I think this what we
should be doing. But, that's how it could be interpreted. Do you think that's the appropriate
language for Green Peace? No probably not, especially because I think Green Peace a non-profit
organization, is concerned about some basic main ideas, values. And when you want to motivate
people, I think these are the ones you stress
because these are the ones that are common in all of you,
that you believe in what you do. True. I talked about values here, like efficiency and agility. But
proficiency, or profitability and things like that, I think from a company's point of view of course
theyre important, but in the end, individually, theyre not my main concern. And to make the
company profitable, my basic idea is probably to change the world, to help it. Exactly. It's more,
more an idealistic thing. For me, the competition and penetrating the market, having a bigger
market share. I doubt that's what most people look for when they join a non-profit. So when you,
use the wrong words, if you use the wrong language, in terms of conceptual terms, all of what
you're trying to say here also applies to Green Peace. They have to do well they have to reach for
their stakeholders and kind of make a difference in the areas that are there. But it's the wrong
language for those concerns. If people hear that, they draw the conclusions you're not one of us.
You don't understand what we care about, and whatever you're working for is clearly not going to
matter for the things that are important to us. Yeah. That we care about. Clearly even through a
simple communicative act, you immediately lose a lot of the support. In an intercultural context, a
lot of these things become more complicated. The coding, the decoding becomes more
complicated, striking the right, tone to establish the right kind of relationship is also trickier. So
there's a great scene in Lost in Translation, the Sofia Coppola movie. Bill Murray is doing this
whiskey commercial and the director is giving all these instructions of how he should behave in
the whiskey commercial. He does this three-minute speech and, Bill Murray doesn't speak any
Japanese, so everything has to go through the translator and the translator translates the three-

minute speech into, please, look in the camera and speak with intensity. That is not very helpful.
We have a double coding, decoding by the translator, re-encoding into English to Bill Murray and
all that gets lost there in translation. hence the title. Mm-hm. What we see from that example is
two kinds of problems. One is really just a basic language problem, You don't understand the
words. That's a lexical or vocabulary problem. The second is actually a semantic problem, that
yeah, you understand what words are being enunciated, but you don't fully understand the
meaning. The first problem: not understanding the words at all is actually an easier
communication problem, because you recognize that there is a breakdown of communication. It's
easy to detect that. If you understand the words but you don't understand the meaning you might
make different inferences from your own cultural vantage point. You attach different meaning to
what's being said. That's a lot harder That's a lot harder to actually detect. Because everybody
assumes the message has been passed on effectively, everybody understands. That is not just a
problem in communicating in a foreign language that you have very little command of, it's also, if
you all kind of agree on a lingua franca, If you all speak in English, the assumption could be well
everybody understands English. Everybody speaks English. No problem. All of
miscommunication problems fall by the wayside. That's not the case of course, because except
for you, our understanding of English is imperfect. Whatever meaning we attach to words might
not be exactly as originally intended. It's not just a matter of as originally intended, we could come
from different sub-cultures or co-cultures as people call them now. That just have different
intonations and different meanings given to particular words that change over generations. I
experience that when I teach undergrads. I see that there is a kind of communication barrier and
culture barrier just based on the generational membership. So that can be a problem. So if you
encounter those communication problems, either the lexical problems with not understanding the
vocabulary, or the semantic problem of not understanding the meaning. If you're talking to
somebody else Mm-hm. And you suspect that there might be communication barriers what would
you do? Mm-hm. Well I would start maybe using my hands as well. Well I would start maybe
using my hands as well. Maybe youd give some context to what you're saying with your hands.
The universal language. Okay. Not as universal as you might think though. Then with my
intonation I would try to maybe make him understand the mood or the context in what I'm talking..
Yeah, okay. ..In which I'm talking about. So you provide even more context to what you're saying.
Yes. Yeah. How do you know whether that was successful? Maybe ask some questions and see
how they react? Exactly. One of the things, that I use when I teach English to my students, they're
called CCQs, Which are content checking questions. And you explain a concept or anything
which can be applied to any kind of leading position and then you start checking with questions
that don't repeat what you said but tackle it from different angle. Exactly, you're looking for
feedback. You try to get feedback from the people that you have communicated to. That's the
easiest way to get a sense of what actually arrived after this process of encoding and decoding at
the other end. Clearly that feedback process, again, people have to think, what did I understand,
they try to re-encode it, it comes back to you, you try to decode it again. But what it might give
you is a sense of what is the, But what it might give you is a sense of what is the, basis of
understanding of the person that you've talked to; What arrived there. You might draw some
conclusions of where the discrepancies might come from either by vocabulary or by mismatches
of meaning. So again, you get a sense of this field of experience of this person that you're talking
to. If that feedback process comes back, chances are you can detect errors. And if that feedback

doesn't come just once, I'd like you to give me short feedback, but actually it comes more often,
then actually you would get to a point where you really have an interaction in the communication
you have a dialog if you will. If the dialogue is sufficiently open and you get a lot of information,
get to a point where you actually jointly make meaning. Where you can make small adjustments
from either side of what things mean and jointly construct the meaning out of that dialogue. That
is usually the point where you want to get to in intercultural communication setting. Its not that
easy though. In some cultures getting feedback is very easy. You say something to me, an
American would say well, I don't get that, can you say that again? Can you explain that little bit
better? So I almost put the burden on you. In other cultures it would be an absolute no-no, that I
would, question your authority or lose face by conveying that I didn't understand, so getting
feedback can be tricky in some circumstances. There's just not the social convention for that
open communication, but that's the way you want to go to have that dialogue to get a sense of
what actually arrived, what I said and can we find a way to bring maybe the discrepancies of
meaning together? To get full advantage of that feedback and to get to the point of drawing, to
meaning making, collaborative meaning making. We have to understand a little bit more about,
how we actually share information? How we process information communicatively? We'll talk
about that in the next segment.
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. Lets 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. Thats 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 its 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 dont 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. Theres 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. Thats a very Weickian statement. You
need people with very different conflicting perspectives to make sense of a situation that has very

different conflicting perspectives. Thats 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 Ill
just keep quiet. Im assuming everybody else does so Ill 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. Its 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. Thats what theyre willing to do. Thats what theyre 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.
The way that we've talked about
communication so far, has emphasized that help is exchanged information,
qualifiers, claims, and appeals. And because of that exchange, we use it to
help make sense of the world around us. We've used uncertainty about what matters, what's
going on,
reduce equivocality, all of that. So if you think about it when we
say you know let's talk about it, it's not just for
entertainment purposes, right? >> There's something to say,
we want to get to some point. >> Exactly right, we want to make
progress in some sense, learn something, work through something. And this productive notion,
working with factual information, why that's really important for
communication. That's why you need a healthy
communication culture and effective communication routines,
especially in a intercultural context. But if we focus only on those elements,
right, this exchange of objective, neutral impersonal information,
we would be missing a whole lot of what is really going on also
in communication, right? >> It's kind of dull, too. >> Yeah, you could say it's dull. But you're onto
something because it

