4th September 2011 - UWE, Bristol Parkway.

Put this date in your diary

10 AM, 4^th September 2011

Day Event hosted by SIETAR UK and UWE, Bristol (Bristol Parkway)

Venue:

 In recognition of the significance of efficient communication in modern complex workplaces there has been an explosion of interest in cultural diversity and intercultural (IC) facilitation and training. Leading training companies in the UK report a steady growth in demand for training over the past few years and studies on IC skills/competence and IC training provide evidence suggesting that training is of benefit to trainees but also to the companies as a whole. Intercultural communication discourses have also become dominant in social life and found their way into policy documents (e.g. National Occupational Standards for Intercultural Working) referring to the skills an individual needs to have or acquire in order to interact ‘successfully’ and work ‘efficiently’ in multinational/multilingual contexts. What is particularly relevant to the IC field however is the scarcity of work bridging theory and practice. Accordingly the aim of this one day event is to bring academic research closer to professional practice and for the experience of the IC trainers and practitioners to feed back into academic research.

 

For further programme details please contact: Dr Jo Angouri (Jo.Angouri@uwe.ac.uk)

Preliminary programme (further details will be announced and circulated soon)

10.00 Conference Opening

10.30-11.30 Celia Roberts, King’s College, London

11.30-12.00 Coffee break

12.00-13.00 Carlos Gonzalez-Carrasco, Transcultural Business Group

13.00-14.00 Lunch break

14.00-15.00 Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini,  University of Warwick

15.00-16.00 George Simons, Diversophy

16.00-17.30: Round table and Coffee: Details tbc  

17.30. Conference Close

 

 

Registration: http://sietarukconference.eventbrite.com/

SIETAR members and BAAL conference delegates: £65

Non members: £90

Students: £35

 

Details on how delegates can register will be announced soon.  For registration queries or to join SIETAR, UK please contact

Matthew Hill (hillmatthew100@mac.com)

Please note BAAL delegates will need to register separately for this event.

 

http://sietarukconference.eventbrite.com/

As of Sept 15, 2010, I stepped down as the Global Fund for Women's President & CEO. I remain a Senior Advisor. I am currently a Visiting Scholar and Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Democracy,Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) as well as the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). You may reach me at knramdas@gmail.com. Thank you for your solidarity & support!

As of Sept 15, 2010, I stepped down as the Global Fund for Women's President & CEO. I remain a Senior Advisor. I am currently a Visiting Scholar and Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Democracy,Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) as well as the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). You may reach me at knramdas@gmail.com. Thank you for your solidarity & support!

Americans are Different - Perceptions of American business people from a British perspective

The 4^th of July

Whilst speaking to someone in the States on the telephone last summer I was asked if I was going to celebrate the 4^th of July holiday, which was due in a day or so. I was taken aback for a moment by the question? I thought to myself, “But why would I? I mean after all, we (the British) were the ones that lost the War of Independence weren’t we?”

I don’t think that the full historical context was uppermost in the person’s mind when they asked me that question. They were simply spreading the ‘goodwill’ that the 4^th of July event can evoke in the States.

Holidays and the celebration of them are not the only differences between cultures. In fact, along with national food dishes they are often the easier parts to understand and join in with.

Business communication

It can be a very different story when we examine the way we communicate in the global world of business.

In the U.S., an extremely vast country, there is a surprising amount of homogeneity; especially in the way that business is conducted. Core values that can drive behaviour in the American office (as well as in US subsidiaries overseas) are a strong focus on getting the task done, a strong sense and pride in individual achievement and an all-encompassing attitude to time and efficiency. Speed is king. There is, as well, often a greater comfort with uncertainty - bouncing back is often seen as much more important than getting every detail right, before moving forward.

Language

American business language can, to a Brit. And to other non-Americans, seem powerful, assertive and dynamic. But enjoying it and understanding it sufficiently to be able to respond are very different things.

Sports language at the business table

The baseball and American football language that flies around the table at meetings can be difficult to make sense of without a rudimentary knowledge of the games they refer to. To touch base, play ball, get a home run, coming from left field, batting a thousand, has two strikes against him and of course the need to cover all the bases are but some of the colourful phrases in common usage. Its use in business reflects the need of Americans to use language that is full of energy and vitality. Where better to take it from that from two very exciting sports.

