Tag: empathy

A New “Golden Rule”: Cultural Intelligence & Empathy

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In the realm of business ethics, the “golden rule” has long been championed as a guiding principle: treat others as you would want to be treated. 

Yet, when navigating cross-cultural business relationships, this rule may not always apply, as cultural nuances complicate matters.

From small talk dynamics to social behaviors, each culture has its own way of doing things.

So if you treat others the way you want to be treated, misinterpretations can arise.

The Disconnect

Such misinterpretations may have serious consequences in business settings, where effective communication is paramount. 

Monkey moments born out of ignorance or assumptions can strain relationships and hinder negotiations. 

In today’s world, where businesses operate across borders, cultural intelligence has emerged as a critical skill set.

Cultural intelligence involves a multifaceted approach to understanding and navigating cultural differences. 

It encompasses a drive to collaborate, knowledge acquisition, strategic planning for multicultural interactions, and adaptive behavior. 

By fostering a high-CQ workforce, businesses can enhance relationships with clients, improve productivity, and foster diversity and inclusion.

Conversely, low CQ can lead to reputational damage, legal issues, and hindered growth. 

Companies with culturally clueless employees may struggle to attract diverse talent and fail to expand their customer base. 

Appreciation, Mindfulness, & Adaptability

Cultural intelligence goes beyond mere tolerance – it fosters genuine appreciation and empathy for others’ experiences and backgrounds. 

Whether in the workplace, social settings, or everyday interactions, possessing a high level of CQ enables individuals to navigate diverse environments with sensitivity.

One of the key components of cultural intelligence is cultural mindfulness. 

This involves being aware of one’s own cultural biases and assumptions while remaining open to learning about and embracing new cultural perspectives. 

It’s about recognizing that there is no single “right” way of doing things and appreciating the richness that diversity brings to our lives.

Another aspect of CQ is cultural adaptability. 

This means being able to adjust one’s behavior, communication style, and decision-making processes to fit the cultural context in which one finds themselves. 

By demonstrating flexibility and a willingness to learn from others, individuals with high cultural adaptability can build stronger relationships and foster greater collaboration across cultural divides.

Companies with culturally intelligent leaders and employees are better equipped to navigate international markets, build strong partnerships, and drive innovation through diverse perspectives.

A New “Golden Rule”: Empathy

This is basically what cultural intelligence is: Empathy.

Organizations prioritizing CQ development can outperform competitors and thrive in empathy.

Empathy remains crucial in understanding others, but in the context of cross-cultural communication, adapting to different cultural norms is equally essential. 

The golden rule must evolve to encompass cultural intelligence, as this study suggests – to treat others not just as you would want to be treated, but as they want to be treated.

Building Bonds Across Cultures: Strategies to Build Trust in Negotiations

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Unlocking successful outcomes in cross-cultural negotiations often hinges on a fundamental element: trust. 

We talked last week about how important trust is to negotiations and that different cultures approach trust differently.

As borders blur and global interactions become commonplace, understanding how to cultivate trust across cultural divides is essential for effective communication, collaboration, and deal-making. 

The power of trust is crucial in navigating the complexities of global business negotiations, and here are some ways to build it.

Cultural Sensitivity and Respect

Demonstrating respect for cultural norms, values, and customs is essential for building trust in cross-cultural negotiations. 

By showing an appreciation for cultural differences and adapting communication styles and behaviors accordingly, negotiators can convey sincerity and foster trust.

For example, in a negotiation with a Japanese business delegation, acknowledging and respecting hierarchical structures and formalities, such as addressing senior members with appropriate titles and gestures of deference, can cultivate trust and goodwill.

Transparency and Openness 

Transparency breeds trust in cross-cultural negotiations. 

Sharing information openly, providing clear explanations, and avoiding ambiguity can instill confidence and demonstrate a commitment to honesty and integrity.

For instance, in negotiations between a European company and an African counterpart, openly discussing financial projections, potential risks, and decision-making processes can alleviate concerns about hidden agendas or ulterior motives.