is actually those other parts do make communication richer, but they also make
it more complex, and more complicated, especially in the cultural context. And it's those other
parts that in
a situation where you're dealing with other cultures,
where you deal with language barriers, that it can really impact yourself and the
relationship that you have with others. That's what I want to
focus on in this part, is those other dimensions of communication
that we haven't talked about so far. To make sense of these other
dimensions of communication, other than the fact that I
want to suggest a framework, this is something that I have
learned over many years ago. Somebody suggested it to me and
it's been very helpful for me. Comes from a German psychologist
called Friedemann Schulz von Thun. There's a. >> That's a name. >> German name for you,
exactly. And what the framework suggests is that
there's four dimensions to communication. And two of those dimensions,
we already talked about to some degree. And that's the factual dimension and
the appeal dimension, right? So you're communicating certain
pieces of information, fact. And you do that to have a certain effect. >> Much like concrete ones.
>> That's concrete, right? So, it's objective in many ways. Still can be misunderstood, but
that's the information, the factual side. Then again, you might do that to
prompt a reaction, to prompt action. That's the appeal side. But there's two other dimensions,
and that is the self statement and the relationship statement. So you're saying something about
yourself
and you communicate it with another person and you say something about
what you think about them or what do you think about the relationship

that you have with them. And those two parts are what we could call kind of the social
performance in the communication. This is how we construct relationships,
right, social relationships. This is how we position ourselves
in those relationships. So that's the idea, that's the self
statement, and the relationship statement. And these two things are also
connected to a concept that I am sure you're familiar with,
and that is the concept of face, right? We often associate that kind of with
that with Asian countries, right? That there is a lot of attention to
>> Respect to this level in the society that you're in. >> Exactly right.
So it has something to do with hierarchies
in society, so the amount of status and respect that you attribute to a person or
to yourself. And that is something that happens
all the time, not just in Asia, that's a universal thing. In all cultures we do that,
we might call it differently. But this is what sociologists call
kind of face-work in interaction, we constantly maintain, increase,
or lose, potentially, face, right? So we lose, status, or
respect in interaction. And that's something, losing face,
is something that nobody wants. Clearly, nobody in their sane mind wants
to look bad, wants to be ridiculed, wants to lose respect so
it's an important area. Again, everybody cares about that. It's universal, but how exactly in various
cultural contents we actually do
this kind of face-work that that differs. But it's very much connected to these
two dimensions of self-disclosure and relationship statement. Let's talk about an example though.
Okay. >> So, for these four dimensions,

very simple situation. Two people sit in a car. She's driving,

he's sitting on the passenger seat. They stand at a cross-section. The light turns from red to
green,
and he says, the light is green. >> Okay. >> Okay? Factual statement? >> The light is now green.
>> Exactly. Appeal? Go. >> Yeah, so. >> Green means go. >> Green means go. So I give you
this information
because I want you to drive. But the interesting parts often
are in the other two dimensions, which is self disclosure and
relationship statement. So what do you think is going on there? >> Self disclosure could be
I don't wanna wait anymore. >> I'm impatient, exactly, I'm impatient
and the integration statement. >> Maybe he's saying he's
a better driver than here or he's helping her in this
moment because he thinks that. >> She needs help right. So there's this kind of authority
kind of thing going on there. And clearly she might reject that to some
degree, that he's a better driver or that he has that authority over
her to tell her what to do. Yeah so even in very simple, seemingly
innocuous statements we have those four dimensions, the facts, the appeal, self
statement, and the relationship statement. So we speak with four tongues,
if you will. That's what Friedemann calls it. We have these four tongues in our mouth
and they always have these dimensions and also we tried to deliberately
communicate on those dimensions, but also might slip in. We might not intend to say something,
but it comes off that way. So imagine you're in the course,
one of my University course, in the first session,
first day of class I come in and say, I was told by the administration
that I have to teach this course. >> You're probably not

that willing to teach it. >> Yeah, it sounds like it. I might not intend that, but I might
unwittingly kind of communicate that. That could be the challenge. That's some of the vagary,
some of the ambiguities,
of communication of the encoding side. Putting something in to what
I'm trying to transfer to you. So decoding means that not only do
we speak with four tongues, but we also with four ears, right? So, imagine the following situation.
I come running to you, very excited,
and I say, did you hear Mike and Jane had this huge fallout, this huge argument about who is
going to
present the project at the convention. So again in the statement you
can pick up different things, where you can listen to it with four ears. So if you listen to it with a
factual ear,
how would you respond? >> What happened? or who won? [LAUGH] I want more details. >>
Who won who won! So you wanna know more details. You wanna know more facts. So that's
your response. The conversation would take that turn,
right? You would actually focus
on the factual side. If you listen to it from an appeal ear,
what would you, how would you react? >> Why are you telling me this? >> Exactly.
>> So what do you want from me, what should I do? >> What should I do about it, right? Or you
might, immediately response, okay,
let me see what I can find, what I can do, because you're assuming that I
tell you because I want you to do something about it. Okay, so that's two so
how about the self disclosure, right? So you were listening to what
I'm disclosing about myself. >> It sounds like you know this may be and you shouldn't know it
because
it sounds like a secret. >> Yeah. So maybe I'm showing off that I'm having
these secrets so you could interpret that. >> Or maybe you're related in some way

emotionally to one of the two people. >> Exactly I could be affected by this,
so your response could be a kiss. How does it make you feel? What are your concerns? Are you
worried? Something like that. And for the relationships statement, if you listened with that ear,
what would your response be? >> You have some trust in me. You're telling me something. >>
Yeah, thank you for confiding in me. Or, negatively, you could reject it. Why do you think I want
to hear that gossip? Because you don't like what I'm
insinuating about our relationship. So people that have this very
intense ear for self disclosure or relationship statement,
they're usually empathetic. We usually think of that as a good thing,
but it goes to extremes. It can drive you nuts right? So if I give you negative criticism or critique of
homework or
presentation that you gave me, and the only response that you give me is,
okay so tell me how you really feel right? You're not really listening to
the fact that I'm trying to convey. >> Or I think you just hate me now. >> Yeah exactly. So you're
not really
listening to the fact. That can drive people nuts as well, right? So it can go overboard. And same
for the appeal. Some people are so intent on hearing,
always, a hidden agenda, a hidden appeal. So again, kind of old joke,
couple sits at the table. And he, they're eating soup,
he looks at the soup and says, what is that green stuff in my soup? So one way to react to this is
to
really answer the question, but in the joke of course would be,
honey if you don't like eating my food, why don't you go somewhere else? So because what she
heard is basically
the appeal leave out that green stuff or the hidden appeal I don't like your food,
cook something else. >> Which may or may not. >> Which might not have
been the intention right? So that's what happens, right,

in the decoding essentially. So these tendencies to hear a particular

dimension of the message can be idiosyncratic or it can be gender based, but often
they are also national culture based. So I made the experience that as a
foreigner in a culture that you don't know very often, you often kind of take
old people's relationship ear, if you like because you're violating,
unwillingly often, you're violating expectations what is an appropriate
relationship in a particular context. When I moved to the US, you know this
idea of too much information, right? >> TMI
>> TMI and that is the relationship issue right because you have the feeling
that you're getting information that is inappropriate for the kind of relationship
that you think you want to have or that you have for the person. So you will say stop, right? And I
had a similar experience,
again, on the relational dimension, when I was teaching in Asia. One of the first gigs that I had
there was a pan-Asian group, so people from different countries, and I was suggesting that
everyone introduce
themselves on a first-name basis. So people from India, Pakistan,
China, introduce themselves, Hi, my name is Ding Shang,
you can call me Dave. And then we came to
the Japanese colleagues, and they all introduced themselves
with their last name. My name is Nakamura and
you can call me Nakamura Son. And that is what I violated, is that they were expecting
a professional relationship. One that is characterized
by a lot of trust and me suggesting that we go on
first name basis, you know, that really rubbed them the wrong

way on the relationship dimension. And they rejected that. >> Which is interesting culturally,
because being on a first name basis is
something, as an American we strive for. >> Yeah. >> So, maintaining that distance for me, it
sounds like there's
some kind of problem. >> Yeah, and it's a power
distance issue to some degree. Because in your own culture, there's less of a contradiction
between
informal speech and professional respect. It's not mutually exclusive. In other contexts, it might
be. Okay, so we have these four dimensions. Factual statement, appeal, self
disclosure, and relationship statement. And we know that the last two are very
important for this idea of face and the social performance and I want to
actually dig a little deeper as the next step on how we actually manage
those two dimensions, right? The relationship statement and
the self disclosure.

