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Working in Multicultural Environment
Radha enters her office building a little tense. She has just ten minutes before the weekly meeting starts and needs to get the reports ready before that. She has to be exactly on time. She knows that even a couple of minutes’ delay to start the meeting would annoy Graham a lot. He is so fanatic about maintaining time! She is also a little tense about her colleague Gaurav coming late. He might just take it a little easy and have a cup of coffee and be late by a few minutes. She is sure that expecting him to be on time for a meeting is a totally unreasonable demand for Gaurav.
Above is a typical scenario which we all are facing quite often these days. The globalosation process has gained momentum and the workplaces have become a melting pot of different cultures. With more and more companies reaching out to the global markets and tapping the competitive advantages of different geographies, we are being more and more exposed to the world outside our comfort zone and face cultural conflicts. The greater the global reach of the company, the greater the scope of contact with people from other countries and hence the scope for misunderstanding and conflict. Many organizations are even recruiting local talents to bring diversity into the workforce and encourage fresh input of ideas. It is no more surprising that we work in a team with members from different parts of the globe coming together to deliver a project. As a result, it has become extremely important for today’s workforce to change the way they think about other cultures and be able to work comfortably in a multicultural environment. Becoming a global citizen is more about the mindset than roaming around the globe. As obvious from the above scenario, the most important attribute needed to work in a multicultural environment is to understand and value the point of views of the other side. Often, the explicit difference in the behavior is just the tip of the iceberg and there is a whole mass of values and beliefs at a deeper level, which are implicit in the culture. While knowing the do s and the don’t s at different countries is important, what is more important is to go down to the deeper level and try to understand the root cause of the difference. The easier way to react to these situations is ‘We are right, they are wrong’ or “We understand them but they don’t understand us’. However, a little different way of thinking can make both sides more comfortable and create a win-win situation. This becomes more important when associates travel at other geographies for work. After the initial ‘honeymoon’ period, there comes a stage of ‘withdrawal’, when every cultural shock you encounter comes as negative and you try to compare and evaluate them with respect to your own culture. This is typically called ethnocentrism. It takes a lot of understanding, awareness and patience to overcome this stage and reach a level of ‘acceptance’, where you not only accept the differences as natural and desired, you move beyond ‘tolerance’ and start ‘appreciating’ the culture and enjoy the differences. A more mature stage would be to leverage on the opportunities of this multi-cultural dimension offers. This is when we evolve as a global person. On the other hand, the cultural gap might widen, if neither side is aware of it and hence are not taking any conscious effort to close the gap! It is not necessary to travel across the globe to be able to think globally, it can happen being in your own country itself, with a change in the mindset. Many organizations these days are taking many initiatives to address this issue in the workplace and make associates generally aware of the other cultures. While some are looking at it more from a ‘fun’ and ‘engagement’ issue, others are thinking in the line of serious education and training to build the mindset of people and create a global culture in the organization. The key to success in building such a culture would be to hold a positive and welcoming view to people from all cultures, create common goals and guidelines to suit all and cultivate a sense of loyalty and belonging. While individual attributes like respect for others, understanding others are important, the communication from the top management of the organization also is extremely important to successfully create the environment. The value from this could be enormous. In one hand you can unleash the potentials of a diverse workgroup with fresh ideas, values, knowledge and approach and on the other hand you create a culture of inclusion, sharing, collaboration and innovation. The success of a company both globally and locally depend to a large extent on how effectively it is being able to build a mutually collaborative relationship and build an environment of trust. Organizations across the world have started seeing more and more value in this. The day is not far when working in a multi cultural environment will be considered as one of the most important competency in any organization across the world. Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in December, 2009. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.
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