Euroasia: Language, Culture and Travel

I realised that one sure-fire way of generating traffic to one’s blog is to talk about relationships. Cross-cultural relationships is certainly a hot topic. In fact some random Russian blog picked up my previous post and translated my points into Russian. Pity I can’t read Russian, but using Google translator, I figured this was the case.

Still on the topic of building cross-cultural relationships, some people are of the opinion that social groups that are prejudiced towards each other only need mix together in order to reduce this prejudice. I hear this all the time. And this logic drives a lot of official initiatives to promote opportunities for different cultural groups to mix together.

It would be great if it were that simple, but unfortunately contact is not enough.

It is necessary that both groups have equal status, have personal interaction, engage in cooperative activities to achieve collective goals, and it should be considered the norm for the groups to interact.

Source: Aronson, E., Blaney, N., Stephan, C., Sikes, J., & Snapp, M. (1978). The jigsaw classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

This winter, you can witness the power of the collective vision by simply visiting a local sports bar on a night when the All Blacks plays Australia. When the All Blacks wins the game everyone is congratulating and hugging one another. I’ve witnessed this scene numerous times at different places.

It’s one of those rare occasions where no one cares what your colour, creed or race is.  All that matters is that you’re wearing black.

It is a truism to state that, as companies wishing to operate successfully in the global economy, we need a global perspective. What is perhaps less widely appreciated is that a key part of that perspective is a real understanding of the people we are working with. We have to see our partners, our staff, in the way they would like us to see them, namely, as rich and complex human beings, who are at once individuals, but at the same time moulded in the light of the culture in which they grew up.

In today’s world, we probably come into contact with people from different cultural backgrounds almost every day. We perceive similarities: we are all human beings. We also perceive differences. But what do we make of those differences? We can, if we choose, see them as a problem, even as alienating; we can pretend they don’t exist; we can treat everyone as if they would really like to be just like us, if only we gave them the chance. Or we can see these differences as fascinating, enriching, real but not off-putting, a key component of who people are and would wish themselves to be; and then, in the process, we also begin to understand a little more about ourselves.

If we take the positive line, we are half-way towards making a success of cross-cultural relationships, business and personal. Where we come in as cross-cultural consultants is in filling in the other half, in offering you a shortcut to specific information and skills which could otherwise take years to acquire.