We talked last time about these four dimensions of communication: the factual side, the appeal
side, the relationship, and the self-disclosure. We want to focus on the last two a little bit more,
because in an intercultural context, they're often a little bit more tricky. Theyre about the
subtleties of the conversation. Exactly, maybe because of that subtlety sometimes people also
pay less attention to them. They are not focused on the facts, they focus on the appeal and what
they want to get out of conversation, but not necessarily on those subtleties. Let's start with the
self-disclosure. This is often the first thing that the people have to judge you. Its what you let
them know verbally or non-verbally about yourself. They form these impressions really quickly.
Let's see what impressions you form quickly. We only have one time to make a first impression.
Exactly, so I'm going to try to make a first impression to you twice Okay. Hello. Hello. Second
time. Serj! Hey! Such a great chance to see you here. Yeah, you too Wonderful, nice to meet
you. You noticed a clear difference, right? You noticed a clear difference, right? Yeah, there was a
difference, subtle, but it's there. How did you judge it? What impression did you form? The first
one had very little energy. It was very distant, and the second one was on the other side of the
spectrum. Maybe too much. Maybe too much, yeah. I didn't say much, but there were a whole lot
of things that you probably noticed not just in the way that I said hello. Mm-hm. But the timing of
it, the voice, the body language as well. People have this great word for this, People have this
great word for this, they say that you have a leaky body language. Uh-huh. It displays a lot

about you and how you feel. You probably got a lot of this low energy that you described out of
the body language. Right.
That I didn't seem engaged the first time. Proximity is another thing; so personal distance. Mmhm. How did you feel? I was uncomfortable with both. Too far, too close? One was too far and
one was too close. Exactly, right. There are body language experts out there that focus only on
helping people navigate how particular body language is interpreted in different cultural settings.
The point is you can't help self disclose, even if youre not talking. You're still saying something
about yourself that-. There's always something. There's always something even if I'm not
saying anything, that still creates a certain impression on you, right, Im disclosing that I don't feel
comfortable speaking or something like that. Mm-hm. That's what happens naturally, but you can
be deliberate about this. You can disclose what it is that you want, what it is that you value, what it
is that makes you effective as a leader and that can help others. Management guru Peter Drucker
once said that's one of the key responsibilities that you have as a leader is to actually let others
know what you need to be effective to be a good leader for them. That's something that you want
to think about. Every time you communicate verbally or non-verbally, see it as an opportunity to
actually share with people something about yourself, so that they understand who you are and
where you're coming from. It doesn't mean that you have to talk like a waterfall. I know it's funny
coming from a guy like me. I know it's funny coming from a guy like me. Even just not telling you
my whole life story but suggesting that you're open and interested in input and learning from
others can be very powerful. You take yourself back a little bit but that already says a lot. Mm-hm.
What you disclose about yourself is, not just giving others something to know something about
you, it's also that you give them cues about how to behave towards you. Mm-hm. So they have
an orientation of maybe what your expectations are for the interaction purely based on what you
want to tell them about yourself, essentially. Erving Goffman who has looked at these kinds of
interactions very closely called that face work. People claim a particular face for themselves.
Then in the action they see whether others grant them that face, which is to say they want to
have a particular image or a particular-. Social status. Social status, and value attached. He
actually explained how this works very nicely in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
Saying that when an individual enters the presence of others they commonly seek to acquire
information about him. Others want that information. They will be interested in general socioeconomic status, conceptions of self, attitude towards them and competence, trustworthiness, all
that. The information about the individual helps others to define the situation, you know, what it is
that we're currently doing here. It enables them to know in advance what he or she will expect of
them and what they may expect of him. That's the idea, you give people an orientation for what
behavior might be acceptable and might be effective as they're addressing you. That's why I want
to self disclose. Also unacceptable though Yeah, you establish boundaries so to speak. This
face work in every day communication, especially with people that you know doesn't really feel
like you're doing anything, because you're claiming a face that you're used to with people that
know you. That two parties already agree on what it is. The relationship doesnt need to be
worked on anymore. You don't notice that you work on it, You still do it, but since the face is
granted, theres no emotional response from you. You don't even notice it. You notice it if you try
to claim more for

yourself and it gets rejected. Mm-hm. If all of the sudden I want to be recognized as the world's
biggest genius, others say, Yeeeaaah, you know? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. I
have an emotional reaction to it. I notice that I try to work towards something that's rejected. Mmhm. It can be positive, Sometimes, surprisingly people recognize you for something that you
didn't think was much and, and that gives you more face than you thought you could get. It's a
positive emotional response. Right. In your circle of friends, do you think there's a little variance in
terms of kind of reactions to what you do? Probably not. Were so used to the way that we
interact with each other, We don't need a way to change. We don't need a way to change. Maybe
you don't need a way to change, and there's a habitual way of interacting as you said. There's a
limited number of faces that you show your friends, and that they know of you and they accept.
Right. Im frustrated at work. That's a face. ?Let's go out and party. That's a face. They know
both, there's no surprise there. In an intercultural setting though, very different. People don't know
you as much. You don't exactly know how they will react. There are different standards. There are
different standards. You have to feel out what is appropriate, how do people react to a face that
I'm claiming? In those contexts, you actually want to think strategically about what it is that you're
disclosing I find it helpful to think: is it depth of disclosure or breadth of disclosure that you're
going for? There are uncertainties about what kind of responses I should get in an intercultural
setting from self-disclosure. Mm-hm. That's why you want to pay attention to it. Let's take an
example: would you disclose weaknesses of yourself in an intercultural setting? Probably not.
The way that I see it is that if I'm in an intercultural setting I don't know what weaknesses are
acceptable for the others or what weaknesses arent; whereas in my culture I'm pretty
comfortable with it and I know what is and is not acceptable so I would probably do it more often.
People often do that-reveal weaknesses for strategic reasons. They want to be more relatable,
they want to disclose that they have some humility and that might work in your own culture and
works to a certain degree in my own as well, but its not universally accepted. If you don't have
that certainty you're getting a little bit concerned. Right. What should I disclose? What shouldnt I?
That's a meaning barrier that people have. What meaning do people attach to things that I
disclose about myself? Okay. Even if I get that across properly in pure language terms. But then
there's also the language barrier, it can actually expressing properly in a language that's not your
own. Which is the more mechanical side of it, it seems like-. To some degree, but there is there is
a critical feminist communication theory called the Muted Group that makes everyone's section
not bad not that mechanical because language is constructed by people and the argument they
make is, its constructed by men. So women can't properly express in the language, because it
doesn't have the right vocabulary for them to express their experiences. That's why they are the
muted group and something very similar happens if you use a different language that is not your
language. It wasn't constructed by your culture, so really expressing what you mean is
problematic. You might call that mechanical, but it's not trivial. Okay, yeah, no, not at all. no, not at
all. Despite those problems of meeting various language barriers one of the things that almost
universally works that I always encourage people stress when they self disclose, is to try to find
things that you have in common; stress commonalities. We know that people take that seriously,
from the smallest things. So if I attach A little red square on you Okay. I'll do that for me too. All of
a sudden we notice, Look at that you also have a red square! We are both red square guys.
Immediately we have a relationship. Yeah. You are laughing about this but, it has been shown
that people take the oddest things, the minimal cue to actually establish a positive relationship.

