Listening to the Air

Listening to the Air Communicating across Cultures W hen I arrived at my hotel in New Delhi, I was hot and, more important, hungry. Although I would spend that week conducting classes for a group of Indian executives at the swank five-star Oberoi hotel, the Indian business school hosting me put me up in a more modest and much smaller residence several miles away. Though quiet and clean, it looked like a big concrete box with windows, set back from the road and surrounded by a wall with a locked gate. This will be fine, I thought as I dropped my bag off in my room. Staying in a simple hotel just steps from the bustle of workaday New Delhi will make it that much easier for me to get the flavor of the city. Lunch was at the top of my agenda. The very friendly young man behind the concierge desk jumped to attention when he saw me approaching. I asked about a good place to eat. “There is a great restaurant just to the left of the hotel. I recommend it highly,” he told me. “It is called Swagat. You can’t miss it.” It sounded perfect. I walked out to the road and looked to the left. The street was a whirlwind of colors, smells, and activities. I saw a grocery store, a cloth vendor, a family of five all piled onto 9781610392501-text.indd 29 3/11/14 9:26 AM one motor scooter, and a bunch of brown-speckled chickens pecking in the dust next to the sidewalk. No restaurant. “You didn’t find it?” the kind concierge asked in a puzzled tone as I re-entered the hotel. This time the young man explained, “Just walk out of the hotel, cross the street, and the restaurant will be on your left. It’s next to the market. There is a sign. You can’t miss it,” he said again. Well, apparently I could. I tried to do exactly as instructed, crossing the street immediately in front of the hotel and again looking to the left. As I saw no sign of the restaurant, I turned to the left and walked a while. It was a little confusing, as the street was jam-packed. After a minute or so, I came to a small side street full of people, food stalls, and women selling sandals and saris. Was this the market the concierge mentioned? But after careful examination of what I felt to be all possible interpretations of “on your left,” I began to wonder if I was being filmed as a stunt for some type of reality TV show. I headed back to the hotel. The concierge smiled kindly at me again, but I could tell he was thinking I really wasn’t very smart. Scratching his head in bewilderment at my inability to find the obvious, he announced, “I will take you there.” So we left the hotel, crossed the street, turned to the left, and then walked for nearly ten minutes, weaving our way through traffic on the bustling sidewalk and passing several side streets and countless heads of cattle on the way. At last, just beyond a large bank, perched quietly over a fruit store on the second floor of a yellow stucco building, I spotted a small sign that read Swagat. As I thanked the concierge for his extreme kindness, I couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t told me, “Cross the street, turn left, walk nine minutes, look for the big bank on the corner, and, when 9781610392501-text.indd 30 3/11/14 9:26 AM you see the big fruit store, look up to the second floor of the yellow stucco building for a sign with the restaurant’s name.” And as this question floated through my mind, I could tell that the kindly concierge was wondering, “How will this poor, dim-witted woman possibly make it through the week?” As my search for lunch in New Delhi suggests, the skills involved in being an effective communicator vary dramatically from one culture to another. In the United States and other Anglo-Saxon cultures, people are trained (mostly subconsciously) to communicate as literally and explicitly as possible. Good communication is all about clarity and explicitness, and accountability for accurate transmission of the message is placed firmly on the communicator: “If you don’t understand, it’s my fault.” By contrast, in many Asian cultures, including India, China, Japan, and Indonesia, messages are often conveyed implicitly, requiring the listener to read between the lines. Good communication is subtle, layered, and may depend on copious subtext, with responsibility for transmission of the message shared between the one sending the message and the one receiving it. The same applies to many African cultures, including those found in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and to a lesser degree Latin American cultures (such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina) and Latin European cultures (such as Spain, Italy, Portugal) including France. The fact is that the hotel concierge provided all of the information necessary for someone from his own culture to find Swagat. An Indian living in the same Delhi cultural context would likely have figured out quickly where the restaurant was by the clues provided; she would have been eating her lunch while I was still wandering wearily around the streets. My quest for the Swagat restaurant illustrates that being a good listener is just as important for effective communication as being a 9781610392501-text.indd 31 3/11/14 9:26 AM good speaker. And both of these essential skills are equally variable from one culture to another. *** It was springtime in France, where I had been living several years, when I was asked to give a presentation at a human resource conference in Paris sponsored by Owens Corning. A leading global producer of residential building materials, Owens Corning is headquartered in Toledo, Ohio—a good eleven-hour drive from my home state of Minnesota, but still within the tribal boundaries of my native midwestern American culture. When I arrived at the conference, I found fifty human resource directors assembled in a typical Parisian hotel space with high ceilings and sunshine streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. Thirty-eight of the participants were from Toledo; the rest were from Europe and Asia, but all had been working for Owens Corning for at least a decade. I took a seat in the back corner of the room just as the presentation preceding mine was beginning. The speaker would be David Brown, the company’s CEO. Relaxed and unimposing, wearing a blazer but no tie, David strolled into the room wearing a warm smile and greeted several of the attendees by their first name. But from the hush that descended when he stepped to the podium, it was obvious that this group of HR directors considered him a celebrity. Brown spent sixty intense minutes describing his vision of the company’s future. He spoke in simple words, repeating key points and reinforcing his messages with bullet-pointed slides. The group listened carefully, asked a few respectful questions, and gave Brown an appreciative round of applause before he departed. 9781610392501-text.indd 32 3/11/14 9:26 AM