Unit 4 - Managing Across Culture

LISTENING 1:
1a - Version 1:
Simon: Morning, Tiffany. Good weekend?
Tiffany: Oh, yes, it was cool. And you?
S: No, not really. Listen, Tiffany, come into my office, I need to talk to you.
T: Oh, no, what now?
S: Look, I hear you had a problem with Maureen on Friday.
T: Oh, that. Yeah. That idiot refused to help me! Who does she think she is?!
S: You mustn't talk about your colleagues like that. Maureen is a very experienced
assistant and a valuable member of the team.
T: Maybe, but she still refused to help me
S: Yes, but she had a good reason to refuse. Maureen was very busy on Friday and
you didn't ask for help you demanded her immediate attention. As a future
manager, you should show respect to all the staff.
T: But I was just trying to finish the job.
S: Well, you won't get results from people like Maureen if you're rude.
T: Look, I was tired. I had a difficult week, OK?
S: Tiffany, everyone gets tired, and I'm getting tired of your attitude. You apologize,
or there'll be trouble. Do you understand?
T: Me? Apologize to some stupid little secretary? No way!
1b - Version 2:
Simon: Morning, Tiffany. Good weekend?
Tiffany: Oh, yes, it was cool and you?
S: Yeah, I had a good weekend too - apart from having to finish off this report. How
about you? What did you do?
T: I went to the swimming pool yesterday. Gorgeous weather.
S: Mm, sounds good. Er, Tiffany, have you got a minute?
T: Sure.
S: Come in. I just wanted to have a quick word. I hear you had a problem with
Maureen on Friday.
T: Oh, that. Yeah. That idiot refused to help me! Who does she think she is?!
S: Well, Tiffany, I think perhaps you should be more careful about how you talk
about your colleagues. Maureen is a very experienced assistant and a valuable
member of the team.
T: OK, but she still refused to help me.
S: Well, you might want to think about why she couldn't help you. Maureen was
very busy on Friday, and I understand you didn't really ask for help so much as
 demand her immediate attention. We try hard to respect all our staff here. As a
future manager, I think you ought to do the same.
T: But I was just trying to finish the job.
S: Well, I understand that, and I appreciate that you work hard and that you expect
other people to show the same commitment. But, don't you think you might get
better results from people like Maureen by being a little more diplomatic?
T: Yeah, OK. I'm sorry, you're right. I was tired. I didn't mean to be rude.
S: OK. It can happen to anyone. Why don't you ask Maureen to have a coffee with
you, and just clear the air? OK?
T: OK. Thanks, Simon.
LISTENING 2:
2a - Sandra: I got my first placement in a PR firm in Paris. Our teachers had told us to be careful
about dress code, being on time, and so on. But I had a problem I really wasn't expecting. The
first day, I arrived at eight thirty and I was a bit surprised because I had to wait an hour and a
half for my supervisor to arrive. In fact, most people came in at about eleven o'clock. But
everybody was very friendly. They gave me a project to work on and I thought, great, I can
really do a good job here and, you know, make a good impression. Well, for the first two weeks I
worked from nine in the morning to about seven in the evening. I didn't really have a social life
because I only got home about eight, but, like I said, I wanted to make a good impression. But
then gradually, people became less friendly, and stopped talking to me. I couldn't understand
why they were giving me these funny looks, especially when I went home in the evening.
Anyway, in the end, I went and asked my supervisor what I'd done wrong. And, in fact, the
problem was that most people didn't go home until 9 or 10pm. So because I left at about seven, I
was breaking the unwritten rules. They all thought was lazy! I mean, I knew I was the first to
leave, but I arrived at 9am, and I was working really hard, you know?! But as far as they were
concerned, you couldn't do any real work before eleven, so arriving at nine in the morning didn't
count!
2b - David: I'm a department manager in the civil service. The department's actually very
informal and friendly - we're all quite young and everyone's on first name terms. We all have
lunch together in the canteen and we often go to the pub for a drink after work. We have one or
two interns per year. We try to make them feel at home and part of the team, and usually it's fine.
