equipping

Here is a typical example of intercultural misunderstanding and assumptions which occurred in a multicultural team situation last week.

For a team meeting time, the low context[*] (individualistic) Anglo-Saxon background workers had brought snacks for their children for the morning tea break. As is normal for Anglo-Saxons, each snack was individually wrapped, allocated and doled out to each child.

The high context (collectivist) workers on the team, from an Asian culture, had not realised that they needed to bring snacks for morning tea. In their culture, food for everyone is normally collectively organized and the strong value is sharing.

When the snacks were brought out, one of the high context children went to help themselves to something from the snack packet in the hands of a younger low context child. This was interpreted by the Anglo-Saxons as bullying – the older child was “taking” food from the younger, more vulnerable child. There was no recognition of the lack of snacks for the high context children, nor any thought of sharing what had been brought with everyone.

As is normal, due to the continuing domination of the Anglo-Saxon cultures, the Asian workers reflected on what had happened, accepted that their child had inadvertently done the wrong thing (according to the dominant team culture – which is actually the minority culture in terms of numbers on the team) and that they needed to teach their children (and themselves) to cope with this in the future.

The Anglo-Saxons remained oblivious to what had really happened and continued in their righteous indignation…

However, I think the Bible is firmly on the side of the collectivist value of sharing and considering the needs of everyone present – and especially would expect children to be taught to share. The majority of cultures of the world hold the same collectivist values.

This incident has also made me reflect on how often we make assumptions (usually negative) about what we see or experience in our teams, totally oblivious to what is really going on and how much we need to learn from others.

[*] For those who are unfamiliar with the terms “high context” and “low context”: High context cultures tend to be collectivist and are very aware of everything going on in the context around them. They read body language, actions and other signs in the context to communicate and to maintain social harmony. Low context cultures (which are typified by the northern European, Anglo-Saxon cultures) tend to be individualistic are particularly concerned with words rather than context. They have a greater tendency to set boundaries around meaning and do not take a lot of notice of the speakers or creators of context or things that are happening outside the boundaries of the words or specific actions being looked at.