cross-cultural skills – Success Across Cultures

Organizations may hire expatriates in high-tech positions based on their technological aptitude rather than on their cross-cultural or personal merit.

On the other end, expatriates may accept a position without being cross-culturally competent or familiar with the country.

A study of expatriates in the high-tech industry reveals some interesting findings on the subject.

Let’s take a look.

What is Cross-Cultural Competency?

The study defines cross-cultural competence as follows:

“the ability of individuals to work effectively and live normally in different cultural contexts, and…to adopt adaptive thinking patterns and behaviors in the host country.”

Using collected questionnaire survey data, the study identifies expatriate challenges in their new role and proposes ways in which expatriates can adjust psychologically.

Challenges

Challenges to expatriates include:

When these challenges lead to excessive pressure, psychological and even physical symptoms can occur.

That isn’t to say that all pressure is bad, however.

An appropriate application of pressure can drive employees to progress in their work smoothly and help the adaptation process.

How Adaptation Can Help

Those expatriate employees who adapt to their host country’s culture and customs participate more in the workplace and find more ways to alleviate stress.

Moreover, those employees with high cross-cultural competency also adjust to their host country more smoothly and have a higher job performance.

Setback Period

There is a setback period when expatriates first begin working in their new role.

Unforeseen situations coupled with cultural incompetency and potential incomplete assignments lead to wariness of expatriate employees.

The expatriate needs to navigate the setback period successfully in order to adapt to their cross-cultural environment and achieve in their job performance.

Cross-cultural skills will help this transition, as the expatriate will sooner accept the foreign culture, the environment, and their co-workers.

The Study’s Findings

To achieve cross-cultural competence, the expatriate must initially recognize the differences between old and new environments in order to spot potential conflicts between the two and find ways to overcome them in order to integrate.

Using the reported data, the study found that the stronger an expatriate employee’s level of cross-cultural competence, the better their performance in both the host country and in their job.

Job involvement is also improved by the employee’s ability to adjust to customs.

This is likely due to the fact that those who can adjust to the host country generally release more work stress and enjoy greater life satisfaction.

Moreover, those able to adjust to work contexts better feel less frustrated and achieve more in their role.

An accumulation of negative pressures can lead to poor job performance, while positive pressures can drive expatriates to achieve individual and work success.

The bottom line is: cross-cultural competency can improve job performance by smoothing the transition and reducing stress.

Not all personalities perform well in a cross-cultural environment.

Research finds that managers with the following qualities achieve the best performance:

Social initiative
Emotional stability
Open-mindedness
Flexibility
Empathy

Transitioning across cultures is not easy, and often managers who are sent to work in a cross-cultural environment are chosen for their business acumen, rather than any inherent cross-cultural skills or adaptability they may possess.

While companies do require managers abroad to know their business, their cross-cultural skills are equally important.

Sometimes successful leadership in one’s home country does not necessarily transfer over to, say, Japan, Germany, or Brazil.

Each of these countries has different cultural values and norms, and if the manager doesn’t have the skills required to accept, adapt, or adopt aspects of the culture, they will fall flat as a foreign manager.

Self-Assessment

Perhaps, you’re not sure if you possess the qualities that are key to cross-cultural leadership.

To self-assess whether your personality is compatible to lead across cultures, read the hypothetical scenario and then answer honestly.

Grief Across Cultures

Grieving processes differ across cultures.

Consider your own culture’s appropriate grieving process.

Do mourners grieve openly and emotionally? Or do they grieve quietly and stoically?

Now, imagine you are from the West, and you’re organizing a relative’s funeral.

The West approaches grief in a somber and communal fashion. Funerals usually involve family and relatives joining either in a congregation or funeral hall, saying prayers, sharing memories, crying. But this is often the extent of the communal grieving process.

Now, consider that the Middle Eastern partner of your relative invites her family to the funeral.

Middle Easterners show grief by moaning and crying out during communal services.

When they grieve this way at the funeral, do you find their actions disrespectful? As the funeral’s organizer, would you be upset that your own family was perhaps uncomfortable with this demonstrative grieving? Would you attempt to adapt the funeral to accommodate different forms of grief?

If you were to attend a funeral in the Middle East, would you adhere to your own cultural norms when mourning, or would you mirror your hosts and express your grief in a similar fashion?

If you are silent, your hosts might find your solemn behavior as disrespectful. Are you alright with this interpretation?

Do you think you could become accustomed to these behaviors if you lived in the Middle East for a time? If so, would you be open to adopting the behaviors when they became natural to you?

Now, consider other foreign funerary customs. For instance:

The Benguet of the Philippines blindfold the departed and seat them on a chair beside their home’s main entrance.
The Vaisravana Buddhists of Tibet and Mongolia perform a “sky burial,” ritually dismembering the departed and leaving the body on a mountaintop for vultures to take.
The Malagasy of Madagascar exhume their departed every couple of years in an event called “the turning of the bones,” in order to dance with them along to live music.

Would you be able to accept, adapt to, or adopt any of these cultural funerary customs?

The answer to this question will give you an idea about where you draw the line and how you might fair in a foreign environment.

What if the above qualities are not your strengths?

Never fear; next week, we’ll talk about developing the skillset to build these qualities.

Tag: cross-cultural skills

Does Cross-Cultural Competency Improve Job Performance?

Assessment: Can You Accept, Adapt, and Adopt Across Cultures?