مقابله تفاوتهای فرهنگی

8

Dealing with Cultural Differences

In San Francisco, an eight-year-old Chinese boy came to school, bleeding from his arms. He was taken to the school nurse, who said it was a case of child abuse. She notified the authorities and said the child should be taken away from his parents.

It turned out that the boy and his parents had just come from a remote region in China. There, one of the cures for the common cold was to scrape the arms to let out the evil spirits.

Was this a case of child abuse? Not in the classic sense. Should the child be taken from his parents? Of course not. Well, who should talk to the parents? And what message should be conveyed? The answer is, someone who is respected by the Chinese community and knows both cultures: perhaps a Chinese doctor who has lived in the United States for some time. He should not say to the parents, “Your way is awful.” He should say, “Your way was fine where you were. But I have other suggestions that are better and more effective. Your child will cry less.” This example shows what can go wrong in dealing with people from other cultures, and how to fix it.

Dealing with people from other cultures—people who are different—is one of the key success factors for this century. As everyone knows, the world is getting smaller and people who are raised differently are running up against each other more and more.

And yet, many people are clueless about what “differences” really mean, and even more clueless about what to do about them. As a result, perfectly good deals fail, wars are begun, and conflict, both interpersonal and international, seems to occur daily.

Indeed, our collective inability to deal effectively with our differences is the root cause of almost all human conflict since the beginning of time. But to make headway, we first need to understand what “difference,” “diversity,” and “culture” actually mean.

WHAT IS DIVERSITY?

Who is more different, (a) a black manager and a white manager who work together in your company, or (b) two white Southern boys in rival motorcycle gangs in Nashville? The two white boys may kill each other on sight. In that sense, they are likely much more different from each other than the black manager and the white manager. In other words, “differences” may not be as much about race as many people think.

Who is more different, (a) a Jewish middle-class family in Tel Aviv and an Arab middle-class family in Cairo, or (b) a Jewish middle-class family in Tel Aviv and Jewish extremists nearby, who killed an Israeli prime minister? Clearly, the Jewish and Arab families are likely much closer in sensibilities than the two Jewish groups. So maybe “differences” aren’t as much about religion as people think.

“Diversity” is not as much about the externalities of race, religion, language, food, dress, music, gender, national origin, age, and profession as it is about where people think they get their identity from—that is, the pictures in their heads. People may get their identity from externalities, but more and more often, they don’t.

Volumes have been written about diversity, too much of it wrong. That is, the ideas expressed are not supported by the way people think and live. In trying to persuade other people in a negotiation, people’s perceived psychological affiliation is much more important than the way they look or the house of worship they attend.

By culture, then, I am referring to the affiliations from which individuals think they get their identity. The production department and the marketing department in the same company may have two completely different cultures. The same may be true for New Yorkers and Los Angelenos, oil and solar advocates, accountants and mechanics, club members and nonmembers. This will affect their perceptions of one another and how they treat one another in all manner of interactions.

So you need to understand first what culture they believe they belong to. If you don’t know that, you won’t even know where to start persuading them. The bourgeoisie in Europe between World Wars I and II, who all spoke different languages—French, German, Italian, Spanish, English—probably had more in common than two people living on the same block in New York City do today.

A major U.S. newspaper once had the headline “U.S. Hispanic Lobby Still Weak.” This is a symptom of the problem. First, it purports to treat the tens of million of people of Hispanic descent in the United States as part of the same culture. This just isn’t true. Hispanics are doctors, lawyers, accountants, mechanics, Spanish speakers, French speakers, Democrats, Republicans; they originate from Spain, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and many other countries. The newspaper account treated them as a monolithic group where none exists. It is this kind of behavior that leads to prejudice and discrimination.

Second, something called a Hispanic lobby could not possibly represent such a very, very diverse group of people. It is likely that their interests coincide only on certain issues on certain days.

Thinking that all “Muslims” are from the same culture is just as inaccurate. There are different Muslim sects, and different nationalities, and they are sometimes at war with one another, as is frequently the case with the Shi’ite and Sunni sects in Iraq. Some people in some of those sects love the United States; others don’t.

Dealing with superficial, often physical differences in an attempt to identify and solve differences is like throwing darts at a dartboard, blindfolded. Sometimes you hit the mark. But it is an imprecise and ultimately ineffective way of addressing the true differences among people.

I define cross-cultural differences as those differences stemming from dramatically different perceptions in the heads of the people I am negotiating with. Their differences may or may not have much to do with race or religion or gender. But they have everything to do with the other person’s beliefs—the influences on them, their worldview, their hopes and dreams and fears, and so forth. Until we know the pictures in their heads, or try to know them, we cannot determine whether the people we are negotiating with are truly different from us or not.

At a workshop for various Russian managers in Moscow, problems they faced were submitted in Russian and then translated into English. A lot of the participants did not speak English. One participant, a consultant named Tatiana Polievktova, wrote that she was having a hard time convincing her son to do his homework.

“We found incentives and rewards for the child doing his homework right,” she said. “Both sides were proud: parents and happy son. I found out what he wanted. I split big steps into smaller pieces.” Tatiana spoke a universal language here: the issues involved in raising kids. She handled the problem exactly the way many parents would have handled it in the United States, Iran, Argentina, China, or Japan. Just because she has a Russian passport doesn’t mean she experiences these concerns differently. Perhaps the strongest cultural bond she feels in her life right now is with “parents with young children” everywhere. In negotiating with her, the fact that she is Russian may not even be among her top three ways of thinking about or identifying herself. These are the kinds of questions you should be asking.

Those who learn to deal effectively with differences among people have a tremendous competitive advantage in negotiating. They will reach more agreements. They will form better relationships. They will gain a truer and quicker understanding of others. They will ask better questions. They will be more successful in many dimensions.

On the other hand, some may call another person “brother” or “sister” or “man of the tribe” without knowing them or asking anything about them. This suggests common ground, but there may not be any. You can’t depend on externalities; you actually have to do the work to find out if there really is a connection. Otherwise you risk its being just another manipulative tactic, as in “We are the same, so please do something for me.” Broadening your definition of “culture” will make you more successful in dealing with the diverse world we live in. One of Sebastian Rubens y Rojo’s neighbors, for example, complained twice to the landlord when Sebastian had parties. The parties weren’t particularly loud, according to Sebastian. So he went to see the neighbor to talk about it directly.