Any kind of common ground is latched on on. is latched on on. You like cats? I like cats too!
Anything can help to the degree that your self-disclosure can help establish that for a common
ground. It usually works as a starting point across cultures. Exactly. We've seen that relationships
can emerge out of the self-disclosure that you make. What you tell others about yourself gives
them a chance to discover that maybe you speak the same language, that there are
commonalities, the red dots for example. Red dot guys. Red dot guys. Its also something that
you do more directly, As a leader you can talk specifically and deliberately about the relationships
that you would want with others; the dyadic relationships, or relationships in a group. You can
create maintain and modify those relationships through what you say in a very deliberate manner.
For example, by deliberately stressing commonalities in a group you would highlight those
commonalities as something that brings you together as a team. Or by talking about the value of
diversity in a group you would basically valorize those that are a little bit different but make them
feel included in the group. clearly you can share expectations and standards for relationships that
you have with followers. How much input you want, how open you are to participation and all that.
So this idea that that communication helps shape relationships is actually a very old one. There
was a 14th century important scholar in Italy Petrarca, this should be right up your alley. He was a
scholar of the classics, he actually revitalized and re-discovered them. His argument was that the
greatest achievement of the Roman Empire was that they had this civic discourse, the public life
was very active. People participated and communicated with each other; and through that cocreated society. There was the idea that through a particular communication culture you shape
the moral character of the group and/or community, and engage them to really contribute towards
the well-being of that community. I think that's a really nice ideal to have even today, you want to
encourage people to contribute. Petrarca said that if you only think for yourself, write for yourself,
and never talk to anybody; that's a crime because you're wasting your capability. You want to be
fully engaged with all your capacities to contribute towards. Get yourself and get your thoughts
out there. Exactly. I think that's a nice orientation point, it encourages leaders to really use
language to shape the bonds that they have with followers, to encourage them also to reconceptualize their role as followers as active participants and active contributors. Clearly
construing relationship is not a one way street, Its not just you willing a particular relationship into
being, you negotiate it with others. It's two-sided. In an intercultural context often it's a bit of a
negotiation and management of dialectical tensions that that exist across cultures. One of those
is actually tension between wanting to be connected and wanting to have some distance, we're
balancing that. Which is similar to the concept of both positive and negative face. Where positive
face is wanting good social standing in whatever context you are, but with negative face you want
a good autonomy in whatever situation you are. It's a balance between the two. Exactly, status
comes from affiliation, and the autonomy, clearly you want a little bit of independence. Mm-hm.
The second tension that also very often you find that you negotiate is openness and privacy.
What is the right amount of sharing that is acceptable in a group? In the US that's something very
-. Yeah, we're very keen on not giving much information about any topics. Not too much, right?
Right. Just the right amount. You even use it as an acronym-. T.M.I. T.M.I. Too much
information, when you feel like, Okay, that's too much. The last one is the predictability and
novelty in the relationship. You don't want complete routine, you want a little bit of novelty, you
also don't want to surprise people completely, so the relationship all of the sudden seems to

change. Mm-hm. For example you know me in a certain capacity there are certain behaviors that
you would anticipate and maybe I change that a little bit there's a little bit of novelty, But you know
me as a German academic motor mouth. If I, all of the sudden, start telling salacious jokes that
would a bit weird. Yeah, Id say so. Then you dont know what the relationship really is so that
doesnt help in building. You want to negotiate what the right balance is there. Mm-hm. The
relationship building and maintenance is a dialogue with others. Clearly followers have an impact
on the relationship that a leader establishes with the bond that the leader establishes with them;
but it goes further, they actually also have an impact on how you perceive yourself. The extreme
view of that would be that you actually only know yourself through the interactions with others.
That's similar to an Italian author, Pirandello, who one of his key concepts was the concept of the
mask. Mm-hm. This mask is basically different for every person who looks at you and you are no
one other than these masks for other people. Yeah, you don't even know yourself beyond, what
those collected perceptions are. My favorite example is also literary, one that you know for sure:
Tarzan. Tarzan is raised with complete ignorance that he is a man, and he only knows himself as
an ape. as an ape. As a weird ape, but he doesn't know anything else beyond that. Only later
does he learns the truth. That's the idea, and I find that very important. for communication in an
intercultural setting that is exactly why you want to engage with others and not draw back. Even if
you feel a little uncertain because of the language barriers or the meaning barriers that there are
you want to engage with others because that's how you get to know yourself in that context.
Right. That's where you learn and where you get all the value of being in a multicultural setting
from. If you don't do that you don't get anything back. There is nothing that you can learn about
yourself that can be helpful. You lose the emancipation that you can get out of being abroad and
having that contact with others. That would be a shame because that's the key value. Mm-hm.
For me that is really one of the key reasons why you want to pay close attention to how it is that
you're communicating, that youre engaging others. Through the four sides of the message if you
will particularly with attention to can this self-statement and the kind of the relationship Mm-hm.
dimension to establish this rich dialogue so that others benefit, but also you personally. Right.
Gabriella, I'm very happy that you can join us. I know that you have a lot of experience in
teaching and consulting and coaching around the issues of communication. And, you do that with
managers, leaders from many different countries. Mm-hm. I often have this impression when you
talk with professionals about issues of communication that there is this sense of, I can do this.
This is easy, Why do we even talk about this? Do you have that experience in this? Absolutely
yes. It's one of the main obstacles to a certain extent. because everybody says, Ive been
communicating since I was born, A baby. So, what's the issue with it? It's something that I have
by default. It's just a matter of being clear. It's just a matter of being clear. What it means to be
clear, we may talk about this later on. It's not that clear what it means to be clear. To a certain
extent, it's true weve been communicating since then. We also need to communicate. There is a
lot of research in the neurosciences. It comes to my mind this book by Cozolino, The Social
Brain, which basically tells us that we need interpersonal relationships, we need communication
to develop as human beings. The brain is social. It needs interaction to really get out and fulfill its
potential. The more we relate, the more we go through experiences, the more we get into
relationships, the more intelligent we get. That's great. Communication makes us smarter.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Weve been communicating since then. And up to a certain extent, we

