“So, what do you do?” she yelled up close to my face

We are at a cocktail party in connection with a professional event. The venue is bustling with university professionals mingling, networking and making small talk.

The party is actually staged. The venue is a classroom at the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, and the occasion is a workshop on working across cultures held by the consulting company ConnectingCultures. All participants have been given different roles and tasks to perform. Some have to speak very loudly, regularly touch the person they are talking to, and stand quite close to them - e.g. by asking an inviting question close to the conversation partner's face. Others must avoid eye contact, take a long time to respond, or not respond at all.

“This exercise makes it clear how cultural norms can be very different. What we Danes may perceive as rude or awkward might be common practice and a sign of respect in other cultures," says Niels-Martin Hauschildt Tellefsen, a management consultant at the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health.

Increasing number of international employees at the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health

Niels-Martin Hauschildt Tellefsen is one of the initiators of the workshop "Working cross culturally" to which the department's academic staff and secretariat staff were invited.

“We’re recruiting more and more international staff, and this increasing cultural diversity at the department means that we need to be able to welcome new employees with different national and cultural backgrounds. Cultural understanding is therefore important," says Niels-Martin Hauschildt Tellefsen and elaborates:

“That's why we organised a workshop, so we could learn more about how to read other cultures and how to communicate across cultures.”

At the Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, 15 per cent of employees have a nationality other than Danish, and a total of 23 nationalities are represented in the staff group.

Can easily lead to misunderstandings

The workshop is facilitated by researcher, speaker and consultant Signe Ørom from the company ConnectingCultures. In between exercises, she gives examples of how the encounter between different cultures in the workplace can easily lead to misunderstandings if you are not aware of the underlying cultural structures and mechanisms.

“I once worked with a company where a Korean employee told me that she had stopped going to her manager with questions and issues. She never felt like she got a clear answer, so she no longer wanted to subject her male boss to the loss of face he’d have to experience time and again when he couldn't answer her questions," says Signe Ørom and explains:

“In reality, the Danish middle manager practised a classic Danish management style, where you don’t dictate a solution, but rather, out of respect for the employee, you initiate a dialogue, argue for and against, and work on finding a solution together. It’s a typical example of misunderstandings in a professional context that stem from different cultural codes.”

The first step is to be aware of different cultural norms

So, if you work in a cross-cultural environment, according to Signe Ørom, it can be a good idea to align expectations before starting the collaboration, so the different norms and working styles are addressed. For example, in connection with meetings – who speaks first, can you interrupt, can you reprimand each other, and can you address the manager directly?

“The goal is for diversity to become an asset and not a hindrance for the organisation or the working group. It's not about making the entire group uniform or forcing one culture over another, because then we lose the strength that can lie in different perspectives and working methods," says Signe Ørom and continues:

“The first step is to become aware of how we perceive others and how they perceive us – what is culturally conditioned and what is perceived as respect and good conduct in different cultures and contexts. If we keep that in mind when working and communicating across cultures and national borders, we’ve come a long way.”

Workshop is an eye-opener

The staged cocktail party results in both laughter and a little unease among the participants, but according to management consultant Niels-Martin Hauschildt Tellefsen, the exercise and the workshop have first and foremost been an eye-opener.

“We have experienced misunderstandings when working together. In reality, these misunderstandings could be due to different cultures and ways of communicating. One of the points of the workshop is to make us aware that the problems or challenges that can arise are simply due to different cultural norms, and then disagreements become less personal. I think we’re more aware of that now," says Niels-Martin Hauschildt Tellefsen.

Contact

Management Consultant Niels-Martin Hauschildt Tellefsen
Aarhus University, Department of Dentistry and Oral Health
Telephone: +45 22 14 73 52
Email: nmt@dent.au.dk