Exploring Culture and Technology

21st July 2008

Exploring Culture and Technology

Today was the first day of a five day workshop I am attending on Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace. It’s being held at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland Oregon.

One of the things I find very special about this particular setting is the people who assemble here, from all around the world, yet all passionate about learning about each other. There are people working a wide variety of settings: education, business, non-profit, ngo’s.

Global Perspectives from global citizens

My day started hearing from the institute faculty who are teaching a range of workshops on diversity, inclusion, cross-cultural, and intercultural communication. Each shared something they have been thinking about, or what I think of how they are changing their little corner of the world. The interns follow, professionals in their own right, greeting us in the many languages they speak, from the countries they have lived in. Can’t remember how many, but more than 35.

Starting Class

To get us fully engaged in understanding the challenges of global teams, our faculty Terence Brake from tmaworld broke us into two teams. All but one person on each team was blindfolded. The rest of us where told we had something to find near us, which we were to assemble once we found it.

This was a very effective exercise to force us to communicate clearly (or not), find ways to connect and collaborate (or not), and challenge all sorts of assumptions. It was not easy, even though we were able to actually reach out and touch each other, giving us another sense we would not have over technology.

We’ll be exploring all week

I’ll be working with my team to investigate a number of technologies, and investigating the cross-cultural implications of the choices we make. My small group is particularly interested in exploring what we can do when the online communication starts going bad. How do we tell? What can we do about it?

Any insights? What are the signs you look for to tell something is wrong in a conversation using technology?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Diversity & Intercultural. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On July 22nd, 2008, Virginia Yonkers said:

This sounds like a very interesting workshop. I can’t wait to here more about your experiences.

I teach global communications, new communication technologies, globalization, and international marketing using online groups that collaborate with other student groups around the world. I also have worked on international projects, many times in developing countries.

One of the main problems with communication with technology globally is the use of silence. Americans aren’t used to silence and are very impatient in receiving answers back quickly. Other cultures don’t have the same communication patterns. So inevitably there is always a question as to whether a lack of response is due to a) misunderstanding, b) a difference in communication style (turn taking, pauses, showing respect) or c) a problem with the technology. Many times, we would put down a miscommunication to a technology breakdown, when in fact it was HOW technology was used (wanting information in writing or being afraid to commit in writing because of the “official” nature of written language in some cases).

Another problem was turn taking and echoes (i.e. video conferencing, conference calls). Sometimes the technology distorted some of the communication cues I would notice face to face (expressions, pauses, eye contact, gestures). I also find the concentration needed for simultaneous technology tiring when communicating with other cultures as I feel I have to pay attention a lot more to try to make meaning and make sure we are understanding each other.

I could go on, but I find this topic very interesting.

2 On July 22nd, 2008, Christine Martell said:

Hi Virginia,
I imagine you would enjoy this class. Perhaps we can give you a taste of it long distance? We are talking about all the things you have mentioned. There are seven national cultures in the room (assuming you recognize French Canada as different from English Canada), with many of the participants working on global teams of some kind. Makes for very rich conversation.

I’ll try to post as much as I can as we go, but I’m sure I’ll have overall insights also. I’ll see if we can get any of the other class members to respond also.

3 On July 22nd, 2008, Michele Martin said:

Interesting question, Christine. . . one thing that came up a few times in the Comment Challenge was the issue of vocabulary and the different meanings that people assign to words. We had a lot of discussions around things like having a comment “policy” and what it meant to get into “personal branding” because a lot of people had assigned negative meanings to those words. So we had to be really deliberate in trying to identify where we were using the same words but maybe not speaking the same language. This became obvious based on the comments and blog posts where people were indicating that they didn’t like the idea and then I had to go back and ask myself why they had such negative reactions to things I’d thought of as being positive. Interestingly, this wasn’t a cultural issue in terms of geography or ethnicity–it was based on the different occupations/professions of the people involved, so these are issues that obviously happen across many different kinds of cultures.

I also think another way it can go “bad” is in finding the right balance. Sometimes people don’t respond because of the “silence” issues that Virginia mentioned. But sometimes it’s because people aren’t engaged in the tasks at hand. Or maybe they are engaged and you don’t know it. I had been running the Web 2.0 Wednesday activities for a few weeks and it seemed like participation had really died down. So last week I asked about it. Part of what people told me was that they were sharing the activities with other people or had been saving them to do later. So I thought my communications were essentially falling on deaf ears when they really weren’t. I think you end up needing to be a lot more deliberate about asking questions in using technology to help you see if you are having issues. It’s a big challenge, but to mind, generally well worth it.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of your class goes!