communicate the way we do communicate because we are wired in a certain way. So

communication, we have it by default, and we interpret it in a certain way because we are set up
in a certain way. Personality. Think about personality. Think about attitudes. Think about attitudes.
Attitudes may change over time, but actually they are so deeply ingrained in ourselves that we
may even consider it something structural. The way that we're wired. The way that we're wired.
Certainly, you see that you develop certain communication habits over time that seem so natural
to you, so maybe you think that there is no other way to do it. Absolutely. It may be difficult to
change sometimes. It may be difficult to change, but the good news is that we can change it.
What we are makes up for more or less 30% of the way we communicate. We have this
wonderful 70% that we can work on, we can work with, and actually, we should work with.
Because we communicate since we were babies, but we can really find a way to become more
and more effective if we take some time to think about it, and if we take some time to develop our
communication skills. Take it seriously, just like any other professional skill that might-.
Absolutely. Communication is a tool for work. Communication is a tool for making things happen
both individually and organizationally, and we really have to put some thought to it. What do you
do then to learn to become more effective at it? Now, in other good news. Now, in other good
news. As we have said, we can become more effective, and how do we do so? Well, by learning
through experience. Mm-hm. So, what I'm saying is you learn to be more effective in
communicating, the more you challenge yourself with interpersonal situations. Experience by
itself doesn't make you learn. We really have to put some effort in it, and it's even nice to get out
your potential, to learn to do something new. How do we learn to become more effective when
communicating? Well, we have a lot of resources that we can activate, and we have to start from
being really willing to put some effort in developing a new skill. Which means, first of all, to
engage yourself in putting yourself out of your comfort zone so that you get in situations that you
have not managed until then. That can help you, first of all, to become more self-aware, learn
where you start from. Learn about some of your strengths And your limitations. And your
limitations. Finding out these gaps that you may want to work on-. Mm-hm. To a certain extent
leveraging on your strengths, but to the other extent working on what can make you even more
effective. What this means is that you have also to accept that after a certain extent, you work on
your strengths so you feel energetic, you feel comfortable in doing so. To another extent, you may
want to develop a new set of behavioral skills that dont necessarily start from your way of being,
from your personality, from your innate strengths. Nevertheless, they can make you more
effective. The more you practice them, the more you exercise them, the more effective you will
become. So, again: new experiences that push you out of your comfort zone. new experiences
that push you out of your comfort zone. and learning from what you're doing. Mm-hm. The other
piece of it is to get feedback. Mm-hm. To accept it, if people are willing to give it to you, which
may be hard, because it's not easy. And to look for it Because really knowing how you impact on
other people starting from the point that we sometimes are not really aware of how we impact
other people. So, sometimes we miss out opportunities for being more effective when
communicating. If somebody tells you, well, this is a good starting point for making yourself more
effective The third resource that we can activate is role models. We learn quite a lot from
observing other people. Mm-hm. So, if you have a chance to focus on people that you think are
interpreting their role in a very effective way, even if you're not going to get exactly their style,
because you really have to start from yourself. You have to find your way to communicate in an

effective way. Nevertheless, you can get inspiration from them, and really find new ways to get
into other people. Yeah, okay. So, those three resources: new experiences, seeking feedback and
taking it seriously and, and finding role models. Yeah. okay. Do you have role models? I look for
them. I look for them. I actually learn a lot from role models, especially from people who are
different from me. You deliberately go for the diversity see the range of- You deliberately go for
the diversity see the range of- You deliberately go for the diversity see the range of- You
deliberately go for the diversity see the range of- Interesting. I do that too actually look at
comedians often. Because that's a very different kind of communication then what we do here
and we're not comedians. Yeah, but you can pick some. You get the range of tools and
techniques and all that. Developing is enlarging your behavioral kit. Yeah. and this is also
fascinating because you can discover parts of yourself that you were not really aware of. And put
them in action, or you can even learn to interpret the role, which makes you more effective in
situations where you maybe need that. Okay. Where you need the comedian, maybe. Yeah. I
think that's a great rollout metaphor for learning. Now, from your experience, are there areas,
particular communication practices, that maybe people want to focus their attention and/or
learning on? Yeah. So the very first one; I talk about it as the first one, also because I think it's
probably
the most challenging one. Because it doesnt have to do with techniques. It doesnt have to do
with things that you may learn to do, in terms of behavior. It has to do with your overall attitudes,
with the way you face interpersonal and communication situations. So, it's something that is very
deeply in yourself. It has to do with your mindset, regarding the interpersonal situation. It has to
do with the way you see yourself in a relationship with other people, and the way you see other
people contributing to your relationship and relating to yourself. So it's something very fine, very
much material, but something that can really make a difference. So if I were to tell you. What
really makes a difference, I would come up with some elements that are actually all connected
one with the other. And the very first one from which you really have to start is you being. Aware
of yourself You being aware of yourself, meaning you knowing who you are, what you want, what
you think, what you want to get out from the relationship That's a really tall order as a first step.
Absolutely. But, very necessary because think about how many times you wanted to be effective
when communicating and you really were not. Because you were communicating something that
in the end, was a little bit ambivalent. Mm-hm. because, you were ambivalent about it. You
wanted to give a feedback, but at the same time, you didn't want to do so, because you didn't
want to be harsh on the other person Okay. On one side, you were speaking in a very tough way,
but with a smile. Mm-hm. Which was taking away the power of what you were saying. Okay? Or it
could be ambivalent in content, as well, right? I really want you guys to do this, I think, maybe, I
don't know, what do you think? Absolutely. Also, this is be aware of yourself, what you want, and
the consequent. Okay? Another issue think of the fact that people are all different. So, the way
you think, feel, and act is probably very different from the way other people think, feel, and act.
And, I tell you, I have seen people really becoming much more effective in relating to other
people, and in communicating with other people. When they finally accepted the fact that other
people are different from how they are. Yeah. Another step forward, more challenging. You see
differences, and you not only accept them, but you are able to see the positive in it. Every
characteristic can have something negative, something positive. You train yourself in seeing the

positive in the characteristics that other people have. Mm-hm. Okay? So to a certain extent we
are talking about a balance, finding a balance between you focusing on yourself. Mm-hm. Okay?
And you focusing on the other people, seeing the other person, seeing his or her characteristics
and leveraging on them. We are talking about the dynamic balance between centering on
yourself, and decentering on the other person, which is the pre-condition for you being effective
when communicating. It sounds like it can be a tricky thing, because if you constantly have to
remind yourself, Oh I need to think about myself. I need to think about the other person. Thats
very difficult to do We need to internalize that. Absolutely, it may sound weird in the beginning,
because yeah, you are forcing yourself a little bit. Do you remember when you learned to drive
that the instruction was telling you look in the mirrors and your forced yourself to look in the
mirrors, and you had these nightmares of not looking in the mirrors and you were doing this in a
very artificial way. and then, finally, it gets to be a habit, a positive habit that you carry out without
even knowing it, but actually you get a lot of information that is vital for you to be able to drive.
Again, when relating to other people you will end up, if you train yourself doing this, focusing on
yourself and focusing on the other person in a very natural way. Okay. That seems like a good
best practice to focus learning on. Is there another one? I see another one that follows The first
one, which is now centering and de-centering what comes next is really believing that
communication really seeing, how communication is a tool for work, for solving problems for
settling conflict, for negotiating solutions and, and even for learning. Because, we can say that
communication is effective if and only if, in the end I have been contaminated a little bit by you,
and you have been contaminated a little bit by me. And we have come up with a new meaning
that makes sense to us, and that enables us to go a step forward. and that enables us to go a
step forward. This is a productive potential, the power of communicating. It's a generative way of
communicating. It's a generative way of communicating. It's a generative way of communicating,
which starts from you believing that you can do so. Yeah. It needs your flexibility, openness and it
needs you to be constructive, and to a certain extent, even creative in seeing things that you
have not been paying attention to until now, Seeing things that can make a difference, combining
them, and coming up with solutions or with opinion insights, and proposals that you may not have
started off from. So it's really, again, a dynamic balance, me, you, structure, de-structuring and
creating, new meanings to. I like that, de-structuring and structuring. Best practices often come in,
in packs of three: is there a third best practice? Absolutely yes. We could not live without it the
third best practice actually, is finding the right balance between emotions and rationality. Don't
panic. Don't panic. What I'm saying is we usually think
that to be effective in communicating, we have to be very rational, very consequent, get out very
smart data. Presented, which really can make a difference. But-. Particularly in some
professions,or even some cultures. I think of my own culture, German- very structured.
Remember that before you give this to the other person through communication You have to have
this person on board. Mm-hm. You have to have this person to be in a relationship with you. You
have to have this person engaged with what you are discussing. How do you engage them? This
works best guess how? By putting in the emotional part. Mm-hm. Engaging the person by
bringing in something that makes sense something that is not obvious, something that stimulates
the curiosity, something that is challenging. Mm-hm. Let's go into an example, and to make an

