Perlmutter Institute for Global Business Leadership

PERLMUTTER INSTITUTE GLOBAL BUSINESS BRIEF Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Behavior Across Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process Andy Molinsky, Ph.D.

Becoming a global professional means not only acknowledging cultural differences; it means adapting your behavior in light of these differences. In this brief, I describe why it’s so challenging to adapt behavior across cultures and how people can successfully overcome these challenges.

Andy Molinsky, Ph.D.

I

f you have ever lived or worked abroad, you have likely had to adapt your behavior to be successful in the new cultural setting. Imagine, for example, that:

• You are from the United States and are working in Germany. You need to communicate negative feedback much more directly than you would ever have done in the United States to be effective. • You are from China and are working in the United States. You need to learn to make small talk with strangers at the office to build your network. However, chatting informally with people you don’t know – and, especially, revealing personal information to them – feels very uncomfortable and awkward. • You’re a junior Korean employee working in the United States. To be effective in meetings, you need to speak your mind and be heard. Yet in your culture, you would never speak assertively in such a context, especially with senior members of the company in the room.

The Perlmutter Institute for Global Business Leadership Established by trustees Louis Perlmutter ‘56 and Barbara Perlmutter, the Perlmutter Institute for Global Business Leadership prepares students for leadership positions in global corporations throughout the world. This institute explores the intersection between business, the global economy, government, and civil society. Using a multifaceted, holistic approach, the Institute also focuses on leadership in a globally independent world, promoting contrasting values of the profit motive and the public good.

If you have ever lived or worked in a foreign culture, you have likely confronted situations such as these where you have to operate outside of your cultural or personal comfort zone to be effective. In each of these situations, you don’t just struggle with understanding cultural differences. Rather, you struggle with the far more challenging task of actually changing your culturally ingrained behavior. But adapting behavior in situations like these is often easier said than done. You can feel anxious about your ability to successfully perform the new behavior. You can feel inauthentic about how awkward and unnatural the new behavior feels. You also feel resentful about having to adapt and adjust in the first place. These uncomfortable feelings can make the very experience of adapting your behavior quite difficult. To help people overcome these challenges, I have written a new book called “Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures Without Losing Yourself in the Process” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013). The focus of the book is on giving people the tools and courage that they need to simultaneously adapt

behavior to new cultural contexts while staying authentic and grounded in their own natural style. This can occur in a wide variety of different situations and contexts. It can occur on the job, as the examples above illustrate. It can also occur during a job search. For example, foreign-born MBA students in the United States – especially those from countries with modesty as a core cultural value -- often struggle to promote themselves at networking meetings, even though networking is a critical tool for building connections and finding a job.

Adapting Behavior without Losing Yourself in the Process So how can people learn to adapt their behavior successfully across cultures without feeling like they’re losing themselves in the process? In Global Dexterity, I offer readers a simple four-step plan, based on my research, teaching, and consulting with managers, employees, students and executives from around the world. Step 1 is learn the rules of the road, or what I like to refer to as the “cultural code” for how you are expected to behave in the particular situation you find yourself in within that new culture. Figure out how specifically you are expected to act by carefully observing how colleagues act in these situations and what seems to be more or less effective. Although there are undoubtedly many different ways to characterize these rules, I portray them in terms of six dimensions that capture the expectations that others have for our behavior in a foreign setting. Directness: How straightforwardly you’re expected to communicate in a particular situation. Are you expected to say exactly what you want to say, or to “hint” at something in a more indirect manner? Enthusiasm: How much emotion and energy you are expected to show when communicating. Can you express how you feel, or is it more appropriate to hide your positive feelings? Formality: The amount of deference and respect you are expected to display with your communication style. Are you expected to show a high level of respect when communicating with someone in a particular situation, or can you be more informal? Assertiveness: How strongly you are expected or allowed to voice your opinion and advocate your point of view in a particular culture and in a particular situation in that culture. Should you be forthright in expressing yourself, or work at hiding or sublimating your point of view? Self-promotion: The extent to which you can speak positively about yourself in a given cultural situation. Should you actively promote your positive qualifications or be more self-effacing? Personal disclosure: The extent to which it is appropriate to reveal personal information about yourself to others. Should you be open and forward in expressing details about your life, or is it more appropriate to hide these personal details? Each situation you encounter in a foreign setting will have a specific cultural code for behavior along each of these dimensions. Your task is to figure out your particular situation’s code, and then to understand the extent to which this new cultural code is consistent with -- or discrepant from -- your own personal comfort zone.