Consistency and Reliability

Consistency in actions and words is paramount for building trust in any relationship – but especially across cultural divides. 

Delivering on promises, honoring commitments, and demonstrating reliability over time can establish a foundation of trustworthiness.

For instance, a European company is negotiating a partnership with a Middle Eastern counterpart. 

The European company commits to delivering a proposal by a specific deadline and ensures that it is not only met but also includes all promised details and specifications. 

They also consistently provide accurate and transparent information throughout the negotiation process, demonstrating integrity and reliability.

By consistently demonstrating reliability in their actions and words, the European company earns the trust of their Middle Eastern counterparts.

Active Listening and Empathy

Actively listening to the perspectives, concerns, and priorities of counterparts and demonstrating empathy can foster trust by signaling genuine interest and understanding.

For example, a tech company in Silicon Valley is negotiating a partnership with a manufacturing company in China. 

The Chinese company expresses concerns about maintaining control over certain aspects of the project to ensure alignment with their production standards and timelines. 

Instead of dismissing these concerns or pushing their own agenda, the Silicon Valley team takes the time to understand the underlying reasons behind these preferences.

They engage in active listening by asking clarifying questions and seeking to empathize with the challenges faced by their counterparts. 

They acknowledge the importance of quality control in manufacturing and express a genuine desire to find a solution that meets the needs of both parties.

This approach fosters a sense of trust and mutual respect between the two parties, laying a solid foundation for a collaborative partnership based on open communication and shared understanding.

Building Bridges of Trust

Trust serves as the linchpin that holds relationships together and propels agreements forward. 

By embracing cultural sensitivity, transparency, consistency, and empathy, negotiators can bridge cultural divides, foster trust, and lay the groundwork for successful collaborations that transcend borders. 

Ultimately, building trust in cross-cultural negotiations is not just about reaching agreements; it’s about forging enduring bonds of mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation in an increasingly interconnected world.

Active Listening & Empathy: How to Communicate More Openly Across Cultures

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Part of walking around in someone else’s skin, in their experience, requires knowing what their experience is in the first place.

This is where active listening comes in.

Why We Don’t Listen Well

Like empathy, itself, active listening is a conscious process.

You can’t leave your ears open and turn your brain off and assume that, just by nodding along, you are honing your listening skills.

Business relations are fueled by the powerful psychological tool of active listening.

Why?

Because active listening results in mutual understanding.

Think of your last face-to-face conversation.

Do you recall what your conversation partner spoke about? In how much detail could you relate what they said?

If your account recalls more of your side of the conversation than theirs, you may want to ask yourself two questions:

1) Are you talking more than listening?

2) Are you even listening when you’re not talking?

We are often distracted while in conversation, splitting our attention between thinking about what we will next share and listening.

Particularly when the dialogue is more of a debate, we tend to turn our ears off, as we’re more focused on formulating our response than we are in taking in another’s conflicting point of view.

Assumptions are made, because we’ve all heard the “talking points” before. So, whether or not the other is making a new and interesting point, we assume they’re rattling off old news.

The focus, then, is on winning the argument.

But the argument would be much more constructive if both parties opened their ears.

The Structure of Active Listening

  1. Focus
    When active listening, your focus should be on the speaker.
    Put down your phone, look directly at the speaker, turn the part of you off that is already formulating your argument, and really listen to what the speaker is saying.
    If you are multitasking or otherwise distracted, you aren’t giving your full attention and consideration to your partner.
  2. Repeat
    The speaker should also be aware that they’re being heard.
    One way to show you’re listening is to repeat what the speaker has said back to them in a way that recounts what you’ve picked up.
    For instance, the speaker is sharing a personal issue with you. After listening to their issue in its entirety without interrupting, you might respond, “So, if I understand correctly, you’re saying…” followed by a summary of what you’ve been told.
    You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying; but in reformulating what you’ve heard in your own words, you are validating their perspective in that you’ve listened with focus and fully understood them.
    It also helps you, as the listener, switch perspective.
    Sometimes you’ll find your own cultural framework has made you misinterpret something.
    By repeating, the speaker can see that you didn’t quite understand them and clear up their perspective, making this communication more effective.
  3. Open Up
    When in cultural conflict, one is often defensive and refuses to see their opponent’s situational perspective.
    Our natural instinct is to then not listen at all and only to have our voices heard.
    We lash out and might even get personal, which is not effective in bridging the divide.
    Active listening combats that, making both parties feel heard and allowing people to open up.
    A solution is more likely to be arrived at through active listening than through combative conflict.

