The Cross-Cultural Challenge - Part 1
Now that I’ve been here for 6 months, work has decided to send me on a two-day cross-cultural management course to learn how to work with Thais. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough not to have to interact with many Thais on a regular basis, so haven’t needed any guidance on this up to now…oh wait!
By all accounts, it is better to have spent some time here before you attend this type of course so you have some real-life examples that you can reflect on. As I’ve been left to flail around, committing social faux-pas and offending people for several months, I have a lot of examples that I hope will be given some context. Hopefully I will feel completely enlightened by the whole experience and return to work as an effective expatriate manager, however, I fear it might be slightly more complicated than that.
We’ve been issued with some pre-reading ahead of the course, and it appears the cultural differences run a lot deeper than I’d originally thought. The aim of the course is to build an understanding of why certain approaches that I might take in a western business environment, fall completely flat in Thailand.
There are obvious things that you comprehend quickly when you live and work here, like the influence of age and seniority in social and professional situations, never to touch someone’s head, and never to point your feet at someone, particularly a monk or a Buddha image.
Despite knowing all of this I have recently committed such a flagrant breach of one of these rules, I can barely bring myself to write about it. I actually tapped someone else’s foot with my own! I cannot believe I did it! The reason was well meant – they were not wearing safety shoes in the warehouse and I was trying to tell them in an informal way. My brain just completely deserted me momentarily. I am hoping there was no real harm done but who knows?
One of the articles in the pre-reading selection discusses the differences between how Thais and Americans raise their children. It was written from a Thai perspective and possibly quite harshly likens the way Americans care for a child to a caged bird! It’s all about how American children are encouraged to be more dependent on objects like toys at an early age to be able to cope with life in an industrialised society where life really does depend on material possessions. In Thailand, children stay with their parents all the time, sleeping in the same room as them, on a cushion or hammock so they can be moved around. They are brought up to love their parents and not toys. The point of the article isn’t to say what’s right and wrong, it’s really to try to explain how the different values are established from the moment you’re born.
One quite noticeable and amusing difference in behaviour in Thailand is that it’s perfectly acceptable to make fun of people directly to their face for being fat, old, spotty, you name it! I did ask one of my colleagues about this and he said it was fine – he said people mocked him for his dark skin! I chose not to explain that this wasn’t quite the same thing.
I had to submit two questions in advance of the course that would hopefully be answered at some during the two days. My first question was:
How do I create a sense of urgency with my Thai team so they start planning ahead, anticipating issues and not leaving everything to the last minute?
I am a planner at heart, I like to prepare so there are no surprises. This is quite a useful trait in my line of work, but it seems that I am the only person in my whole team who takes this approach! I asked one of my direct reports to prepare a plan for a particularly busy period of work. To help him out I listed all the potential things that could go wrong and suggested he think through some actions to overcome each one. I thought this was a logical approach.
The immediate suggested action was that we needed to buy some food to offer to the ghost that lives in the office to stop the bad things happening. I’m not sure if it would be acceptable for me to add this to a ‘robust action plan’ but I did start thinking that a disproportionate number of bad things have happened at work recently and maybe this wasn’t a bad idea. Anyway, GMP rules mean this is a non-starter as we can’t have any food in the workplace, but I will endeavour to try to appease the ghost in some other way.
My second question was (and this is probably linked to the first question):
Why don’t Thai’s ever seem to want to go home from work?
Genuinely I have never seen people spend so many hours at work! They’re not necessarily getting any more done in that time, but they don’t seem to have any real desire to go home. I find this particularly strange on a Friday night when I am gagging to get out of there and to the pub, but everyone continues to work.
Maybe next time I will have the answers to these questions and have some idea of what I’m supposed to be doing!
Flailing Around
By all accounts, it is better to have spent some time here before you attend this type of course so you have some real-life examples that you can reflect on. As I’ve been left to flail around, committing social faux-pas and offending people for several months, I have a lot of examples that I hope will be given some context. Hopefully I will feel completely enlightened by the whole experience and return to work as an effective expatriate manager, however, I fear it might be slightly more complicated than that.
We’ve been issued with some pre-reading ahead of the course, and it appears the cultural differences run a lot deeper than I’d originally thought. The aim of the course is to build an understanding of why certain approaches that I might take in a western business environment, fall completely flat in Thailand.
There are obvious things that you comprehend quickly when you live and work here, like the influence of age and seniority in social and professional situations, never to touch someone’s head, and never to point your feet at someone, particularly a monk or a Buddha image.
Despite knowing all of this I have recently committed such a flagrant breach of one of these rules, I can barely bring myself to write about it. I actually tapped someone else’s foot with my own! I cannot believe I did it! The reason was well meant – they were not wearing safety shoes in the warehouse and I was trying to tell them in an informal way. My brain just completely deserted me momentarily. I am hoping there was no real harm done but who knows?
A Caged Bird?
One of the articles in the pre-reading selection discusses the differences between how Thais and Americans raise their children. It was written from a Thai perspective and possibly quite harshly likens the way Americans care for a child to a caged bird! It’s all about how American children are encouraged to be more dependent on objects like toys at an early age to be able to cope with life in an industrialised society where life really does depend on material possessions. In Thailand, children stay with their parents all the time, sleeping in the same room as them, on a cushion or hammock so they can be moved around. They are brought up to love their parents and not toys. The point of the article isn’t to say what’s right and wrong, it’s really to try to explain how the different values are established from the moment you’re born.
Fun and Games
I told my Thai colleagues that I was going on the course and they said that the culture is changing – there is an old, more conservative Thai culture and a new Thai culture. I never really found out what that really meant as I made a joke about how one of our group must be ‘old Thai’ and the conversation descended into a game of guess how old I am.One quite noticeable and amusing difference in behaviour in Thailand is that it’s perfectly acceptable to make fun of people directly to their face for being fat, old, spotty, you name it! I did ask one of my colleagues about this and he said it was fine – he said people mocked him for his dark skin! I chose not to explain that this wasn’t quite the same thing.
Supernatural Colleagues
I had to submit two questions in advance of the course that would hopefully be answered at some during the two days. My first question was:
How do I create a sense of urgency with my Thai team so they start planning ahead, anticipating issues and not leaving everything to the last minute?
I am a planner at heart, I like to prepare so there are no surprises. This is quite a useful trait in my line of work, but it seems that I am the only person in my whole team who takes this approach! I asked one of my direct reports to prepare a plan for a particularly busy period of work. To help him out I listed all the potential things that could go wrong and suggested he think through some actions to overcome each one. I thought this was a logical approach.
The immediate suggested action was that we needed to buy some food to offer to the ghost that lives in the office to stop the bad things happening. I’m not sure if it would be acceptable for me to add this to a ‘robust action plan’ but I did start thinking that a disproportionate number of bad things have happened at work recently and maybe this wasn’t a bad idea. Anyway, GMP rules mean this is a non-starter as we can’t have any food in the workplace, but I will endeavour to try to appease the ghost in some other way.
Go Home, Please!
My second question was (and this is probably linked to the first question):
Why don’t Thai’s ever seem to want to go home from work?
Genuinely I have never seen people spend so many hours at work! They’re not necessarily getting any more done in that time, but they don’t seem to have any real desire to go home. I find this particularly strange on a Friday night when I am gagging to get out of there and to the pub, but everyone continues to work.
Maybe next time I will have the answers to these questions and have some idea of what I’m supposed to be doing!
Comments
Post a Comment