4 On July 23rd, 2008, Exploring culture and technology: Day 2 » VisualsSpeak blog said:

[...] see: Exploring Culture and Technology Day 1 This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Diversity [...]

5 On July 23rd, 2008, Christine Martell said:

Michele, I was surprised at the differences in language interpretation in the Comment Challenge also. I find I look for linguist nuances in talking and listening to people from other places, and some of those exchanges have been playful. I didn’t see the same type of playfulness and curiosity with the organizational and occupational differences. While I have participated in a number of online learning experiences, and do some virtual work with colleagues like you, most of them have been voluntary participation. It doesn’t feel the same even simulating a work project. The dynamic changes when there is a common deliverable and a deadline. Turns up the heat, and what is curious and interesting in a learning experiment becomes an impediment to accomplishment in a virtual team. I’m also intrigued by my own shift in perception about silence. Once again, what is totally understandable when someone is ‘lurking’ or observing online, becomes a block to getting things done on a virtual assignment-almost instantly. I’m reassessing my online behavior. How can I give clues that I am ‘participating’ by observation, without making ‘I agree’ comments or sending ‘thanks’ emails that also seem to annoy people. Or do I need to design in a more passive way for people to signal? On our blogs and websites, our statistics give a kind of signal? You can see somebody is coming, although you have no idea who. But I’m not sure this would help at all on a virtual team, since I hear people finding silence on conference calls to be unnerving also. Anyone have ideas or experience to share on this?

6 On July 23rd, 2008, Exploring culture and technology: Day 3 » VisualsSpeak blog said:

[...] Exploring Culture and Technology [...]

7 On July 24th, 2008, Ken Allan said:

Tēnā koutou (hello all)!

Kia ora Christine!

In an online elearning environment (such as in a chatroom) where a community lurks, the platform can often yield information to the participants as to who has ‘come into’ the room and who has ‘left’. This is an attempt (albeit contrived) to proffer some indication of presence and absence. It is not unequivocal, for I can ‘come into’ the room and then go away and watch TV and still be registered as ‘in’.

BUT, even in a F 2 F situation, one can never be sure of mind-attendance. For instance, any teacher who has had classroom experience will tell you that there are students who are there ‘in body’ alone. Fact. They are what I call Clayton’s attendees, for their minds are somewhere else.

NOW, when we have a group of people interacting at a party, say, it is still conceivable that the personalities that one thinks one is interacting with in those situations may well be quite removed from what they are like when in a work situation or some other environment (and vice versa). With the virtual environment the possibilities for THIS sort of personality flip (call it deception) is just as likely, but more difficult to keep track of.

In the blogosphere, I can understand why some people are actually scared to participate, for they don’t know who is watching. For those with imagination, it could be like a million web-cams pointing at them as they walked down the street etc.

I’m afraid I don’t go along with the communication through silence bit (sorry Viginia :-). I quote (again) Ashleigh Brilliant’s “I waited and waited, and when no message came I knew it must have been from you”. One must have a lot of faith in telepathy to genuinely believe that communication can take place through not saying anything, especially (as Virginia pointed out) if you don’t really know if they are ‘in’ the room.

So, hmmm. Y’know, perception is where it’s at with me. If it’s difficult for me (say) to take someone at face value when interacting F2F, it is (to me) evidently more complex in a virtual encounter.

People love to play games. Even making a set of rules doesn’t guarantee that everyone adheres to them. If they don’t, then why do we make the rules? In the blogosphere some rules are defined by what we might accept as netiquette (or whatever). But there’s nothing in netiquette that says anything about the rules of lurking (are there any?) Like, I mean, I’m remaining silent (as a lurker) but, yknow, I’m actually breaking a rule of netiquette in what I’m thinking. Yeah right!

Ka kite anō
from Middle-earth

8 On July 24th, 2008, Virginia Yonkers said:

Ken, I have found when teaching in Costa Rica, that there are some cultures in which people will not take the initiative to start conversations (or even participate) if the person they are interacting with is from a higher status. That being said, there are other reasons for “silence”.

