JULY 07, 2014
HTTPS://HBR.ORG/2014/07/LEARNING-TO-SPEAK-UP-WHEN-YOURE-FROM-A-CULTURE-OF-DEFERENCE
Many of us are
uncomfortable speaking with people of higher status. We can feel
self-conscious, unsure of what to say, and afraid what we’re going to say — or
what we’re saying — is the wrong thing. After these conversations, we often
replay in our heads what we said, analyze what we shouldn’t have said, or
realize what we should have said but didn’t.
But imagine what
communicating up the hierarchy is like for people from countries and
cultures where notions of hierarchy are much deeper and much more ingrained
than ours. Where even as a small child you are taught to speak only when spoken
to, and that in the presence of authority figures, like your parents, your
teachers, or your boss, you should remain quiet, put your head down, do solid
work, and hope to be noticed.
I teach and work with
people from such cultures on a daily basis, and I can tell you that it is
extremely challenging to learn how to function outside your cultural comfort zone when
interacting with authority figures in different cultures, especially in
cultures where the rules are much more lax and you are actually expected to
voice your opinions, be assertive, and even establish relationships with these
taboo figures. I call this the liability of deference: the fact that people
from deferential and polite cultures often struggle quite significantly trying
to make their way in less hierarchical cultures. This problem can be
debilitating to the individuals and their careers, and it also hampers their
organizations’ capacity to leverage the human capital that they have worked so
hard to select, train, and cultivate.
The problem is a pervasive
one. It manifests itself in the classroom, where students from cultures where
participation is not a typical feature of classroom dynamics are forced to
participate in the U.S. and some other cultures, and they struggle to make the
cultural switch. Here, for example, are the words of a former MBA student from
Vietnam who struggled with the difficulties of classroom discussion: “I know
participating in the U.S. is required to get good grades but somehow deep
inside I felt like I was doing something very wrong. I was trembling, sweating.
I just couldn’t look at the professor or my classmates in the eyes. I felt
guilty.”
This same issue also
manifests itself during the job search process. The following is a quote from
one of my former MBA students from Nigeria about the challenges of overcoming
the liability of deference at networking events:
It felt very uncomfortable
and artificial to be expected to participate in an informal conversation with
this senior person. Thoughts going through my head were, “What can I possibly
have to say to this man who has much more experience than I do?” The values
that were instilled in me were to “speak when spoken to” and “children are to
be seen and not heard.”
Finally, this liability of
deference also impacts people at work. They can struggle to participate in
meetings, can avoid calling senior partners by first names (and, as a result,
can appear quiet or standoffish), and can struggle to cultivate rapport and
relationships with senior colleagues, which is critical for their advancement.
So what can organizations
and particularly leaders of organizations do to lessen the brunt of this
liability of deference for their employees from other cultures?
The first critical thing
is to educate themselves and their employees about these differences, and to
develop a solid level of empathy for the challenges that their employees may
face — especially those from hierarchically-oriented cultures — in adapting to
the American workplace.
Sensitizing managers to
these differences is critical for them to be able to make accurate attributions
for their employees’ behavior. For example, if an employee doesn’t speak up in a
meeting, it may not be because the employee doesn’t have anything to
say. Or if an employee offers to take on a new assignment, but without the
unbridled, “go-getter” type of enthusiasm the manager is used to from his
American employees, this may just be a difference in communication style
instead of a difference in motivation to do the work.
On the employee side,
companies should develop robust training and mentoring programs to help their
employees take the leap and learn to act outside their cultural comfort zone.
Such programs should of course highlight the cultural differences that employees
face in adapting their behavior to a new cultural environment. But to be
successful, they must go beyond that, helping employees actually take this
knowledge of cultural differences and then go the next step, learning to
translate it into effective behavior in a new cultural setting.
Employees need to have
opportunities to practice and hone their new skills, make mistakes in a
forgiving environment as they work on customizing a style for interacting with
authority figures that is effective and feels authentic, and then, having
cultivated a new style, have opportunities to practice that new approach in
realistic and challenging situations, ideally with feedback from a mentor or
cultural coach. Intellectual understanding of differences and the capacity to
develop global dexterity and
actually shift their behavior are two very different challenges and skill sets.
Training and education should follow accordingly.
For organizations to
thrive in a global economy, everyone needs to pitch in. But when pitching in
means speaking out, don’t forget the liability of deference
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