“I told him we were from two different cultures,” said Sebastian, who is from Argentina. “He was from the workaholism culture, which I told him I very much respected. But I was from the student culture, along with many others in the building.” Students, he noted, often have parties on the weekend, as the neighbor must have done when he was younger.

Sebastian, who now works for the education ministry in Abu Dhabi, told both the neighbor and the landlord that the students could adapt, but that flexibility was needed on all sides. The result was a constructive set of ground rules that worked for everyone. “He was very interested in the international students,” Sebastian said. “He even let us dance the tango in my apartment.” Some people around the world profess to hate Americans. All 300 million of them? We can’t all be the same. In fact, some people who live in the United States may identify themselves not as Americans first, but as vegetarians.

Not understanding genuine cultural differences has caused many historical problems. One of the most celebrated moments in diplomatic history occurred in 1960 when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on the table at the United Nations, threatening the West. While there are conflicting accounts of this, a number of research papers claim that when Khrushchev was banging his shoe on the table at the United Nations, he was wearing two shoes at the same time.

Was this the emotional rambling of an out of control leader who might actually cause a nuclear war? Or was this the calm, cool negotiation strategy of someone who knew exactly how to push the West’s buttons? Certainly, greater knowledge of the Russians’ negotiation style would have been helpful to the West in 1960, early in the Cold War—whether Khrushchev had two shoes or three.

It is easy to turn gender, race, and similar issues into full-blown workplace blow-ups where everyone loses. And there are legions of lawyers, journalists, and government officials who know exactly how to help people do that. But it is much better to use negotiation tools to identify your goals, find the real cause of the problem, and put things back together again.

Often it’s a cultural misunderstanding: the parties have different perceptions and ways of communicating. Frequently, a cultural interface manager, a kind of cultural mediator, is necessary to help the parties translate, like the Chinese doctor at the start of this chapter. Sometimes each party needs its own interface manager, someone they trust, to explain the other side.

Cultural averages are interesting starting points, but they do not provide answers about what to do in any particular negotiation with individuals. You still have to get inside the head or mind of the people you are negotiating with. And you can’t assume a cultural trait has validity in your case without first finding out the pictures in the other person’s head—unless, of course, you want to be wrong a lot (or worse).

Following are the results of one of the politically incorrect surveys I take from time to time. This particular survey was done among seventeen executives at Wharton in a program soon after 9/11.

IS THERE ANY VALIDITY TO THESE STATEMENTS?

Yes No

Some races are better at sports than other races. 9 8

Certain races have a certain smell. 5 12

Certain cultures dance better. 4 13

Certain cultures produce better lovers. 4 13

Certain cultures are less trustworthy than others. 7 10

Orthodox Jews bathe less than other people. 1 16

Most Muslims support “evening the score” with the U.S. 2 15

As you can see, we had disagreement on every question. Clearly, the executives had lots of preconceptions and stereotypes.

I then asked each participant who said “Yes” to a stereotype to stand up. Then I asked that person to prove to the class how they knew that particular stereotype was valid. I started with “Certain cultures produce better lovers.” I asked them: “What? You’ve slept with twelve million people from your favorite amorous culture?” I want people to prove that their stereotypes are valid. “Now,” I say, “my laboratory says there are no intelligence- or performance-based genetic differences among the races. What’s your laboratory say?” I continually ask for evidence. And of course, often there isn’t any.

I once had a conversation with some white racists. I asked if there were real cultural differences between whites and blacks that they didn’t like. “Or,” I said, “is this just a skin pigmentation thing?” It was a standards question: be extreme or come to me. If they said, “Nah, we’re just skin pigmentation guys,” that’s like saying, “Gee, I’m a jerk.” “Oh, no,” they said, “there are real cultural differences.”

So I said, “Tell me, do you like jazz?” “We love jazz,” they said, nodding in unison.

“Well,” I said, “jazz comes from the black culture.” I leaned forward. “So are you part black?” “What!?” they retorted, aggressively.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is this just a skin pigmentation thing, then?” They stopped in their tracks, mumbling that that was only one example.

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me, do you like grits?” A little more uncomfortably, they said, “Sure, we love grits.”

“Well,” I said, “grits was the traditional food of the slaves.” I paused. “Does that make you mostly black?” I paused. “Or is this just a skin pigmentation thing?” I added, “As far as I can see, you guys have a lot in common with the black culture, don’t you?” THE ROOTS OF STEREOTYPES

Where do such cultural stereotypes come from? Perhaps from ignorance. Perhaps from fear. Certainly, stereotyping is as old as the human race, when survival and protection depended on one’s family and tribe. People who were the same were safe. Strangers were risky. They were assumed to be “enemies,” often based on little more than the fact that they looked, spoke, or acted differently.

But they might not have been different in their psyche, where it counts. Those with the same blood, on the other hand, might be very different. In the Bible, Cain killed Abel, his brother. So we need to ask more questions to find out who is really the same and who is really different.

So where do people get their ideas about stereotypes? Ignorance, a single bad experience, the influence of others? In a negotiation, you need to find that out. Often the key to removing stereotypes is simply providing information to others about the humanity of individuals. Start with this principle: There is no Them. There are just people with individual perceptions. You are trying to meet your goals in a sea of different perspectives and views.

Overcoming stereotypes can be as simple as asking people to live a week, a day, or even an hour in the other person’s shoes. In the business world, people in marketing and production should trade jobs for a few days—or at least do role reversal. Managers and employees should trade jobs for a few days. A few of the smartest companies do this. It decreases mistrust and communication problems, and increases teamwork and productivity. Often, the main problem is that people from one culture haven’t ever been exposed to those of another culture.

DEALING WITH DIFFERENCES

Sadly, understanding different cultures is not a strong suit for many in the United States. Part of this is because of the structure of our legal system.