But, a year or two ago, I had a problem with an intern I was supervising. At first, everything was
fine. Monica was very bright and friendly, and got on well with everybody. But then one day we
had a crisis in the office. My manager needed one of Monica's files for an important meeting at
10am. We couldn't find it, and unfortunately Monica wasn't in the office; she wasn't answering
her phone, and she didn't arrive until ten fifteen! In fact, she'd been to the dentist's, but she hadn't
told me that she'd be late. Well, as you can imagine, I was stressed out and I made it very clear
that this was unacceptable. And Monica just burst into tears, so I had to tell her that, you know,
that was unprofessional too. Anyway, after that, things were never the same. She stopped
socializing with the rest of the team; she wouldn't say anything in meetings and she didn't even
eat in the canteen with us anymore. I tried to explain that it was my job to tell her when there was
a problem, and that it wasn't personal. But she couldn't accept that. For her, a boss was a boss,
and a friend was a friend, and you couldn't be a boss and a friend.
LISTENING 3:
I: How do you prepare people to do business intemationally?
JT: How we prepare people to do business internationally really depends on the task that
they're undertaking on behalf of their company or organisation. For example, if you're being sent
by your company to live and work overseas for a period say of two or three years, as an assignee,
then we would provide you either with a one-or two-day programme covering such issues as:
cultural awareness, practical issues of living in, working in, as well as how to deal with culture
shock, which everybody goes through when they go on assignment. We'll also deal with
particular issues such as schooling, health care and, in particular parts of the world increasingly,
with security. However, if, as is the case now, many more people are not actually going to live
overseas but have intemational responsibility. You need a different set of learning tools and that
is, first of all, a general cultural awareness and understanding of how you should really operate
when dealing with people with other cultures; teaching you how to negotiate contracts;
communication, just generally whether that's by telephone, by e-mail or even by the written
word. The words that you choose have a very different effect on the recipient depending on
which culture you're conversing with Another important area these days is presentation skills. In
the past it has been assumed that you use the same presentation from your home country when
presenting to a more multi-cultural audience. That's very much not the case, and we teach people
even down to the kind of words you use on the slides, the colours you use, and indeed how to
deal with questions and answers and manage your audience because of course in different
cultures there's a different response. Finally, it's very important we believe here at Famham
Castle, to underpin all this with some ability to communicate in the host language. Whilst
English is still very much regarded as the international language of business, it is increasingly
expected that people will make at least some effort and attempt to learn the language of the
people that they are dealing with, particularly in a social environment. It really demonstrates an
interest and an affinity with the people that really you are trying to build relationships with and,
of course, business is all about building relationships.
LISTENING 4:
I: And are there certain skills and techniques for doing business internationally, which can
be applied in any culture?
JT: I think rather than skills and techniques there are some very strong personality traits that
those people who tend to be more successful in an intemnational business environment tend to
demonstrate. For example, flexibility and adaptability would be a particularly strong
requirement, the ability to observe, participate in something and adapt your own set of skills and
knowledge and your own way of doing things. To actually listen more carefully would be
another strong trait that you really ought to demonstrate. Adaptability, listening and I think really
to take an approach with a very positive attitude. I think anybody who approaches cultural issues
with a very negative attitude will get a very negative response from the people they are trying to
do business with.
LISTENING 5:
I: And can you give us examples of typical cultural mistakes made by people doing
business internationally?
JT: There are lots of quoted examples and I think they are really to do with attitudes,
particular facets of cultures. For example, timc would be a very important cultural aspect that
you really do have to learn if you are from a western culture then how you do approach time and
how you do business. For example, in a country like Saudi Arabia would be very important.
Other examples are really attitudes to hierarchy. For example: there are many US corporations
wbo have very young, high-flying business, very successful business executives. For example, if
you send one of those individuals to meet and do business with a senior Asian businessperson,
again Japan coines to mind, then they will be met with a very distinctively negative response,
and what indeed will happen is that the senior Asian businessperson will see it very much as an
insult, probably either leave the meeting or refuse to attend the meeting and will actually send
somebody who thcy think is of equal status and age to negotiate with that individual and because
that lower individual, more junior individual doesn't have the authority then you're very unlikely
to achicve anything out of that meeting.