example, Ill go into the most challenging communication situation, which is, I want to not only
change your attitude, I not only want to give you some information, but
I also want you to change some behaviors. Mm-hm. Very challenging. Now, how am I going to
change your behaviors, how am I going to communicate with you in a compelling way? Well, I
have to start from Again emotions. As a matter of fact, I have to start from creating a sense of
urgency. There is something that is not the way we would like it to be. We have to do something
about it. We have to really take action. And we have to do it now. Okay? And I can do so by
realistically representing the situation. Maybe using a story, maybe referring to something that
comes out as being very critical, so I get you engaged because I'm kind of soliciting your reptilian
brain. Mm-hm. That part of the brain which is very ancient and old, that makes you be wide
awake and listen with four ears, not only with two to what I'm telling you. Because, Oh wow, I
didn't know about that! Or, I didn't think about that! Oh wow, I didn't think that we have to really
do something about it. Especially if there's a kind of perceived threat or danger. That's that's the
reptilian instinct. it's that oh my god theres-! Fight or flight, and to a certain extent sometimes
freeze and to a certain extent sometimes freeze but be wide awake because something is going
to happen. You are really hearing, listening, looking around, and whatever. Now, to have you
move, I have to get you awake by doing what I said we should be doing, but then I also have to
give you a chance for getting out of it So I have to give you, or to create an idea of yeah, it's
challenging but we can do it. There is a solution. There is a solution. We are in control. Look at
these resources that you have all around you that you are not seeing, that you can see and
activate. Let's bring them in. To a certain extent, I create a sense of urgency, but then I follow up
quite immediately by creating a sense of we are in control. We can make it. We can activate
some resources that are there and that we have left, until now, in the backstage, but actually that
we can bring in the front, To work on that. Mm-hm. Create a sense of urgency, create a sense of
hope, we can do it. What follows next is, what should I be doing? Are there a couple of things that
I can do that can help me get it done the way we want to get it done? Yeah. So, now I have
played on the emotions. I have made you stay wide awake. Concern, and then hope. Yes, hope. I
made you really want to do something about it. And now I get in with some rational arguments,
with some numbers, because we need them. Then to analyze the situation, to do the problem
setting thing and then to finally problem solve and get ready to act and to translate the solution
into real action. Okay? That's the tension there That's the tension there to prepare the ground
emotionally for people to be willing to engage, and then follow up rationally Okay. Okay. Okay.
Three best practices, three tensions. To learn how to balance. As you said its a dynamic balance.
Yeah, a very dynamic balance. It Depends on the context, It depends on you, on the people you
are referring to, it depends also, on the cultural context, it depends on the situation. Okay.
Anything else we need to learn? Yeah, may I add something that's really important? One last
thing. Yeah, So far we have seen how much communication gets to be something that happens
at the intellectual level but quite a lot also on the physical level. Mm-hm. Because we have the
verbal, but also the non-verbal, the meta verbal, so we use our voice in a certain way, we use our
gestures, and so on. Communication happens quite a lot also. And, especially in the beginning on
the emotional level. Mm-hm. To engage ourselves, to engage other people, to really act in a way
that what we are saying can have an impact, we need a lot of energy. And unless we have this
energy, communication is not going to produce the results that we wanted it to produce.

communication is not going to produce the results that we wanted it to produce. Be aware of one
very important fact, again, it's something that we take for granted, to be effective in
communicating Bring in the energy that you need, and act in a way that gets you the energy that
you need. And this is my last thought concerning communication. Remember that you have an
impact Think about you bringing in very nice data, very nice ideas. You work on it all night and
then finally when you get to do this speech. You are totally exhausted. You are totally exhausted.
And you are missing very relevant parts that really make it get to your audience, and that make
your audience be engaged with what you are saying. I bet that's something that people
underestimate, that communication can be powerful, but for it, you need to have power. Might too
actually get it done. Thank you so much Gabriella. Thank you.
Okay, we have talked about a number of different intercultural communication problems so far. So
let's try to integrate some of these concepts and we'll do it with a critical incident with a small
case. Imagine the following situation: Jack Ryan is a young American engineer, and he's traveling
to China for the first time. The company that employs Jack has made a manufacturing joint
venture deal with a Chinese partner. There's been long negotiation of legal work, and now they're
to talk about how they're actually going to make this deal work, how they're going to cooperate,
how they're going to deal with the operations of the joint venture. Jack is the right person to talk
about these technical details. He's the technical expert, he can talk about the nuts and bolts. And
so he happily accepts the task. He is setting up an agenda with the chief operating officer of the
Chinese partner, Peter Chang. And he arranges for a two-day schedule. First day he's presenting
the production system to the Chinese partner tells them all about the state-of-the-art that the
American partner will contribute and the second day, he visits the production facility of the
Chinese party to see whether there are any incompatibilities, any technical issues to be aware of.
He travels to Beijing to meet the Chinese party, travels to the headquarter, and
meets Peter Chang, the CEO and a whole delegation of Peter Chang's colleagues, and direct
reports. They're all there in the meeting room and Jack is by himself. He relies on a translator, he
doesn't speak the language so he goes through
translator and says at the beginning of the presentation that this is
a very important deal for his company. And they really want to make it work. He encourages any
questions if there's anything that his audience doesn't understand they should ask questions. And
then he launches into his presentation. It's very precise very well put together a very professional
presentation that he's giving. And there are no questions. At the end of the presentation
he again repeats his invitation, if there's an ambiguities, any open issues, please let me know.
Again, nobody asks any questions. so then we ask questions, Jack thinks, This went perfectly all
right. I nailed the presentation. On the next day though he learns from his translator that the
Chinese partner was actually very displeased with how the first day went. And he's very surprised
by that. He's also getting very anxious that he is somewhat ruining this attempt to make the
partnership work and gets angry at the translator saying why didn't you tell me yesterday, you
should have warned me. Okay, so let's think about what went wrong here. You know, what were
the problems,