The United States has a legal system that usually works. It is generally fair, accessible, less corrupt, and less expensive than the legal systems of other countries as a percentage of income. Legal services cost only half of 1 percent of the gross national product, and that cost has been slowly trending downward in percentage terms. In India, the cost of legal delays alone is estimated at 2 percent of the gross national product.

The problem with the U.S. legal system is that you don’t have to form a relationship with the other person. You just sign a contract and you can sue them if they break it. Plenty of attorneys will represent you for a small or contingency fee. This produces a system that is highly transactional; it minimizes focus on relationships.

Most of the rest of the world doesn’t have this luxury. Their legal systems are often inaccessible, unfair, corrupt, and very expensive. That means that for most of the world, all that people have is each other. And it dramatically changes the way people interact with one another.

If you get hosed by your business partner in Bolivia, or Yemen, or Mongolia, the legal system is not likely to help you. There is no unemployment insurance, food stamps, or welfare system. You and your family may literally starve to death. Corruption is viewed simply as a business expense in many developing countries. “The courts of many developing nations are often used not to eradicate corruption, but to punish and eliminate any perceived threats to the government,” according to the University of Iowa Center for International Finance and Development.

As such, in the United States, relationships are a very nice subject. People write books about it; they go on television and talk about it.

For most of the rest of the world, however, relationships are not just a nice subject. Often they are a matter of life and death. So the focus on the other party is intense.

Let’s say an American and a Peruvian executive go out to lunch in Lima. It is supposed to be a one-hour business lunch. For fifty-five minutes of the hour, the Peruvian executive asks the U.S. executive about friends, family, and hobbies. The U.S. executive is thinking, “What’s wrong with this person? I came here for a business lunch.” Does the Peruvian executive think they are having a business lunch? Of course. The question the Peruvian executive is asking himself or herself is, “Do I trust this person? Before I put my life, and my family’s life, in their hands, without recourse, who are they?” This is the question that is asked by most of the rest of the world. It is not a question that appears to be asked by most people in the United States. The United States focuses more on punishment and contracts than on relationships. And this hampers the United States and its citizens in their negotiations with the rest of the world. There are studies to this effect. “Let’s get down to brass tacks!” is an oft-repeated American business expression. But for meeting one’s goals in a world where cultures increasingly run up against each other, it is ineffective, and often insulting.

Even in societies where lying is considered common, there are certain people to whom one just does not lie without thinking long and hard about it. Who? Those with whom you have relationships. Your family. Your close friends. Business associates that you have dealt with or will deal with for a long time.

Mike Finch of Marathon Oil was having trouble with a foreign supplier. “They delayed responses, shifted levels of authority, did not honor established points of contact,” he said. “They continually provided less than adequate information.” We did a role reversal exercise, in which Mike played the role of the other side. The real problem became quickly evident to Mike. “Marathon is focused on the substance and the supplier is focused on the relationship,” he said. “Marathon needs to reevaluate how it works with this supplier.” Essentially, the supplier didn’t trust Marathon enough to give it the information needed to improve various oil processes. Cost-savings could not be realized as a result. Clearly, not focusing enough on the relationship with the other party was costing money.

Marathon saw similar problems in Mexico and in Asia. Marathon wanted to talk about the details of transactions. Their counterparts wanted to talk about the relationship. In more than one instance, U.S. Marathon people talked about their foreign counterparts as just “waiting.” Marathon managers asked how they could “create a sense of urgency” among their foreign counterparts.

The Marathon people thought at first that the Asians and Mexicans were waiting for lower prices. Finally, it became clear that they were waiting for long-term commitments: people commitments as well as business commitments.

MetLife found out the same thing with its own Korean subsidiary. The Koreans simply refused to accept a new company-wide platform for various business processes. John Rao, a Met manager in the United States, found out that the Koreans were less focused on money saved or business efficiency.

“It was about trust,” he said. “The Koreans wanted some say in the matter. They wanted some control.” And the Koreans wanted the technical support to be in Korean, not English.

Even between developed countries there can be vast cultural issues. Mike Gallagher, a U.S.-based manager of BASF, got into a big argument because a company factory in Germany was late by four days delivering yellow pigment. The customer walked, and the German factory wouldn’t take the pigment back.

“We didn’t understand their culture,” Mike said. And this was in his own company. It turned out that the American arm simply ordered the German factory to make what the Germans called a “nonforecasted order.” It disrupted their carefully planned schedule. To them, it was the Americans shooting from the hip again.

As far as the Germans were concerned, they stopped on a dime and did the order. It was four days late, but it was the best they could do. And then the Americans criticized them. For the Germans, the response was, well, the heck with you! Germans versus Americans—the perception was a culture of order versus a culture of chaos. “It wasn’t just a problem we had to fix,” Mike said. “It was the whole process. It was all the communication.” “Given that the world is getting smaller very fast, almost every negotiation is a cross-cultural negotiation,” said Igor Ojereliev, who was a student in my NYU negotiation class and is now an emerging-markets hedge fund manager in London. “It is important to remember that different cultures have different standards of what is fair and relevant.” He said he found that in negotiating in China, most (not all!) street vendors need to haggle, so he doesn’t usually start with a value discussion. At the airports in Egypt, he said, most taxi drivers (not all!) will take less if they think you are not in a hurry. “It’s the pictures in their heads that count.” STEPS TO IMPROVEMENT

The first step to improvement is communicating effectively with others: understanding the signals they put out, especially when they are from another culture. If the other side starts making “relationship signals,” they are interested in seeing whether or not they can trust you. Relationship signals include talking about nonbusiness subjects such as recreation, sports, food, and music. They are trying to get to know you as a person.

Too many people pay lip service to this—they ask a couple of questions without listening to the answer, and quickly move on to business. But others can sense when you are not really interested in them. So you have to mean it.

Christine Farner, a manager for Warner-Lambert, a pharmaceutical company, went to County Cork, Ireland, to discuss building a $275 million factory there. The local planning board was initially cool. Then Christine remembered the cultural learnings of the course, which she took at Columbia Business School. “So we took them out to dinner to learn about each other.” By the end of dinner, everyone was on the same team, she said, with the same agenda and a planning process.