Fair play & dodgy wickets

Where the British may reference sport in a business setting it more likely to refer to fair play, a level playing field, giving someone a sporting chance or a dodgy wicket. This use of sporting language reflects a much more measured and conversely less dynamic atmosphere around the table at meetings.
And divided by a common language is only the half of it.

From the others’ perspective

Looking at the reality of how might we (Brits. & Americans) may see and experience each other, some of the following observations may be useful.
Some Americans may see the Brits, as: cynical, cold, distant, argumentative, implacable, distrustful of each other, pessimistic, out of touch, over-cautious, lacking spontaneity, bureaucratic, secretive, uncommitted to results, autocratic.

And Brits may see the Americans, as:naive, childish, superficial, insincere, lacking in conviction or depth, foolish, aggressive, workaholics, scatterbrained and undisciplined, small-minded, poor judges of character, over-reaching of themselves and of course wasteful.

Making sense of it all

The American friendliness and openness which is designed to promote trust as a proactive and constructive approach to life and business may be seen by Brits as somehow naive or childish. We have learnt through our long and often bitter history that to trust less is probably safer. One is less likely to lose ones’ head either in real terms or figurative terms. Americans sees this attitude as cynical and pessimistic. The Brits see it as necessary realism.

Americans are, on the whole much more spontaneous that Brits. They like to ‘brainstorm’ their way through the problems and challenges of life and business, the more ideas the better. The Brits. see this as rather undisciplined, disorganised and unpredictable and highly dangerous.

In such uncertainty one never knows what may end up being suggested!

To a Brit. it is much better to prepare precisely what you wish to say, choose your words very carefully, in a ‘blame culture’ like ours a person will be held accountable for what they say.

Americans see this as overly cautious, guarded and lacking in spontaneity. For Americans this dull British approach can almost crush the desire for freedom and creativity. How repressed says one side – how immature says the other.

Changing times

But things are changing. The truth is that in the business world, we in Europe, have progressively borrowed from America more and more cultural traits, business practices, idiomatic expressions and the language of business communication than we may realise or be willing to admit.

In some ways we have all become a little bit American around the office or on the shop floor.

Perceptions from the past

In a recent research project the following question was asked:
What negative stereotypes/prejudices about people from the US have you heard?
These following answers were given by Americans in Europe about their own culture.

What the Americans mentioned about themselves:

• fat
• ugly
• loud
• impolite
• impatient
• pushy/rude
• bossy
• ignorant (of world events)
• don't understand irony/ have a sense of humour
• arrogant
• rich
• spend too much money
• racially bigoted
• language-impaired
• self-centred
• overly individualistic
• don't work vary hard
• not on time for anything

The above may be comforting confirmation to the Europeans of how they believe the Americans really are but the current reality is always caught in a time warp of comfortable stereotypes that say more about the past than the present.

Today’s Americans

The Americans who travel the world today on business are a very different group from those that came over to Europe in the 60’s. Today they much more savvy and attuned to the cultural differences around them. They may still prefer the American way of doing things but they are increasingly more open to difference and to experimentation – if it can be proved to work. Perhas it is time to update the stereotypes.

Richard Cook is an intercultural trainer and coach and can be contacted on richardcook@global-excellence.com or on +44 (0)20 8579 1980

I do check this email for matters related to the Global Fund,but can be reached much more quickly at knramdas@stanford.edu or at knramdas@gmail.com. Thank you for your solidarity & support!

**The Global Fund changed its email system on September 20th. If you sent me an email prior to the 20th, please resend it to my Stanford or Gmail account.

Intercultural trainers and academics are nervous of each other.  Academia either produces more and more complicated models or more and more vocal criticisms of the theoretical approaches of the trainers.  Trainers on the other hand are accused of mis-applying models and theories, or ignoring latest developments and are branded culturist and reductionist.

The best trainers, and the most resourceful academics, are more open minded and can take lessons from each other. 

Which is why I dare to write a short article on pragmatics, or more specifically what pragmatics can bring to the debate about intercultural communication.