why was the Chinese Party displeased? We can also think about what Jack could have done
differently. So take a few minutes to reflect on this then we'll see what you what you came up
with, whether you spotted some of the problems. Let's think about what happened herein this
situation. Jack Ryan is going to China for the first time. He's ill-prepared for that situation. He's a
junior guy traveling all by himself to meet a whole delegation of fairly senior representatives of the
Chinese partner. That is already problematic. He also gives no time at all to actually build a
relationship. He's coming into this deal very late. There's already been a lot of negotiation
that his boss did with the Chinese partner, but he had no part on that. This two-day schedule that
he set himself doesn't give any room for relationship building, for trust building with a partner at
all, so even before he starts his presentation, the whole context that hes setting for himself is
already very problematic and the chips are stacked against him. So let's talk about the
presentation. He gives this presentation, this is really what he sees as the objective in this trip as
a information transmission this is what you should be doing, this is what the US technology looks
like,
this is how you should be implementing it. It's a very one way conception. should be
implementing it. It's a very one way conception. Here's the junior guy talking to senior
representatives of the partner. He tries to open it up. He tries to make this work and tries to
get feedback from his partner by saying, if there are any questions, please let me know. But this
business of inviting questions during a presentation is very tricky in a Chinese context where
there's a lot of concern about face, about maintaining face and preventing the losing of face. So
when you ask someone to ask questions, when you invite someone to ask questions, what that
basically does is that the person asking you the question could demonstrate their own
incompetence that they have to ask the question. They don't understand what you're saying,
that's why they have to ask. That's how it could be interpreted. That would cause the person who
asked the question to lose face. If you step over that barrier, if you find a point that's particularly
pertinent, you absolutely have to ask the question you might actually put the presenter in a bad
position if the presenter doesn't have a good reply to the question. So that causes the presenter
to lose face and because you, as the question-asker made the presenter lose face you lose face.
You would make them look incompetent, that reflects badly on you. Okay, so that's the whole
problem with the asking questions. The other thing about asking questions is
we have the chief operating office of this company with his direct reports. Now are the direct
reports going to ask any questions in the areas of expertise? Probably not because that would
make the boss look bad if the direct report spots an issue that the boss didn't spot that makes the
boss look bad. The boss loses face, bad situation for the direct report. So the questions don't
really help
Jack Ryan much. to elicit any response and any constructive information to make this deal work.
Let's think about what he could have done differently. to make this deal work. Let's think about
what he could have done differently. Clearly he should've allocated a little bit more time, maybe a
day extra, maybe a couple of days extra before he actually gave the presentation to establish a

relationship with his Chinese partners Peter Chang and, ideally, some of the direct reports. Even
better if he could've brought somebody who was already involved in negotiations with him, ideally
somebody more senior who can basically, give him legitimacy as the technical expert from the
U.S. side. That's the situational side. The presentation itself also could have been done
differently. Even the intention of the presentation could have been re-framed, Not as linear
transmission of information, but instead as an attempt to actually learn
from the Chinese partner of how to make this deal work, how to ensure that the productive
production side, the operation side is working smoothly. That would have been a very different
framing. And probably would have been received with more appreciation by the partner. Let's
think about this in terms of the
four dimensions communication that we talked about. So the factual information that Jack Ryan
could've stressed is actually not the competence of the US partner, and what they know is the
best way to do things, but instead, stress all the competencies
of the Chinese partner, and how those competencies, those skills actually complement very
nicely with the U.S. partner and that they're very excited that this match is, is going to happen.
That already has a relationship implication as well. Rather than saying my company's very
interested in making this deal work he could have said, we want our relationship
to be an harmonious one, one characterized by trust, so that we have a successful partnership
which is, again, very different framing and puts the relationship on a very different footing. With
this relationship statement, when you say that the relationship, what is important for the
relationship is trust and harmony, that could also be coupled with a particular appeal, with the
appeal side of the message. Now on the appeal side he could've said, well trust for us means that
we share information openly and that we critically discuss, so that we can identify issues before
they become problems. So that we can maintain the harmony in the relationship. The last point
then is the self-statement. How could Jack Ryan have positioned himself in a more effective way?
the self-statement. How could Jack Ryan have positioned himself in a more effective way?
Coming there as the technical expert to talk down to the Chinese partners is not very effective.
More effective would have been to put himself into a serving role. To say, I am here to try to
facilitate, to serve this deal, and to serve the relationship between the more senior people that
have made this deal possible in the first place. And that is something that would be more in line
with his junior status essentially. These four sides of the message could have been maybe a
productive start. This is not a surefire recipe for success. There's a lot of things that can happen,
but at least it's a nudge in the right direction. Now the translator that Jack Ryan was so upset that
he didn't warn him earlier, he could have been the test audience. Clearly that's something that
Jack would have managed and said to the translator, look this is the first time that I'm in this
context, help me out, give me signs, give me feedback if you have the perception that something
is going wrong. He could have tested the presentation with the translator first and give clear
instruction that he wants feedback, not just the literal translation off anything that the partner
says, but some guidance of how it might come across. That's something that he could have used
as a resource and support for making his trip more successful. Okay, so that ties together

a number of the ideas that we had. The four dimensions of

the message kind of the high context and culture that we talked about, and
more collectivist attitude that he could have adjusted to more to make this a more productive
relationship.
We have talked about different communication models and the four dimensions of
communication. We have seen the role that communication plays for problem solving and for
decision making, and the role it plays for establishing relationships and establishing a social
identity for yourself. We have got some great ideas of how to improve your communication skills
and what best practices to focus on when you do so. I want to round off our discussion by
focusing on the practical realities of communication. What I've done is talked to Bocconi Alumni. I
wanted to learn from them, I wanted to hear what they considered most important about
leadership communication. Myself, I would describe as a couple of things: First, extremely
informal, and I therefore, avoid any any form of excess formality because when I get to excess
formality I lose my effectiveness. I really encourage every form of communication, no matter if it is
with a guy who just entered the company a week ago, Ill try to create an environment which is
extremely friendly and extremely informal in which we can talk very openly. The other one is what
I call extreme passion for seeing reality. I don't want people to tell me the coded, embellished
version of things. I always start meetings by saying, Listen. Whatever went wrong is my fault by
definition. Even if I didn't know, I could have asked. So now that we know who's guilty, can you
please help me understand what is really going on here? What is the problem? What are we
missing? When people disagree, I usually stand up, shake their hands and say, Well done. Let's
talk about it now; but the fact that you stood up and told me that was right. This is great because
this is the kind of environment that I want to see on the business. That facilitates a
communication that, after a while, becomes very direct, and very linked to reality. I fundamentally
believe that once you know what the problem is, and you are able to define it correctly, 90% of
the time you are going to resolve it. Most of the time it takes too long to know what is the real
problem, or the program is not described in the correct way. We talk about the symptoms, but we
do not talk about the root causes of the problem. Communication is a way in which I get to know
what the problem is in the fastest possible and most direct way. This is the way I am, which
probably also is visible through this interview: to be informal and try to get, as fast as possible, to
what is the topic that we want to discuss. The best analogy for communication in my experience
is the game of chess. In the beginning of learning to play chess, you are all focused on your first
move. You almost do not think about what will be the reaction to your move. You try to figure out
what is the best first move. Then, over time, you learn to make your first move and try to
anticipate the move of your counterpart, and think through the second move, and the third move.
I find that communication is the same initially, when I was less experienced, all my focus was in
making sure that I was expressing as clearly as possible, what was in my mind. I was all occupied
on, Okay, what is it that I want to achieve, and how do I say it very clearly? Over time, I learned
that what really matters is something completely different which is the kind of reaction I get. As
you focus less on what you are saying and more on the reaction you want to get, your
communication changes; because in the end it does not matter if I unload all my frustrations, all