Through empathy and the tools we’ve discussed over the past few weeks, you’ll be able to better communicate and deal with conflict cross-culturally.

Practicing Empathy: “How Would I Feel If…?”

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Slipping into another’s skin comes easier to some than others.

Multicultural environments prepare those who grow up in them to imagine how a person from a different background thinks and feels, imagine another’s experience in this world.

In that person’s experience, multiple worlds exist, so slipping fluidly from one perspective and reality to another is often more familiar; it comes naturally.

But for those of us who live in a monocultural environment – that is a single, homogeneous culture – the change in perspective is not innate.

Despite having no experience or natural instinct to shift perspectives, there is a simple way to practice.

Ask The Question: How Would I Feel If…?

A Walmart CEO is heading up a branch in Germany.

He digs his feet in, declaring English the company language there and forcing his German staff to communicate only in English. He refuses to learn a lick of German.

If this Walmart CEO had taken a moment to ask himself, “How would I feel if the tables were turned?” he might experience a shift in perspective that would reverse this decision.

If he had imagined for a moment a German CEO at BMW in New York forcing his employees to speak German, declaring it the official language of BMW, he might have seen how flat-footed such a decision is.

How would American employees react? How would YOU react?

Asking the simple question, “How would I feel if a foreigner was doing this in my culture/country?” allows the shift in perspective you need to see your own obvious cultural blunders (i.e. “monkey moments“).

You can also take this view when accommodating foreigners in your own country.

For instance, if you have a visiting colleague from Japan and you know something of the Japanese culture, you probably understand that physical contact – and especially touching of the face – is considered intimate and taboo in Japanese culture.

Although it’s part of your own culture and this visitor is in your country, you might consider, “How would I feel…?” And instead of going in for a hug, a kiss on the cheek, or even a handshake, as are customary greetings in many cultures, you might offer your visiting colleague a bow. Doing so is respectful and would make this colleague that much more comfortable and at home in your country.

While your colleague may try to adapt to their host country and greet you as is customary in your culture, they will likely appreciate the empathetic gesture that you’ve extended.

Tommy Thompson & Krushchev

A little understanding and shoe-shifting go a long way in cross-cultural relations.

In politics, you might call it diplomacy, which is defined as:

“the art of dealing with people in a sensitive and effective way.”

An example of this by Psychologist J. E. Sherman in Psychology Today illustrates a rather extreme example of how shifting perspectives can truly facilitate cross-cultural relations – and even save the world from war.

Sherman explains that missiles had been installed by the Soviets 225 miles off the Florida coast in Cuba during the Cold War.

President Kennedy had to show a strong front. He was leaning toward an airstrike, which would, of course, have escalated the situation, but he thought he was boxed in.

However, level-headed senior foreign service officer Tommy Thompson offered some keen advice.

Having lived with Soviet Premier Khrushchev, Thompson could adopt his perspective, and he convinced Kennedy to go for a softer front: to make Khrushchev an offer that there would be no U.S. retaliation if the Soviets pulled out.

Of course, we all know the result: Khrushchev took the offer, and the world was saved from nuclear war.

Sherman writes:

“Thompson, a competent shoe-shifter put himself in Khrushchev’s shoes. He recognized that Khrushchev wasn’t expecting the US to find out about the missiles so early and hadn’t foreseen the potential for direct confrontation. He would be looking for a way to save face, to claim that he had saved Cuba from attack.”

You, too, can be a competent shoe-shifter like Tommy Thompson.