Next, you need to acknowledge differences openly. If you’re different, or at least perceived as different, the extent to which you are honest about this will gain you trust and credibility. Even if the other party tells you that you should have learned more, you can apologize and say you’d like to start now. People look for honesty first.

After that, start somewhere. Agree to anything, no matter how trivial: where people will sit, what you will order for drinks. Acknowledge something you like about the other person and his or her culture. Talk about something you might have observed or read about the culture and ask if it is true. If not, what is? Be curious.

Donna Farrell, a consultant formerly with Arthur Andersen, found that clients kept looking at her as a young woman. They had misgivings about her abilities and sometimes asked for someone older and more experienced. Maybe, she thought, they wanted to work with a man. They couldn’t say it legally, but to her it felt like the 800-pound gorilla in the room.

So she took the subject head-on. “I addressed their perceptions about age and gender directly, even if I didn’t like their perceptions,” she said. “I used humor. I found out their fears and addressed them. All of this established rapport.” This brings me to my next point. It is as counterintuitive as it is essential for dealing with differences.

Do other people expect you to be like them? When in Rome, should you do as the Romans do?

The correct answers to the above questions are no and no. Other people who are different from you do NOT expect you to be like them. They know that you are not. They DO expect you to value and respect them. It is a subtle but important difference.

When I go to China, I don’t eat monkey brains. What’s more, I have special dietary needs. I don’t wait until I have arrived to tell my hosts that, after they have spent a lot of money on a ceremonial feast. I call ahead and tell them my dietary needs. And they are pleased to cook for me what I need to eat. After all, the point in cooking the meal is to make me happy.

It should be of interest that cultural fatigue is not just a sociological term. It’s a medical term. Cultural fatigue occurs when you have made the dozens of accommodations every day to try to be just like those around you in another culture. At the end of six months, you are physically exhausted. Cultural fatigue is the biggest cause of the failure of foreign executives and their families in adjusting to a new culture. The key is NOT to adjust. The key is to be yourself. You can learn some of the language, you can pursue some of the customs that you like.

But you do NOT want to be like them. And this is one of the major points of this book: there is value in being different. Being different adds value.

The single biggest cause of the growth of the U.S. gross national product since the end of World War II has been new technology. New technology has been largely developed by innovators, and innovators are different. They represent change. They represent a level of discomfort as new things are tried and instituted.

Many people hate change. Many people hate differences. Companies claim they love diversity and differences. But try to advocate change, and in many companies, it’s a one-way ticket out. Yet it is difference that adds value. In differences there is strength.

So, if someone says to me, with some frustration, “We’re different from each other,” I’m going to slap the table and say, “Great! We’re going to make money!” Homogeneity is not as profitable. Differences are more profitable. I like to say, “We have to get some people in here who disagree with us so we can make some money around here!” It is the messy process of trying new things, the intensity of disagreement, the synthesis of the best ideas, that lead to value. Often, mistakes are made. Feelings sometimes get hurt. But the result is more.

So you want people with different perceptions and solutions. You do want to pay attention to the process of discussion. How you set your goals, what commitments you make to each other, your interest in discovering one another’s value. When this occurs, people get more.

Research has proven these conclusions. One study looked at diversity in U.S. cities. The three most successful cities economically—New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—were the three most diverse. Each 10 percent increase in diversity resulted in a rise in net income of 15 percent in the original U.S.-born population. Diversity of opinion—tolerance of differences—is particularly important in the high-tech sector. It is not an accident that Silicon Valley developed just outside San Francisco, which studies show tolerates the most diversity of any area of its size in the United States.

To underscore this point: for this to work, the environment must support differences. In Rwanda, diversity led to ethnic genocide because differences were not tolerated. The more that differences are tolerated—indeed, embraced—the more economic benefit develops. Even in countries where the choice is not total tolerance or total intolerance, the failure to capitalize on differences has economic costs. Studies show that a company’s failure to capitalize on the clash of ideas and perceptions results in higher turnover, less productivity, and lower profits.

The cost of extra turnover alone in a 2,000-person company in which differences are not embraced is $5 million per year right off the bottom line, studies show. This does not count the opportunity costs of losing the better ideas. It’s a huge economic penalty.

Studies show that more creativity results from the clash of differing perceptions and experiences. The most creative people are those with widely varying experiences and skills from which to draw. In fact, diverse groups produce three times the high-quality solutions to problems than nondiverse groups.

But you need to be careful of just paying lip service to this. Someone who is different is someone with whom you will often disagree. Too many groups I have seen pick someone whose physical attributes might be different, and then pride themselves at having “diversity.” But unless their perceptions are different, then they are really the same, and such benefits don’t flow.

Here is an example of strength through differences. It ranks as one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. In the mid to late 1990s, my colleagues and I convinced 3,000 farmers in the jungles of Bolivia to stop growing coca for cocaine and to start growing bananas. These bananas were exported successfully to Argentina for several years until the value of the Argentine peso dropped and the venture was no longer profitable with us in it. The growers continued on their own.

The project started with a request from Donna Hrinak, then the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, to assist in the antidrug campaign. She wanted to wean the farmers in the jungle region of Chapare off cocaine. I had met her through work I had done there on economic development.

After studying various agricultural markets, we decided there was an undersupply of high-quality bananas. And the prices that the bananas could fetch were actually more than the farmers got for their coca crop. In the drug trade, the processors and distributors made the real money, not the farmers. The government, meanwhile, kept firebombing coca fields, so it was a risky business for the farmers.

We started with 100 growers. The first time we talked, it was a sweltering January night (summer in the Southern Hemisphere). We met in a little clearing in the jungle. It was very dark except for the glow from my battery-operated computer and the shapes of people and animals. There were jungle sounds. No one spoke English except for me and an interpreter. The growers spoke Qetchua, an Indian dialect. The interpreter translated between English and Qetchua.

The growers—men, women, and children—wore little more than rags. Many looked malnourished. Barefoot children dressed in tatters were hanging out of two-story wooden shacks with big openings in place of windows. The skin of many was blackened with dirt.

