As has happened every time I have attended the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC), insights are emerging about my cultural edges. There is nothing like being immersed in an experience with people from around the world to surface opportunities for growth!
I can only begin to skim the surface of the learning. Cross-cultural dialogue unfolds over time for me. I understand on a simple level what I am learning today, but I know it will seep in and affect my behavior over a longer period of time.
Worldprism
We spend much of the day exploring cultural dimensions and how they might impact our communication over technology. Using the Worldprism™, each class member played the role of cultural informant for the country they were born in. We took our best guess about where the business culture fell on average in the different countries.
The conversations were very rich. We were not looking to identify simple lists of what to do in specific countries, but rather to look at the factors that might be influencing communication. To begin to understand the type of drivers which might be under particular responses, and to learn what in our own behavior over technology may be difficult for others. I’ll have to spend some time combing through the notes to organize our collective thoughts.
Identifying my people
I was on the USA team. At the end of the part where we were charting the USA, I commented that I felt like a deviant. While I recognized the pattern, I was also aware how I felt different. Then I saw the French Canadian from Quebec chart. My grandparents were French Canadian, and though I only knew one of them, I see now how their norms have passed through to me. I had never heard someone speak from this perspective before. I always wondered why descriptions of French and Canadian separately had never felt familiar to me.
There was part of me that felt very emotional, like I had found my people. Ok, so I realize that part is very US American. It takes many of us quite a while to discover and define our cultural identities. Many other aspects are very clear to me, but this national piece has been elusive.
Our first virtual team experiment
I’m on the technology in business team. We are working virtually (in theory) on a project to explore how to identify and intervene when things go poorly. We ended the day with an hour working on our project over Google Chat. Lets just say that we experienced a full range of the things that go wrong on virtual teams. I think we are doing action research. Just a few things we noticed:
What created challenges
- hadn’t thought about process or content
- got into trouble right away, but kept going anyway
- were answering different questions
- German Google was not working technically (no indication in US chat windows)
- assumed universal chat vocabulary which wasn’t true
- no one was responsible for checking in around technology
- no common cohesive problem
- no defined roles
- no direction
- no turn taking
- no clear facilitator
And after an hour of struggling, we are resorting to email since we have a deliverable on Friday. I no longer wonder why business doesn’t adopt more technology! Oh did I mention we ended up in the hall talking face to face?
Have you experienced any of these challenges? What did you do?
One of our class members is also reflecting on the class here.
Also see: Exploring Culture and Technology Day 1
Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 3
Christine, let me first tell you that your list parallels many of the findings my students find after a semester long international negotiation project. I don’t grade my students on the final project as much as on what they learned from participating in the international project. They do a presentation to the class the includes identifying the problems they had, what the original goals were, the process they used in achieving those goals, how the project/goals changed throughout the course, and what they would do differently the next time they had to participate in an international project such as this. I will wait to reveal what their findings are until you finish the course. But let me tell you that most either love the idea of working globally (the challenges, etc…) and others resolve never to get involved working globally as it is not as glamorous and much more work than they expected.
Another comment I wanted to make had to do with your understanding of “US” culture. When I worked in Costa Rica, I was the only American from the East Coast (the rest were from the West Coast and the Mid West) and the only Roman Catholic. I learned how different our values were when doing cross-cultural training, especially when we were preparing a group of high school students to go throughout the US. As the majority of the students were Roman Catholic, I was shocked at the things some of my colleagues were saying about being Roman Catholic in the US. Interestingly enough, one of the best trainers we had, who was well versed in being Roman Catholic and its potential impact in the US was a woman who had been a missionary in Panama for the Morman church.
I am interested: are the Americans all from the same part of the US? Did you see differences in “culture” from those from different regions? I have lived in Colorado, South Carolina, and have family in the midwest (Wisconsin, Illinois, Wisconsin), the South, the Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest. While there is an “American” culture, I also believe that regionally there are very strong cultures based on deep seeded differences in values.
Virginia,
I totally agree that there are strong regional differences. Two of us are from the East Coast, but now live in Oregon. The third is also living in Oregon, and the fourth the Midwest. As we were identifying the cultural norms, there were comments about how it differed across not only regions, but occupations, and sectors.
I do think many people idealize working globally. Clearly there are people who are cut out for it, and those who are not. Good to get a sense of that before you find yourself immersed in it.
I think it’s interesting that you used Gchat to talk as a group. I personally find it to be most effective if I’m talking to one other person and find it much harder to do chat with more people than that. As soon as it’s a few people and I need to talk in real-time, I tend to want either phone or face-to-face.
I wonder if the issue was using the wrong technology for the task? If you were on a real virtual team, you would have most likely done a conference call (for any real-time discussion you needed to have), maybe taking notes in a wiki or Google doc. Then you could have had people add to the minutes and go off and do what needed to be done on the project, adding to your shared document as they found their pieces of information. I guess my point is I wonder if your experience is pointing out the need to be clear about which technologies work best for which kinds of circumstances. I would have seen a phone replacing chat and a google doc or wiki replacing the emails. Very interesting to see this in action. . .
Michele,
Gchat was all we could use in common other than email. One person is from Germany, and is using a pay per minute cell phone and German Google. One has a work laptop, that prevents downloads. So we only had browser based tools to work with. We did start with a face to face with a Google Doc, but we found although we had just been told what would make our interactions successful, we didn’t do it. We are all pretty tech savvy, and one works on a global virtual team every day. We were all surprised at not only how quickly we got into a mess, but that we weren’t able to work our way out of it.
That brings up an interesting barrier to cross-organizational virtual teaming–the fact that it can be difficult to come up with tools in common. The fact that in the end you had to resort to email is yet another reason that it isn’t going away any time soon.
Hi Christine,
It’s been interesting to read about how you’ve been experiencing the culture, communication and technology class at SIIC (being in the same class myself).
I really found the World Prism exercise to be quite interesting as well as helpful in trying to understand a variety of cultures and how those factors would affect communication when using virtual technology.
What I found to be particularly interesting was the differences depicted between French Canadian and English Canadian cultures. Being from English Canada, I’ve always recognized the fact that there are differences between the two cultures. But to see those differences identified and to discuss them was truly interesting. Also, looking at the connections (and differences) of these Canadian cultures to the current cultural tendencies in France and England was fascinating. It certainly provided a deeper sense of context (and history). Interesting to see your personal historical connection to this as well. Amazing how such things are internalized and passed down.
Rachel,
Discovering “my people” was a huge take away from this class for me. Interesting to hear it from you also. There is just another level of knowing that emerges from these classes. It’s what keeps my coming back.
Rachel,
I know this was one of the more significant learnings for me personally.It’s helpful for me to hear that it wasn’t something you were deeply familiar with either. I was wondering if I had just not been paying attention or something. But really, I do think our classmate was particularly articulate about the French Canadian culture due to his background as a cultural anthropologist.