my hopes, and all my decisions if I don't get the reaction, because what really matters is the kind
of reaction I get. Am I getting the reaction that I want? When you start worrying about the
reaction, the communication becomes much more interesting, but also much more difficult
because as I speak, I need to look at you and try to see if I am getting the reaction that I want to
get. If I am not getting the reaction I want to get, I need to start changing my communication
almost like in a chess game, in real time to try to get to what I believe is the right endpoint for all
of us. So in the beginning its a very mechanical exercise, because I talk, and I talk slowly, and I
try to understand if the audience is reacting in the way I am expecting, and if I do not see the right
reaction, which is usually through a dialogue, which I talk a bit, and then you talk and I realize that
actually you are reacting in a completely different way than what I wanted say. And then I need to
start talk again, and try to change the way I talk, so that I generate the right reaction. Over time
you get a bit faster at that exercise, and now it comes naturally. I mean as I am in big meetings,
or in front of a large audience and I talk, and that creates a bit of empathy and requires a bit of
emotional intelligence. But the Aha! discovery for me has been when I stopped being overfocused on what I wanted to say, and became much more focused on the reaction I was getting.
You learn to ask questions. This is another very important skill of leaders. In the early phase, you
tend to listen 10% of the time, and talk 90% of the time because you believe the more you talk,
the more you can make a difference, and the more you can give direction to people. Then over
time, you learn that maybe 50/50 is much better. The way you ask questions is different with
different people in different parts of the world. When I am in certain countries, I need to be more
direct if I want to know what exactly is the problem. If I am in other places, I need to be a bit more
subtle and allow a bit more time for people to open up and describe what the opportunity is. So
asking questions is critical for leaders, and it is a way that helps you go beyond the surface of
things and to really penetrate situations and challenges. There are different ways in which people
interact and get motivated. Sometimes people like the clarity of the endpoint, the clarity of the
vision. What is it that we want to achieve? What do we want to be in five years or in ten years
from now? They get really excited and really energized by the beauty of that endpoint, and the
clarity of that endpoint. The more challenging that endpoint is, the better; because that drives
more energy. This is, I would say, a typical attitude that you find more commonly, for example, in
the Anglo-Saxon cultures. There are other cultures where people like to understand where you
want to go in ten years from now, but they get worried if there is no clarity on the building blocks
to get it to that endpoint. Therefore, as you spend a bit of time to say, guys, I mean in ten years
we want the business to be like that, and we want to change the market in this direction. Then
you need to spend much more time discussing, I think to get there, we need to do one, two,
three, and four. Then people get comfort and confidence by the fact that there is a path towards
the endpoint. The endpoint in and of itself people do not react to, but if the path is convincing,
then you can get more energy out of the team. There are some cultures, but also some teams
where it all starts from the analysis of today. People almost do not want to engage on where we
are going to go next if we do not know exactly where we are today. It requires a bit of agility and a
bit of flexibility. You need to try to understand what is the prevalent need in a team, country, or
business and try to adjust your style to one that is most helpful for the team. Of course, you can
take these three styles and start putting a few flags of different countries or different. But these
are big stereotypes to a degree, but there is a bit of truth I would say. Provide with all the
generalizing. I'm sure that in our alumni's recommendations and their experiences, you heard

echoes of themes that we've talked about earlier. As you reflect on their experiences, the
importance of thinking about communication as a dialogue, that asking powerful questions and
active listening are as important as speaking. And I really like this metaphor that Giovanni was
suggesting about communication, as playing chess. That you're trying to anticipate each other's
moves. You think strategically about communication. And we also heard it emphasized that it is
really important to be attuned to your audience's needs and their communication styles, to show a
certain level of respect to cultural conventions of communication, in the context that you are
working. We also heard that it is very useful in a diverse multi cultural setting, to be heedful of
communication barriers. That you have to try a little harder to make sure that you are effectively
communicating, to reduce misunderstanding and misinterpretations, To make sure that what you
and what others are trying to accomplish communicatively, is actually getting through. Maybe,
most importantly, we heard that as a leader, you really need to find a way, a style of
communicating, that is uniquely you, that suits you, that allows you optimally leverage your
strength as a leader. That differentiates you, and that your followers can come to rely on. It might
be your communication by its very nature is something that you work on together with others, and
therefore it ca not be perfect, right. In fact if you try to make it perfect from your perspective, you
will probably end up excluding others from the work. There is this great quote from Johann von
Goethe that. It comes from [FOREIGN] and it goes. [FOREIGN]. I think that really hits it on the
head. Communication, by its nature, is wrought with some errors, with some inefficiencies. You
just have to work with others, and therefore, in my view, perfectionism really is not the right goal
for developing your communication skills. What I would propagate as suitable goals, is try to have
more or better generatively, and more participation, and engagement in communication. In fact, if
you develop communication skills along those lines, you're well prepared to motivate others, to
build relationships. You're have an easier time actually tackling conflict. In fact your understanding
of communication, the intricacies of communication are going to be a great foundation for some
of the other topics that we are gonna talk about in this course.
In situations of collective decision making in multicultural groups it is generally important...

to judge and evaluate as quickly as possible any additional new piece of information that is
shared in the group.

to encourage mutual convergence of perspectives in order to be better able to (re-)interpret

diverse viewpoints.

to encourage participation in a collective sense-making process.

2.
The channel of communication

influences how easy it is for a sender to encode and a receiver to decode his or her messages.

determines whether communication between the receiver and the sender is uni or bidirectional.

is the least important determinant of intercultural misunderstandings

3.
The risk of decoding a message incorrectly is particularly high if

sender and receiver have a dramatically different field of experience.

sender and receiver engage in a dialog to jointly build shared meaning.

sender and receiver address language barriers and semantic barriers

4.
The semantic barrier (also called the meaning barrier)

can be easily eliminated by the use of english as a common language.

implies that different cultures sometimes understand the same phrase differently.

is easier to detect than the language barrier.

5.
In order to overcome communication barriers in intercultural communication

feedback is important.

written communications should be used.

the sender and receiver should use body language, because that is always more easily and
unambiguously understood.

6.
Uncertainty in decision making

can be with regards to the current state of the situation or problem, and the consequences
of different alternative solutions.

can be reduced with a multicultural team with different backgrounds and perspectives on
problems ("It takes uncertainty to reduce uncertainty").

generally cannot be reduced.

7.
Diversity of a group's members

makes information sharing easier.

can make information sharing more difficult, because members are concerned that their
contributions may be regarded negatively by others.

automatically leads to better decision quality.

8.
High context communication

can often be more difficult to decode for a receiver who is foreign to sender's cultural
context than low context communication.

implies that a message is communicated directly without intermediation

is more precise and clear than low context communication.

9.
Low context communication

is communication that carries relatively less important information for leaders.

is more generally effective

implies that the meaning is upfront and direct.

10.
Practically all communicative acts have the following 4 dimensions:

self-disclosure, self-aggrandizement, appeal, doubts

lies, misunderstandings, opinions, facts

self-disclosure, facts, relationship-statement, appeal.

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