I purposely wore a three-piece suit, a tie, and suspenders.

“Look at me,” I began, talking to the group through the interpreter. “I couldn’t be more different from you. I dress differently. I talk differently. I look different.” I added, “My plane ticket down here probably cost more than many of you make in a year.

“But,” I said, “I think we have some things in common. We both want a better life for ourselves and our children. And if we work together, we just might be able to do something together.” I noted that the growers had land, cheap labor, and diseased, nonproducing banana trees. We had capital, technology, and markets.

We talked about the life they led, how they made money, their complaints against the government, their interest in better medical care. Few could read and write, yet they were interested in education, especially for their children. I told them that I would need a commitment from each and every one of them that they wanted to attempt this banana-growing venture.

For several hours that night, we negotiated a lengthy contract. I typed it in English, and then the translator typed it in Spanish. Almost all of the growers were illiterate, but they weren’t stupid. They asked very good questions and wanted all the terms one might expect in such a contract. It was subject to the laws of New York State. We negotiated each and every point, respectfully and thoughtfully. I would invest money in equipment, trucking, marketing, technology, and chemicals for the bananas. The growers would be guaranteed a certain price. They would commit to achieving certain production numbers. They promised to learn world-class banana production methods; and we promised to bring in the people to teach them.

They might make less money in some weeks than they would with coca, I told them. But we would form a brand that would have value, and over the long term they would get more. I noted to them that under Bolivian law, it was easier to get out of contracts for various technicalities. But under New York law, I said, if there is a meeting of the minds, there is an agreement. “So,” I said, “when you put your names on the contract, or an X next to your name, it’s for keeps. It’s a commitment. You have to mean it.” We finished about dawn. There was nowhere to print out the contract since there wasn’t any electricity. So the two growers who could read and write, and who spoke Spanish, drove the 350 kilometers (about 200 miles) with us back to Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s commercial hub, where we printed out the contract and signed it.

In the years to follow, the contract with the Bolivians withstood the test of time and distance. This is because we had openly discussed our differences and how we could work together. We came from two dramatically different cultures, but we had similar goals. Our agreement was forged with human feelings.

This was a good start, but I didn’t think it was enough to form the kind of long-term bond I sought. So we went back frequently, and took tours through the jungle. I wanted to understand their customs and how they lived. Then we hit on an idea.

The U.S. and Bolivian governments, which supported the project, wanted the growers to open a bank account to hold their money. A cash economy, they figured, is a drug economy. So the agency involved set the growers up with a bank account at the Bank of Santa Cruz, a regional bank located in the city.

But I wanted to value the growers more.

The best bank in the country was the Citibank in Santa Cruz. The best department at that bank was the corporate department. Companies like Mercedes banked there. The setting was elegant and quiet, with thick blue carpets. You could hear the soft whoosh of air conditioning. There were strict financial and corporate requirements. The growers hardly had two pesos to rub together.

Nonetheless, we asked the Citibank corporate department to make an exception for the growers. “Absolutely not,” the head of the corporate department said, insulted that we even asked the question. So we used all of our various contacts, including political ones, to prevail upon Citibank to accept the growers as depositors. This was a highly visible project and Citibank, a major U.S. bank, was being asked to do something for Bolivia. They agreed.

Imagine this scene: a ragtag group of growers walking through the luxuriously appointed corporate banking department, where everyone else was dressed to the teeth in business suits and dresses. Imagine these growers getting their own Citibank card, their very first banking card and checkbook. And imagine the growers coming back to their shacks in the jungle, holding up their Citibank card and saying to each other, “We’re as good as Mercedes.” A couple of years after we signed the contract, there was a big transportation strike. The road through Chapare (the jungle) was one of the country’s principal transportation corridors. Only one truck was let through—our banana truck.

We took leaders of the growers to one of the best restaurants in Santa Cruz: white tablecloths and the like. They came in by bus from the jungle. We had them take back delicacies for their families. Others in the restaurant looked askance at them. But they were with us, and the restaurant could hardly afford to make a scene.

The number of growers in our project grew quickly and steadily. After six months, we had 3,000 growers from all over the jungle. The project became known in Bolivia. Protests by some coca growers were overwhelmed by the people turning to bananas.

But the biggest change occurred with the bananas themselves. The reason the project had never moved forward was because the banana trees in that part of the jungle were diseased. They had a fungus called black sigatoga, which causes the leaves of the banana trees to droop. Exposed daily to the sun, the bananas ripen on the tree, turning black, which makes them unusable.

The trees needed to be sprayed several times a day in part of their yearly growing cycle with a fungicide to kill the fungus. But it was too expensive to fly aircraft the 350 kilometers back and forth from Santa Cruz every day to spray the trees several times. As a result, the banana business had never gotten off the ground.

However, there was a small military airport in the middle of Chapare. If the small crop-spraying planes parked at that airport and used it as a base, the chemicals and fuel could be trucked in from Santa Cruz.

The airport was owned by the National Aeronautical Association, a joint effort by the U.S. and the Bolivian military. For twenty years they had refused requests from the growers to open the airport to agricultural projects to grow something other than coca. So we decided to use the negotiation tools outlined in this book to make our case: standards, framing, third parties, goals.

I wrote a letter to the U.S. Departments of State, Justice, and the Treasury, the three departments that dealt with the illegal drug trade. This letter essentially asked them if their actions were consistent with their goals. And it used their standards.

The letter said that if the airport remained closed, it showed that the U.S. government supported the illegal drug trade. But if the airport was opened to the growers, it would show that the government opposed illegal drugs, not just in word but in deed. Again, we got assistance from both the Bolivian and U.S. governments to help get our request to the right people.

At the same time, Alexa Sundberg, a U.S. marketing consultant, and Andres Judah, a Bolivian economist, worked for me on the ground and put pressure on politicians, got stories in the media, and organized the pilots’ associations to join in the pressure.

