I recently spoke to a friend about the challenges inherent in bringing staff from different cultures together into one organization. In this situation there was a group of employees moving from Asia to the American Headquarters.
Cultures are a tricky thing to talk about. First of all, when people talk about cultures they tend to make sweeping generalizations that can be confused with bigotry or racism.
"People from India are uncomfortable confronting the truth."
"My Asian employees refuse to tell me what they are thinking."
"Americans are impolite and aggressive."
Yes, I've heard people say these things in work environments. I've heard worse things too. So how can we talk about culture in organizations in a way that doesn't demean people by insinuating that everyone from a particular culture has a particular behavioral trait? How can we avoid sweeping generalizations?
Here is my suggestion. Rather than taking the overarching approach that cultural integration means that we get into a room and talk about "what Americans are like" and "what Asian cultures are like" lets instead focus on a few areas that actually relate to our work together.
1. How we manage conflict.
2. How we communicate.
3. How we will handle confusion/problems in these two areas.
Yes, I have clever books that talk about the generalized difference between collectivist and individualistic cultures. But when it comes down to it, at a practical level I'm not sure that that kind of data is what people need.
Nor do we want to set up an environment where the "outside" group is told (even implicitly) that to fit in means they need to abandon who they are. Diversity isn't about assimilation, it's about understanding.
From an organizational perspective, I think that conflict management and communications issues go to the heart of the issue of "how will we from different cultures work together" in a practical and unbiased way. Lets leave the generalizations to the side for now and focus on the work.
Cause that is why we're here, right?
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