Intercultural communication studies are at some stage bound by their very nature eventually to concentrate on communication failure, examining the reasons for misunderstandings and miscommunications, verbal and non-verbal CITATION Sie08 \l 2057  (Sierra, 2008).  Taking the view expressed by Scollon and Scollon (2001) that intercultural competence is the ability to communicate with

                people in social interaction with each other  CITATION Sco01 \l 2057 (Scollon, 2001)

we can state that all communication is intercultural.  Taking the definition of pragmatics as explained by Atkinson, Kilby and Roca (1988:217; in Grundy 1995) that pragmatics focuses on the distinction between the literal meaning of a speaker’s words, and what the speaker may intend to mean by those words, we can see that pragmatics is one of the essential tools we have at our disposal to examine intercultural training. 

When speaking to familiar people who share the same native language we can reasonably assume that the majority of our talk is understood, (for example in  CITATION Mol05 \l 2057 (Molinksy, 2005) when, as in the case of intercultural communication we are talking across language or international borders we can presume that communication breakdown is more likely to occur. 

A communication exchange can only be successful where it takes place within the realm of the participants’ shared knowledge and experience.  As both speaker and hearer have to make presumptions about what this “common ground” entails, and within the cooperative principle the speaker must assume that the common knowledge is shared by all participants in the talk.  However, crucially the speaker can never be sure that this is the case  CITATION Bos06 \l 2057 (Bosco, Bucciarelli, & Bara, 2006).  We can therefore deduce that one of the main causes of miscommunication is relying on false assumptions.

If you’re still reading, a more practical approach:

When you go into a client meeting, think about all the presumptions you make. 

1.        Language

Most meetings are conducted in English, but how many business people check in advance, or even better, apologise if they are unable to conduct the full meeting in their hosts’ language?

2.        Intentions

We presume that we have similar intentions – in other words if we are there to present a proposal, we have a reasonable expectation that there is some chance of success. 

3.        Understanding

We have an instinctive ability to interpret verbal and non-verbal messages, and for clarifying meaning.  However these are based on our own personal experience which may differ significantly from those of our partners in interaction.  At a very simplistic level 99.9% percent (rough guess) equate BBC with the British Broadcasting Corporation, however my daughter knows the BBC as the Better Behaviour Centre at her school (fortunately she has no personal experience of it!). 

Usually the context of a conversation gives us good clues as to what it means, but if she were to come home saying she had been to the BBC today and was then distracted by a phone call, she would get away with her crime completely without having uttered a single untruth – yet it is clear that I have been deceived. 

In an international context, personal experiences are likely to be much more varied, and therefore conversations will have a much smaller area of common ground and higher levels of misunderstanding.  With remote communications and slangy emails abundant, we need to double check our understanding instinct

4.        Rules of engagement

Life is made up of rules, and communicative interactions even more so.  The problem is no one has written the rules down.  We nearly always manage to avoid swearing in front of our parents or at an important business meeting.  We always manage to avoid addressing our closest friend as Mr Y or Ms Z (maybe occasionally with irony...).  We understand at an instinctive level when a conversation is over, when it is our turn to talk, whom we can interrupt and who cannot be interrupted – these rules are part of our transition from babyhood to adulthood – we often term those who cannot adhere to these rules as “immature” – they have not learned the correct way. 

However we assume that these underlying rules are universal, or at least that OUR rules are best and not to be questioned.   I have no idea whether these pictures are genuine or not but they illustrate the point better than me http://bit.ly/d0en4l

In summary these 4 points are scratching the surface of what we can gain as trainers from pragmatics without delving into overly complicated methodological debates and arguments.  What better way to justify training content than referring to well researched academic texts that support our training activities.  Austin in 1962 was one of the first to  look at the intentions behind utterances, and by identifying the stages of locution, illocution and perlocution he implicitly recognises that what we actually say and the effect it has on our partner in discourse may be two (at least) very different things .  Dascal makes the important point that participants in conversation must comply with two essential duties: to make oneself understood, and to understand (Dascal, 1999).  As part of those duties, interlocutors make every effort to ignore superficial, insignificant “errors” in grammar, pronunciation in order to maintain a smooth flow of conversation – if we can promote the ways in which we can make ourselves understood and in return make it easier for  us to understand others then we are achieving the goal of intercultural training

If we, as trainers want to provide training on avoiding intercultural misunderstandings then we should not ignore those who have gone before.