Learning to Diagnose the Cultural Code Here’s an example of diagnosing the cultural code using the six-dimensional approach. As you can see, there are strong differences between the American and Indian cultural codes for speaking with a potential employer at a networking event. These differences can make cultural adaptation in this situation quite difficult.

Table 3-1

Cultural norms: India versus the United States India

United States

Directness

Low

High

Enthusiasm

Low

High

Assertiveness

Low

High

Self-promotion

Low

High

Formality

High

Low

Personal disclosure

Low

High

From Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process by Andy Molinsky. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press

After having determined how you need to behave to be effective in the new setting, the next step in the process is to determine your own personal comfort zone with this exact same situation. Your personal comfort zone is the range of behavior that you personally feel most comfortable engaging in for this particular situation. In the example above, you might be fairly “prototypical” of Indian culture, for example, and therefore experience strong cultural differences speaking with a potential employer at an American-style networking event. Or, alternatively, you may be “atypical” of Indian culture and have a personal comfort zone for networking that is quite different from the norm in India, perhaps because of your experience living and working abroad. In this case, cultural adaptation would be easier for you than for others because of the overlap between your personal comfort zone and the new cultural code.

Not All Situations are Alike in a Foreign Culture Remember that there are many factors influencing the cultural code for the situation you face in a foreign culture, and “national” culture is just one of them. Industry culture, regional culture, company culture and the cultural background of the person you’re interacting with all make a difference. Make sure that you recognize all these influences on behavior when diagnosing the cultural code for your particular situation.

FIgUre 3-1

Factors that shape the cultural code

Country norms

Company and industry norms

Cultural code

Individual differences

Regional norms

From Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process by Andy Molinsky. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press

Once you have a clear sense of the cultural code and your personal comfort zone with respect to that code, Step 3 in the process is learning to personalize or customize your behavior. In some cases, this means putting your own personal spin on the new behavior so that it’s appropriate in the new setting but also maximally comfortable for you. In addition to making these slight adjustments to the new behavior to maximize comfort but maintain appropriateness, you can also adjust your interpretations and perceptions of the behavior. For example, you might start to imagine that this behavior is a “skill” that you need to perfect in order to achieve a goal you care about (such as being promoted or of making partner). By seeing the behavior in this way, you can start to focus less on your discomfort and more on finding a way to improve your new cultural skills. Finally, the last step in this process of developing global dexterity is to make this new behavior part of your own personal repertoire, so that it becomes “muscle memory” – something you do quite automatically. You can do this by practicing in increasingly challenging situations that mimic the realistic conditions of the situations in which you will ultimately perform. You can also enhance your performance by getting feedback from a trusted mentor or colleagues about the appropriateness of your behavior and then adjust accordingly. The overall goal here is to craft a cultural style that works successfully in the new setting and that also feels authentic to you. Business has never been more global than today. And the people in those businesses must be capable of moving smoothly and seamlessly across cultures. That’s true for simple cases of etiquette, like learning how and when to bow or shake hands, but it’s especially crucial when performing core professional tasks such as giving performance feedback, pitching an idea to your boss, networking, or motivating others. In Global Dexterity, I provide individuals and businesses with the tools and frameworks to make these cultural shifts, and without compromising their integrity in the process.

For more information about the Perlmutter Institute for Global Business Leadership contact:

Perlmutter Institute for Global Business Leadership Brandeis International Business School Mailstop 032 Waltham, MA 02454-9110 781-736-8351 http://brandeis.edu/global/world-ready/centers [email protected]

Andy Molinsky is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Brandeis International Business School. Follow Andy on twitter at @andymolinsky.

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