I remember when my students did a project with a group from France, there was very little “chatter”. If given a deadline, the French tended to post by that deadline, but there was no conversation in between. Having worked and studied in France and Francophone Switzerland, I see this as a common cultural trait among French speakers in that they do not want to put something in writing that is not of a high quality. They are acculturated through school that something poorly written reflects badly on the writer. The feedback I received from their teacher was that they were shocked at the poorly written e-mails they would get (with typos, grammatical mistakes, etc…). In this case, the lack of communication (silence) ended up being a cultural difference that did affect communication.

One year, however, the “silence” was due to a major flood that knocked out all the computer terminals for almost a month. Being half a world away, this flood did not make national news, but clearly impacted communication. If I had not corresponded regularly with their teacher in France, my students might have interpreted this as a cultural rather than a technical problem.

On the other hand, the group my students worked with in Peru had internet access only through their professor in class. All e-mails and correspondence went through the professor. Some students did set up Yahoo groups, but it soon became clear that they were expected to notify the professor. My students were also supposed to copy me, but many times did not. This was a difference in culture as South American business/organizational structures tend to be centralized and hierarchical. This made communication slower, and sometimes the silence was due to the more centralized nature of communication slowing down the process.

In each case silence is an indicator. The difficulty is trying to determine what it indicates. I don’t advocate ignoring the silence, but rather trying to determine what is the cause. In the first case, my students found that setting deadlines closer together made the time between silences shorter. The the second case, having other ways to contact key players so that there could be communication in times of crisis or technology breakdowns was important. In the third instance, students needed to be given permission to participate. That is something that should be recognized (perhaps creating private spaces for communication, for example).

9 On July 24th, 2008, Christine Martell said:

Ken,
You have many good points about the reality of online indicators— what do they really mean? And we have seen a lot of game playing even in the class. All in good fun in this context, but we are often playing with things we know from doing them in our work lives.

10 On July 24th, 2008, Christine Martell said:

Virginia,
There seems to be no end to cultural differences that do indeed make a difference in virtual communication. We have been hearing similar things from our classmates re: Quality of writing, fear of typos, typing too fast to care. Floods, luckily we have been without, but at least then we would have a good excuse for the abysmal quality of our attempts so far. I thought I was better at this!

With having to communicate through the professor, do you know if that would also be true in business? That’s one we haven’t talked about. We are incorporating some of your ideas into our mini project, so are really grateful for you sharing your experiences.

11 On July 25th, 2008, Virginia Yonkers said:

Absolutely there is a correlating process in business. I worked on a project in Paraguay where it was useless to go directly to those with the information as they would always need to run it past their Director first. It was better to go to the Director first off and have him put you in touch with those who could give you the information (even though technically I was the boss as I was the Project Manager). I find this especially true with governmental agencies worldwide (regardless of culture).

Sometimes, however, the “gatekeeper” for information and communication is dependent on technology and language skills. Working on a project in Hungary, we usually went through the Director or Assistant director because they had the language skills to interpret. Another project in our office in Brazil usually worked through the assistant for US support staff because the Brazilian assistant spoke English better than the Director. As the upper management all spoke Portuguese, they would use conference calls for higher level discussions. However, because of the director’s limited computer skills (in many countries, at least 10-15 years ago, the upper management would not know how to type or use office equipment) any documents would be requested to the office assistant.

12 On July 25th, 2008, Exploring culture and technology: Day 4 » VisualsSpeak blog said:

13 On July 25th, 2008, Collaborating over Google Docs » VisualsSpeak blog said:

14 On July 25th, 2008, Tips for Avoiding Problems on Virtual Team » VisualsSpeak blog said:

15 On July 25th, 2008, Margaret said:

I love it that you are taking notes for all of us. I stopped blogging after day 1 but I’m going back to capture some thoughts but not any course content. Thank you,So now we have tips for successful virtual teams. What happens when things break down no matter how much you try? Case is Intercultural Insights group which is now so dominated by two people (who jump in and discourage anyone asking a simple question, that people have simply stopped posting. They put in announcements but as a discussion group, it is no longer effective. This happens in teams too…what to do?

16 On July 25th, 2008, Christine Martell said:

Peggy,
It’s been great to see I can actually take the notes live. Usually I am filling yet another yellow legal pad that becomes part of the pile in my office.

One of the major take aways for me this week is how much collaborative leadership is needed. I am also on other discussion groups with dominant members. I just tune out, which is unfortunate. I wonder if these types of people understand the effect they have on others? I think we need to understand that place to better understand how to create solutions.

VisualsSpeak blog