Improving cross-cultural relationships
The best way to show you how different cultures can clash and cause personal conflicts that can have lasting effects on business relationships is to start with an example of it going very badly.
Watch this video of a short business meeting between two people that are not only from different cultures, but have managed to cultivate some negative attitudes about the other's culture.
While this is a somewhat humorous presentation of the stress different cultural values can put on a relationship, you can see that although these two people probably have a great deal in common, their approach to business is very different because of their culture.
Both characters, in their thoughts to themselves asked "Why?" questions about the other's approach to business. Very simply put, the answer is their culture. Had either taken the time to understand one another's values about "getting down to business" or punctuality, this encounter could have been a lot less tense.
So what can be done to learn about a culture, especially one that you will be interacting with during a typical business day? Watch this video below and consider what the speaker suggests, and even what she did to learn about the Chinese culture.
For the final post in this series, we will summarize what was presented in the previous posts, but before that, jot down a few of the tools Valerie Hoeks provides in the video you just watched. We'll discuss them in the wrap-up.
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