All it takes is to ask yourself what your own feelings/reactions might be if the shoe was on the other foot.

The conscious process of shoe-shifting allows you to delve into thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in another’s perspective.

In the end, while practicing empathy and active tolerance, you gain insight into individuals, differing perspectives, and foreign cultures.

Empathy in Action: An Exercise in Developing Empathy

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Close your eyes, and picture this:

You are born into a relationship-based culture.

Relationships are the most important thing to you, because they are so integral to society.

Not only do they help you rise in the world, but they have your back when you fall.

Everything is tied to these relationships.

How do you see the world? How does this foundation impact your behavior, values, and norms?

Exercise in Empathy

The above was an exercise in empathy. 

Being able to put yourself into another’s shoes and imagine things from their perspective builds empathy – a tool that you can wield to your advantage.

Last week, we talked about how empathy is an essential personality trait when managing across cultures.

It’s not easily alterable or acquired; some are naturally more empathetic than others.

But like every trait that doesn’t come naturally, one can take actionable steps to develop it.

Developing empathy is an active, voluntary act.

And when working in a cross-cultural environment, you must be willing to volunteer this shift of perspective in order to adapt to your host culture.

We’ve talked a bit about the “monkey experience” in this blog and in my book I am the Monkey.

It’s one example of an exercise in empathy: viewing the world through the eyes of a monkey – and imagining others’ perceptions about you, the monkey, in turn.

It’s a radical shift in perspective, but a necessary exercise in understanding other individuals, other cultures, and better responding to differences in behaviors and values.

Another Exercise

You teach the third grade in New York City.

A new student enters your class. He just moved to America from the U.K. He is timid and visibly shaken. 

How do you sympathize with the student?

You comfort him, sharing with him that you understand his fear in this new situation.

But how do you demonstrate empathy?

Here’s how:

Picture yourself in his shoes: a young foreign child in a new school, new country, new culture.

Although you may never have been in this position yourself, drawing from your own similar well of experiences in unknown places, you may have a sense of what he’s feeling: the fear, the discomfort, the vulnerability, the confusion.

Sympathizing is the first step to creating a cross-cultural warmth of companionship and camaraderie; empathizing goes far deeper.

In this instance, you understand the child’s inner turmoil and are thereby better able to provide support and confidence through your words and actions.

With more information, you can make informed decisions about how to address his discomfort. And empathy gives you that information.

Visualization is the key to empathy – placing yourself into the untied shoes of that third grader, and viewing the big, scary world through his eyes.

This is empathy in action.

Next week, we’ll provide some examples of empathy in the workplace.

Empathy: A Trait That Facilitates Cross-Cultural Relations

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What makes good leadership?

Charisma comes to mind. Communication and organizational skills; the ability to influence and delegate; confidence, integrity, accountability, empowerment.

All of these characteristics make for an exceptional leader.

But perhaps one of the most important attributes when working in a cross-cultural environment is empathy.

Putting Yourself in Another’s Shoes

Emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and empathy regularly emerge as principal attributes of those who facilitate cross-cultural relations.

Empathy is defined as

“the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.”

When you put yourself in another’s shoes, you start to identify with their beliefs or their actions.

You attempt to understand from multiple perspectives, drawing on different cultural backgrounds and the complex nature of human lives.

How Does Empathy Differ From Sympathy?

Sympathy is sometimes used interchangeably with empathy, but they are not one and the same.

When you sympathize with someone, it means you share their feelings; you commiserate with their grief, sorrow, or misfortune.

Often, you offer compassion and comfort simply by acknowledging the person’s difficulties.

“Thoughts and prayers.”

“Sorry for your loss.”

“Thinking of you.”

These are offerings of sympathy.

Empathy, on the other hand, goes a step beyond.

“In Feeling”

From the Greek, “empatheia,” the word is a combination of the prefix, “en,” and the root, “pathos,” meaning “in” and “feeling.”

So, empathy literally means “in feeling.”