The airport was opened. U.S. and Bolivian agencies appropriated $100,000 to build a new commercial airstrip next to the military landing field, in the heart of the banana plantations. We brought in technology from Ecuador to grow better bananas. We brought in new refrigeration and washing equipment. We found markets in Argentina. Our food label, Andean Gold, became a fixture in some of the Argentine supermarkets. The high prices the bananas fetched in Argentina showed that the Indians of Chapare were competing with the world’s best banana producers.

Some months after the project started, banana prices dropped for a brief period. I was sure we would go into the red that month. But when I got the accounting reports, we were still in the black; the project was still making money. I didn’t understand this. So I called down to the people who were handling our finances in Bolivia, and asked them why we were not in the red that month.

“Oh,” one of them said. “The growers saw the market prices drop and they didn’t want you to lose money. So they decided to drop their prices to you until the market recovers.” These are people that one would think I had nothing in common with. I didn’t speak their language. I didn’t understand their customs. But we made a connection, across time and space and culture, that endures to this day.

Does this happen 100 percent of the time? Of course not. But it happens a surprisingly high percentage of the time if you go through the process.

COMMUNICATION, PERCEPTION, AND CULTURE

Clearly, the way in which we communicate with people from other cultures is key. The way we interpret their actions. The questions we ask about their perceptions. When we think everyone else perceives the world just like we do, it causes all kinds of conflict.

One of the most interesting studies about this had to do with the misinterpretation of a smile. It was conducted on a college campus. Two Americans passed each other on a walkway and smiled at each other. Both felt good about this. Then, an American passed a Korean student. The American smiled; the Korean student did not. The Korean student thought, “These Americans are so superficial. All they do is smile, even at strangers. It means nothing to them.” The American student thought, “These Koreans are so unfriendly.” An Arab student walked along a path in traditional garb, wearing a white flowing robe. People smiled at him in approval. But he felt only ridicule—because that’s what smiling means in some Arab cultures in such a context. He quickly ran into the bathroom to check how he looked.

But the most interesting part of this research concerned an American woman and a Southeast Asian man. The female student was waiting for the off-campus bus to take her to her apartment after class early one evening. A man from Southeast Asia was tending to his two small children.

The young American woman was touched, and smiled at the man. The man, suddenly bewildered, looked back at her and said, “Oh. Do you want to meet later? How much do you cost?” He thought she was selling her services.

If just a smile can be the basis for such misunderstanding, think of the pitfalls in the blizzard of sentences in a complex or emotional negotiation.

The process to solve cross-cultural issues is the same as for other negotiation problems, although the perceptual differences are larger so it usually takes more time. The key, of course, is to start with the pictures in their heads, no matter how alien these pictures seem.

And you need to move incrementally. Across cultures, you often have to cross vast distances. Divide the negotiation into small steps. Take the steps one at a time. If they balk, shorten the steps.

When you are trying to bring someone a large distance, it’s hard to do it without being very visual. They actually have to see it, both in their mind and with their eyes. Without the actual experience, it’s very hard to change their perceptions. That’s why this book is big on role reversal. For most people, you actually have to put them in the setting.

If they think they hate someone, you need to get them to spend time with that person. If they hate a culture, you need to find a way to have a positive experience with that culture. It makes no sense to give them data, to argue with them, to increase benefits that might not matter as much (salary, for example). Give them a picture, spark their imagination. Strike a chord they can feel.

STANDARDS AND CULTURE

Overcoming cultural norms is often incredibly difficult. But it can be done through the use of third parties, the reframing of standards, and an understanding of their perceptions. Carter Mayfield was invited to stay at his girlfriend Sheila’s house, which was full of guests. Sheila’s father, Justin Ali, who was Persian, prepared to sleep on the couch and give all the beds to his guests. This was a cultural norm; to do otherwise would be to lose face.

After consulting with Sheila, Carter looked through the TV guide and found a program he really wanted to see. He asked Sheila to tell her father that Carter really wanted to see the TV program, it could only be seen from the couch, and it would be rude not to let him see it. Another standard was found. Mr. Ali slept in his own bed, Carter said. Such a small thing, yet such a big thing. Carter, now a family business executive in Texas, married Sheila.

In Chapter 1, I mentioned that various women from India had gotten out of their own arranged marriages using course tools. Here’s the story of one of them; let’s call her Dena. Her parents wanted her to marry someone from her own sect. It’s a tradition that began in the fourth century; even today, 90 percent of marriages in India are arranged.

But Dena loved someone else, from another sect. Her father seemed persuadable, but her mother was absolutely outraged at the thought during a talk one winter break. “We would have to walk with our heads down,” her mother said. Indeed, one of Dena’s cousins refused to marry her chosen spouse some years before and was disowned by the family: no one even spoke to her for years.

So, during the course, Dena did a role reversal exercise with some other negotiation students to try to figure out what to do. “The first thing I realized is that I had to validate my mother’s feelings and not argue with her,” Dena said. “She wanted what was best for her children.” Such an emotional payment could get a conversation started.

Next, Dena would talk to her father, who was a lot more accommodating as long as the family’s religion and traditions were followed. She would also talk to a family friend who had married a non-Indian and had a happy marriage. The endorsement of these third parties would further calm Dena’s mother down and enable a reasonable conversation with Dena—in very incremental steps, over a period of time.

Dena would next introduce her beau to her parents—not in any formal setting, but just for them to see him. Her parents would feel consulted. Dena decided not to tell her beau of the significance of the first meeting; she wanted him to be natural. The man she loved was a professional; Dena had good judgment in that regard. Dena also realized that if she got emotional at all, all was lost, since the situation was so incendiary to begin with. Dena’s team in class practiced and prepared, and then did it again and again.

When Dena went back to see her mother, she executed her strategy over a period of weeks, sometimes talking to her mother alone and sometimes with her father, always calm and empathetic. The result: “My parents paid for the wedding and were proud parents,” Dena said.

“The most important thing we learned was the power of using the negotiation tools in a structured way,” Dena said. “It’s one thing to hear about the theory; it’s quite another to practice putting oneself in the other’s shoes. Preparation is critical. Keeping out the emotional is essential.” She said the whole exercise fundamentally changed her relationship with her mother for the better, based on mutual respect and value.

