Getting an Insider View
Exclusively for our intercultures network, the following is an insider view of one set of intercultural training investments that Daimler makes to increase business performance. Over the past two years, intercultures consultants have influenced Daimler’s work towards increased internal cultural synergy. The first part of this two-part article looked at why Daimler invests in intercultural training. This piece examines how consultants delivered group-customized intercultural training in line with their diverse styles and professional know-how.
Introducing the CAT Series at Daimler
Daimler has been in the process of outsourcing financial accounting functions from multiple countries to the Philippines. People who have processed accounting functions in Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa and South Korea are working with counterparts in the Philippines to transfer knowledge about such processes so that they may be consolidated in the Philippines. In support of the training that was needed to complete a successful transition, Daimler Corporate Academy launched the Corporate Awareness Training (CAT) series. Daimler recruited intercultures to implement the series.
Participating intercultures consultants thus far include Taruni Falconer and Karen Huchendorf in Australia; Joseph Shaules in Japan; Keith Teo in Singapore; and Kathi Tarantal and Dr. Claude-Hélène Mayer in South Africa. The most recent of their trainings was facilitated this year by Keith Teo in South Korea for South Korean and Filipino participants. Keith has shared that the training was marked by “great interaction and discovery.”
The “Short Answer” to Complex Questions
The first piece of this two-part article ended with real and relevant questions that link international business with intercultural competence:
- How is mutual confidence and trust built between two teams of different national cultures?
- How can training for multi-national, multi-ethnic and multi-racial groups be navigated?
- How does a group made up of relatively conflict-avoidant people begin a conversation about managing conflict in the workplace?
The “short answer” to these complex questions includes a blended training approach including—and not limited to—voicing[ii] cultural impressions; recognizing cultural and personal differences; identifying one’s cultural self; discovering common ground; learning research-based concepts of intercultural communication; practicing intercultural competence; reflecting; and having fun! In order to best assist their trainees through this process, intercultural trainers learn to observe and recognize how people may interpret the contexts that surround them. Context is “king”!
Group-Specific Contexts
South Afrika
In Pretoria, South Africa, for instance, Claude-Hélène and Kathi anticipated that post-apartheid socio-racial realities would influence the training they led. According to Claude-Hélène, “For the South African context, that was a challenge because people from different ethnic groups don’t really know each other because of apartheid.” She added that, “It was good to have such a big group [of 40 participants] and such a diverse group. It really contributed to the success of the day.”
An unanticipated challenge for this Oct. 2013 South African-Filipino training was the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that occurred in the Philippines the day prior. On training day, Claude-Hélène said Filipino participants “explained that in their culture they prefer laughing and being happy, and externalize the happiness and not the sadness…Some of the participants were really surprised, and said, ‘Well, how can you not express your anger?’ And they [Filipinos] said, ‘Why should we?’”
Australia
In Melbourne, Australia, Karen and Taruni shared that Australian and Filipino “team leads had different [training] objectives [for the Sept. 2012 training] reflecting their own cultural backgrounds…The Filipino team lead wanted to ‚break the ice‘; the Australian team lead [wanted] to deal with defensiveness/ resistance to working together.”
Japan
Joseph also recalls that situational context caused feelings of pressure for participants at the Tokyo, Japan training in July 2013. “Japanese accountants were having work outsourced and didn’t know anything about the people or the country of the people who were going to be taking this over,” he shared. The “Filipinos were in a different situation of needing to take over work that was all being done in Japan by Japanese people in Japanese [language] without ever having any experience in Japan.”
Singapore
In Singapore, the physical context of the training was an offsite location like no other. The April 2013 training took place at the Singapore Flyer, the world’s largest Ferris wheel. “We have to create the environment; we have to create the opportunity,” said Keith. And, “Oh yes…we actually rode on the Ferris wheel!”
The “How-To” of Working Towards Cultural Synergy
The following are a sampling of activities carried out in select Daimler CAT trainings.
South Africa
In Pretoria, Kathi and Claude-Hélène:
- “[M]ade it much more interactive: Less ‘South Africans are like this, and Filipinos are like that’…and more helping them understand their own preferences and styles; recognizing ‘differences’; validating them; and giving them tools to understand each other and work together better.”
- Organized participants in seating arrangements according to their language groups.
- Made space for participants to moderate portions of the training.