When you empathize, not only are you commiserating with someone else’s hardship, you’re taking their feelings upon yourself, feeling what they feel, assuming the emotional anguish or hardship of said individual.

John Steinbeck described the power of empathy, writing,

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”

As you can probably recognize, empathy in cross-cultural relations is a powerful tool.

When entering a foreign culture, you must be able and willing to understand your colleagues or staff by feeling them in yourself.

Once you empathize and relate to their experiences, you are better positioned to understand their mentality and behavior.

Understanding will help you better navigate any conflicts that arise with individuals or groups.

And that empathy goes both ways.

As a foreign manager, you are the monkey.

So, you can only hope that your colleagues do you the same courtesy by putting themselves in your shoes and trying to understand your foreign ways.

Thus, both sides will observe the golden rule, “treat others as you would like to be treated,” which is what empathy is all about.

Next week, we’ll offer ways in which you can develop this important trait.

Step 3 of Cross-Cultural Integration: Adapting in Action

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Once you realize you’re the monkey in a foreign culture, you can’t go around, swinging from limb to limb. After being made aware of and accepting your differences, you must start to adapt.

This is where the monkey must come out of his cage and start behaving like a human to “fit in.” Slowly, he’ll begin to adapt some of their behaviors, and the following advice will ease the process.

5 Steps to Adapting

  1. Seek the “Why” – Instead of seeing things as black or white, wrong or right, seek the “why” when faced with cultural differences. Knowing why your host culture believes certain things or behaves in ways that are strange to you will help you understand local culture.
  2. Adopt Your Host’s Worldview – To help you seek the “why,” try to put yourself in the shoes of your host and momentarily adopt their worldview. Leave your gavel and robes at home, because you’re not here to judge or condemn; you’re here to learn. Look at yourself as a student and your host culture as the teacher.
  3. Rely on Analogies – A German businesswoman in France was once advised to forget the clockwork functioning of a business. She was told, instead, to view French companies as “royal courts,” where the CEO is king, and she was an earl, building her network until she earned favor. Analogies like these can help you visualize how to behave in the culture and interpret what’s going on around you.
  4. Apply Stereotypes Wisely – While stereotypes are similar to analogies in that they can aid cultural interpretation, these simplified representations of people shouldn’t be applied in an overarching manner. Doing so can be dangerous and hurtful. However, even though it’s important to remember that we’re all individuals and should never be treated like stereotypes, looking at an individual in a cultural context can allow understanding. As Kevan Hall at the Global Integration Blog notes, “If we focus on individuals irrespective of their cultural context we may assume everything is personality. Using US-normed tests on extraversion and introversion, for example, has led to a very high proportion of mainland Chinese participants scoring as introverted. Not a very useful result.”
  5. Apply Empathy Generously – Remember that empathy – or putting yourself in another’s shoes – is essential to understanding. To truly understand your hosts and their culture, you must be culturally empathetic.

Adapting Inaction

Employee A is from Japan. She’s moved to Spain. Spanish greetings involve a kiss on both cheeks. This makes Employee A very uncomfortable.

The Japanese find touch inappropriate and even intimate. When introduced to the Spanish form of greeting, Employee A does not seek the “why,” adopt her host’s worldview or feel empathetic. Instead, she views this greeting style as wrong and inappropriate and chooses to remain physically distant. Every interaction that follows is awkward, for both Employee A and for her hosts.

Employee A does not adapt to the simplest of cross-cultural differences – greetings – which will make it even harder to fully integrate into the culture.

Adapting in Action

Employee B is also from Japan but looks at this greeting from the Spanish perspective. It is not meant to be uncomfortably intimate; it’s a gesture of friendliness.

She chooses to adapt this simple greeting into her behavior, even though it gives her discomfort at first. After a while, she starts to get used to it, despite the fact that limitations on physical touch are deeply ingrained in her culture.

Her hosts appreciate her effort, and as she starts to adapt other Spanish behaviors, she has a much easier time integrating.

She may even move onto adopting behaviors and ideologies of her host culture, which we’ll talk about next week.