Dena is now living happily with the man she loves in California. She bridged big differences in culture. Worldwide, 60 percent of all marriages are arranged. Dena did what millions of women likely want to do but cannot because they lack the skill. She successfully negotiated for her life’s happiness.

Let’s take a harder example—a young woman who is Israeli and who wants to marry a young man who is Iraqi. Let’s say it’s the 1970s or 1980s. What if they want to live in Baghdad? I don’t think so. What if they want to live in Jerusalem? Again, I don’t think so. If they want to live in New York City, maybe. New York is more diverse and, as such, more tolerant.

Let’s think about what happens. The young woman talks to her mother. What does her mother say? “Over my dead body!” Being calm, the young woman asks, “But why?” And, of course, we all know the refrain, “It’ll never work!” Now, that is exactly what we want to hear. Why? Well, what has the young woman’s mother given her? A big fat standard! So if you are the young woman, you should be asking yourself, has it ever worked? And the answer is yes! My brother-in-law’s sister, to name one. She’s from a religious Jewish family that survived the Holocaust. Her husband is an Iraqi who worked for the World Bank. They lived in New York City for years, two kids and five dogs. Blissfully happy. And they aren’t the only ones. In fact, there are at least several hundred mixed marriages of Arabs and Jews in Israel alone.

So you use standards, calmly, in this relationship situation, to make some headway here. But let’s say your mother is clever. She says, “But the chances are almost impossible that it will work. I’ll bet only one out of a thousand works, if that.” What has your mother given you again? A big fat standard! If you are the young woman, you say, “But Mom, don’t you always say that your kids are the best? So if anyone could succeed at this, wouldn’t it be your kids?” Of course, this is an emotional situation, and in and of itself, this will not be enough. Her mother needs to meet the guy. And you’ll need to bring up the fact that there have been mixed marriages in the Old Testament; in other words, marrying non-Jews is not, in and of itself, against tradition. Indeed, in the Bible, Moses, Sarah, Ishmael, and Solomon all married non-Jews, and Abraham had a child with a non-Jew. Now that’s a precedent.

What this example shows is that you can begin to bridge what seem to be big cultural differences by finding and addressing the pictures in the other person’s head.

CULTURE AND BUSINESS

Let’s look at an example that involves a business situation, one that has occurred several times with my students. It demonstrates the kind of incremental steps and role reversal necessary to bridge cultural gaps.

You are a smart female graduate of a business school. You have accepted a job as an associate in the Tokyo office of a major international consulting firm based in the United States. It’s a two-year assignment. You’ve been to Japan on various trips and speak Japanese pretty well from your studies and visits.

You are assigned to be the main contact with a traditional Japanese manufacturing company. Management and the board of directors are all male and very conservative. They will have nothing to do with you as a consultant. They go around you constantly to your boss, a man. Or they treat you like a secretary. A 2010 report by the World Economic Forum said women occupy just 24 percent of company jobs in Japan, second lowest only to India with 23 percent, among the twenty-seven major countries studied. And very, very few women are permitted into the corporate suite. Many women in the Japanese workforce do clerical tasks like serving tea: they are called O.L.’s, or “Office Ladies.” Your choices are either to mark time in the office for two years, returning to the United States with your career having advanced very little, or to do something about it, and shine. If you use the right negotiation tools, it will take about six months for you to become a full-fledged consultant, respected by the Japanese company.

Let’s first consider how a traditional, all-male Japanese management views a young, bright foreign woman in their midst, inserted as an advisor and essentially as an equal. The word that comes to mind is threat. Let’s spell this out. A threat to the established order. A threat to a thousand years of history. A threat to the cohesion of society. A threat to tradition. To them, it could easily suggest a break-up of the family (“What if all women behaved this way?”).

So getting inside their heads is critically important. You may not like how this kind of inquiry makes some Japanese males recoil. But we’re here to deal with the real world.

Of course, their perceptions and their feelings are just where we start our process of changing their perceptions to move toward our goals. As I’ve mentioned, problems are the start of the analysis, not the end.

Two key negotiation tools you need to look at here are their interests (needs) and third parties that could influence them.

Let’s first make a partial list of their needs (interests): to profit and attract the best people, and to be seen as innovative, socially conscious, international, competitive, focused on the long term, and collaborative.

And third parties: shareholders, employees, customers, government, U.S. partner, public, competitors, board of directors, media, and colleagues.

Having done this, we can see how to reframe the situation. Far from being a threat, the young woman represents profit, the future, competitiveness: she is among the brightest of the new generation of young businesspeople. As an American, she can address the need to be international. There are likely an increasing number of role models of women executives in Japan who have increased their company’s positive public image, and, as such, sales.

As you can see, we simply used the things important to the company’s management: business needs and people. And we showed that their actions in excluding the American woman consultant did not meet the company’s stated needs. If the company says that its needs also include keeping tradition, it could be pointed out that many traditional Japanese companies are moving in this direction as well. Tradition is not stagnant. The samurai were replaced by modern soldiers. Horses have been replaced by cars.

Now, the American woman is not the right person to make this argument on her own behalf to the traditional Japanese management. An American male counterpart in the consulting firm that already works with the Japanese company would make a better advocate. And the woman would have to prove herself professionally. But, little by little, she would be able to gain the trust of the Japanese company’s management. They would view her as having changed from a young foreign woman to a smart business advisor.

The role played by the American male consulting firm manager is key in this situation. He is in the role of cross-cultural interface manager: someone who knows both cultures and is trusted by both. When the distance between people of two different cultures cannot be bridged by the parties, the cross-cultural interface manager can close the gap, and more quickly.

It is not the job of the interface manager to solve things. It is only the job of the interface manager to help in communications. The process is intended to get the parties to understand one another’s perceptions, to send signals, to enhance understanding.

Remember, the differences here involve more than just language issues. In fact, if you have learned the other language fluently, it might work against you, because people in the other culture often incorrectly assume that you are “fluent” in all other cultural matters. In other words, they are actually less tolerant of mistakes.