- “Took 8 [Geert Hofstede and Fons Trompenaars] cultural dimensions, explained them quickly, and then told the group to stand up and cluster according to the different [cultural dimension] poles along a line…put up along the room.” In the course of this activity, South Africans and Filipinos selected cultural identities that were different than the archetypes for their national culture; they mixed, and found commonality with, colleagues of different national backgrounds.
- In relation to Filipino participants’ general response to the earthquake in the Philippines that occurred the day before the training, all participants “[T]alked about how South Africans…react when conflicts are coming up. How to deal with different reactions; how to express them; and how to decode them.”
Australia
In Melbourne, Taruni and Karen:
- Facilitated discussion amongst participants regarding their (shared) concerns about the outsourcing transition.
- Coached Australian participants towards getting clearer on their cultural self-identities. According to the trainers, “The Australians tend not to be as clear as the Filipinos that they have a distinctive cultural identity; in other words, [the Australians may perceive themselves to be]…the ‘normal’ ones.”
Japan
In Tokyo, Joseph:
- Led a discussion about cultural differences in the context of work environments, especially the experiences of the group in working between Filipinos and Japanese cultures.
- Asked “a lot” of questions before and during the training in order to bring out the complexity of the situation. He “put cultural differences ‘on the table’ as something that would need to be considered” by asking participants simple questions that revealed significant differences.
Singapore
In Singapore, Keith:
- Started the training by asking Singaporean and Filipino participants to voice cultural impressions about each other. The group laughed together over some of the stereotypes that surfaced.
- Occasionally spoke with Singaporeans and Filipinos in their respective languages.
- Booked his accommodations in a residential area near the training site. Keith explained, “I stay in the local areas. If there are certain gossips or certain news, I’ll…follow up the next month. I talk to people in the street…I talk to my clients.”
And, the Beat Goes On…
Thus far, the trainings are supporting Daimler Corporate Awareness Training trainees in gaining increased progress towards cultural synergy. Keith, for instance, received high praise from the main CAT organizer for his work the day following the Singapore training. The group that Karen and Taruni trained shifted from an ethnocentric to an ethnorelative mindset as measured by the Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®)[iii]. And, the training schedule for intercultures consultant-led Daimler training continues in 2014. Intercultural competence will ever be an evolving competence, just as intercultural training and global business. All are also only worth the ongoing practice that we individually and collectively invest.
All intercultural consultants cited in this article are partnered with intercultures.
- Taruni Falconer is a culture coach and intercultural communication professional based near Melbourne, Australia. She has 30 years experience in the field.
- Karen Huchendorf is a culture competence coach has practiced in the intercultural field since the mid-1970s. She is based in Coffs Harbour, midway between Sydney and Brisbane.
- PD Dr. habil Claude-Hélène Mayer, PhD is an intercultural consultant and professor of Management and Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She splits her time betwen Pretroia and Grahamstown, South Africa and Frankfurt, Germany.
- Dr. Joseph Shaules is an intercultural consultant and professor. He is based in Tokyo, Japan, where he lives with his wife.
- Kathi Tarantal is a cultural and diversity consultant and trainer with 17 years experience. She lives near Johannesburg, South Africa with her family.
- Keith Teo specializes in intercultural consultancy and training. He is based in Singapore, and enjoys his 40 weeks of travel every year, meeting people, discovering cultures.
The above article was included in the July 2014 intercultures e-newsletter.
This is the second of a two-part article about a multi-year training series at Daimler[i].The first half of this article, “People-Driven: Why Cultural Competence Makes Good Business Sense at Daimler,” was published in our April 2014 e-newsletter.
[i] Daimler AG is a German multinational automotive corporation. Daimler AG is headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. By unit sales, it is the thirteenth-largest car manufacturer and second-largest truck manufacturer in the world.
[ii] According to the work of Dr. Marcus Hildebrandt and Stefan Meister, “voicing” is sharing of an observation, feeling and / or internal state of being with others. Sharing can be verbal, nonverbal, or paraverbal; text or object-based; face-to-face or technologically-mediated. Triggers for voicing can be external or internal; tangible or abstract. Dr. Hildebrandt and Mr. Meister’s work on voicing has been influenced by similar work by Line Jehle.
[iii] The IDI® is a psychometric, theory-based, 50-item questionnaire. According to the official site of the Intercultural Development Inventory®, the tool “assesses intercultural competence—the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities. Karen and Taruni’s trainee group moved from the stage of Defense to the stage of Minimization which indicates a transition between ethnocentric and ethnorelative worldviews according to the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS).
Photo Source Title Picture: Getty Images.