I was working on a deal for the United Nations involving trade with Cuba, and had a meeting scheduled with the executive vice president of a major pharmaceutical firm in Japan. I knew neither the Japanese culture nor the pharmaceutical industry culture very well at the time. I didn’t need a translator between Japanese and English. The EVP of the pharma firm spoke perfect English. Rather, I needed help with the cultural issues, which were even more important.

I found a Japanese pharmaceutical consultant who had spent time in the United States and attended a program at Wharton. I retained him as my interface manager to help me handle the meeting.

We arrived at the company and were shown to a conference room. The executive vice president was not there yet. I immediately sat in the chair next to the door. In the United States, the chair across from where I was sitting, facing the door, was the chair of respect. I wanted to leave that chair vacant for my host.

No sooner had I sat down than my consultant gently pulled me up, led me around the table to the other side, and sat me down squarely in the chair facing the door. “In the U.S.,” he said, “the host sits in the chair of respect. But in Japan, the chair of respect is given to the guest.” When our host came in, he immediately saw three things. One, I was sitting in the right chair. Two, I had taken the trouble to find out which chair it was. Three, I brought with me a cultural translator to make sure we started and continued with a minimum of miscommunication.

I was not trying to be like my host, speak his language or immerse myself in his customs. I was trying to send a small signal that I understood there were cultural differences and wanted to find a way to talk effectively. The meeting went very well.

This kind of strategy works in all kinds of situations, in many different cultural contexts. The first time I was planning to go to Ukraine, I was told that the standard for negotiations there was one bottle of vodka per person per negotiating session. This was not the kind of vodka that one buys in the store in the United States. This was the kind of vodka that one might use as lighter fluid. I don’t drink, I don’t drink vodka, and I certainly don’t drink lighter fluid substitutes. But I needed to do the negotiation.

So I brought with me—please forgive the stereotype, but alas, this is true—a 350-pound Irish investment banker who told me that no one would drink him under the table. I introduced him to our Ukrainian counterpart as my “designated drinker.” They were cool with that. I never saw so much vodka consumed in my entire life by two people. And we did the deal. We had found a way to bridge cultural differences.

THEIR REAL CULTURE

Often people have a wrong idea about what constitutes another culture. Just because someone is Chinese doesn’t mean they belong to the Chinese culture. They may have been raised in America and would be insulted if you assumed they follow Chinese customs and traditions.

I once wrote an article about a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. This professor, Hanan Selvan, had retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that gradually narrows one’s field of vision until one becomes blind. Dr. Selvan, a brilliant independent thinker, was in the advanced stages of the disease. But he led an active life, traveling on trains by himself, armed only with his telescoping cane. He was an active member in a lot of academic societies, as well as Mensa, the society for those with a genius I.Q.

I asked him whether he belonged to societies for patients with retinitis pigmentosa. He responded indignantly. “They aren’t scholars for the most part,” he said. “All I have in common with them is a common affliction.” Those words stuck with me. Here, the attribute that most onlookers would think was the most visible and defining part of his being was not even on his radar screen. One really needs to probe deeply to find out the culture to which the other party feels they belong.

Following is a list that captures what one should think about in dealing effectively with those who are different. It puts a lot of the tools from this book in a structure that can help anyone in getting more value from situations where people, at least at first, appear different from one another.

ACHIEVING AGREEMENTS WITH THOSE WHO ARE DIFFERENT

Develop goals. Find common goals. Invoke common enemies. Paint a picture of the logical extreme: the risk in continuing the present course. Do role reversal. Who are they? Question your assumptions. Find their dreams/fears. Listen for signals: verbal, nonverbal. Identify the “noise” that masks similarities (physical, language, style). Articulate and value real differences. Find standards: theirs and reasonable norms. Name bad behavior and identify your own weaknesses. Insist on evidence to support all views. Be incremental in any suggestion. Focus only on what is controllable. Consult before deciding: bring them into the process; ask their advice. Find models where the suggestions have worked. Insist on finding creative options. “Is this the ONLY way?” Look for hidden agendas; develop incentives to change them. Find their constituencies; appeal to their values. Create a vision of the future. Discuss it with them. Create a new “culture” of those who want to make the change.

The first thing, of course, is to identify your goals. Do the actions you plan meet your goals? Can you meet your goals given the people you are dealing with?

The picture of the logical extreme is a key one. It paints a vision for the parties as to what will happen if you continue on this path. Bankruptcy? Years in court? Nuclear war? I was once in a room with Israeli and Jordanian businessmen. I said, “How about this as the answer for the Middle East? The party that wins is the party that kills everyone on the other side: men, women, children, dogs, cats, goats, chickens, snakes, fish, worms, butterflies …?” They thought that was ridiculous. I said, “But that’s what you have to do, right? You have to kill everyone. Because if one thing is left standing, you still have a war. Someone is still going to try to kill someone on the other side over what happened yesterday.” They could see that this was indeed the picture of the logical extreme, and it was not going to accomplish anyone’s goals. I wanted them to consider better options.

And I want to be incremental in the proposals; a little progress at a time. Are there some small examples where solutions have worked? Find them and apply them.

Start building a coalition of people. Start with those who want to join a new way of doing things. Bring more and more people into the process. Ask people’s advice. Develop incentives to change things that are harder to change.

In May 2007, I conducted a two-day workshop for executives, educators, and government officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is a very conservative city. We focused on the common bond that we had: improving processes and results through negotiation. In that sense we were all part of the same culture—educated people trying to do better. We had a great workshop in which we taught about forty-five people, many dressed in traditional Arab robes, the tools in this book.

At the end of the third day, I felt the freedom to say, “Not every Israeli is your enemy, and not every Saudi is your friend. Some Israelis will make you rich, and some Saudis will steal you blind.” They got it; there were lots of nods in the classroom at Prince Sultan University, whose namesake and benefactor is an heir to the country’s throne. The group included the head of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, the presidents of some of the largest companies in Saudi Arabia, and the head of Prince Sultan University.

It is possible to deal with vast differences between two groups, or individuals, calmly, effectively, and in a way that creates lasting value. You just have to try.