woman was not a secretary.
Stereotyping involves a form of categorization that organizes your experience and guides your behavior toward ethnic and national groups. Stereotypes never describe individual behavior; rather they describe the behavioral norm for members of a particular group. For example the stereotype of German businessmen is to be very punctual, busy and ambitious. Stereotypes, like other forms of categories, can be helpful or harmful depending on how one uses them. Effective stereotyping allows people to understand and act appropriately in new situations. But you should always keep in mind that stereotypes describe a group norm and not the characteristics of a specific individual, that they only describe a group and do not evaluate it and that you can and should modify them, based on further observation and experience with the present people and situations.
The problem with stereotyping is that it often leads to prejudice, a pre-judging of people you actually do not even know. In contrast to stereotypes, prejudices are based on emotions and easily translate into feelings of uneasiness and fear.
Even more dangerous than stereotyping and prejudice, certain groups of people feel that they are superior to others. In this state, others are seen as having positions below one’s own and that gives rise to making judgments about what is right and wrong according to one’s own values. This is called ethnocentrism. This attitude inevitably leads to conflicts with people from other countries, as they will probably think the same about their own culture.
1.4.2.1 Sources of misinterpretation
Misinterpretation can be caused by inaccurate perceptions of a person or situation that arise when what actually exists is not seen. It can be caused by inaccurate interpretation of what is seen; that is, by using my meanings to make sense out of reality. For example if a German (businessman) greets his American partner with “Mister” although they have seen each other already, the American categorizes the German as a businessman and interprets his formal behavior to mean that he does not like the American or is uninterested in developing a closer relationship because North Americans maintain formal behavior after the first few meetings only when they dislike or distrust the associates so treated. Culture strongly influences, and in many cases determines, your interpretations. Both the categories and the meanings you attach to them are based on your cultural background. Sources of cross-cultural misinterpretation include subconscious cultural “blinders”, a lack of cultural self-awareness, projected similarity, and parochialism (narrow-mindedness).
1.4.3 Subconscious cultural blinders
Because most interpretation goes on at subconscious level, you lack awareness of the assumptions you make and their cultural basis. Your home culture reality never forces you to examine your assumptions or the extent to which they are culturally biased, because you share your cultural assumptions with most citizens of your country. All you know is that things do not work as smoothly or logically when you work outside your own culture as when you work with people more similar to yourself. For example, a Canadian conducting business in Kuwait was very surprised when his meeting with a high-ranking official was not held in a closed office and was constantly interrupted. Since the Canadian-based cultural assumption is that important people have large offices and do not get interrupted, he came to the conclusion that this officer was neither a high ranking one nor interested in conducting the business, which might not have been the truth.
1.4.4 Lack of cultural self-awareness
Although you think that the major obstacle in international business is to understand the foreigner, the greater difficulty involves becoming aware of your own cultural conditioning. As anthropologist Edward Hall has explained, “What is known least well, and is therefore in the poorest position to be studied, is what is closest to oneself.” You are generally least aware of your own cultural characteristics and are quite surprised when you hear foreigners’ descriptions of you. For example, many Germans are surprised to discover that they are seen by foreigners as well-educated, punctual, disciplined… A Newsweek survey reported the characteristics most and least frequently associated with Americans:
Another very revealing way to understand the norms and values of a culture involves listening to common sayings and proverbs. They tell you what a society recommends and what it avoids. For example does the American proverb Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy and wise indicate the values of diligence and work ethic whereas the proverb There’s more than one way to skin a cat indicates originality and determination.
To the extent that you can begin to see yourself clearly through the eyes of foreigners, you can begin to modify your behavior, emphasizing your most appropriate and effective characteristics and minimizing those least helpful. To the extent that you are culturally self-aware, you can begin to predict the effect your behavior will have on others.
1.4.5 Projected similarity
Projected similarity refers to the assumption that people are more similar to you than they actually are, or that a situation is more similar to yours when in fact it is not. Projected similarity particularly handicaps people in cross-cultural situations. For example, you assume that people from the orient who drink Coca-Cola and wear Levi’s jeans are more similar to you, Western people, than they actually are. When you act based on this assumed similarity, you often find that you act inappropriately and thus ineffectively. At the base of projected similarity is a subconscious parochialism (narrow-minded behavior). You automatically assume that there is only one way to be – your way. Therefore people often fall into an illusion of understanding while being unaware of their misunderstandings. “I understand you perfectly but you don’t understand me” is an expression typical for such a situation. The other possibility is that all communicating parties may wonder later why other parties do not live up to the “agreement” they had reached.
One of the best exercises for developing empathy and reducing parochialism and projected similarity is role reversal. For example, when dealing with a foreign businessman try to imagine the type of family he comes from, the number of siblings he has, the social and economic conditions he grew up with, his goals in working for his organization, his life goals and so on. Asking these questions forces you to see the other person as he or she really is, and not as a mere reflection of yourself. It forces you to see both the similarities and the differences. Moreover it encourages highly task-oriented businesspeople such as Americans or Germans, to see the foreigner as a whole person rather than someone with a position and a set of skills needed to accomplish a particular task.
1.4.6 Cross-cultural misevaluation
Even more than perception and interpretation, cultural conditioning strongly affects evaluation. Evaluation involves judging whether someone or something is good or bad. Cross-culturally, you use your own culture as a standard of measurement, judging that which is like your own culture as normal and good and everything, which is different as abnormal and bad. Your own culture becomes a self-reference criterion: since no other culture is identical to your own, you tend to judge all other cultures as inferior. A common mistake made by Americans for example is that they affiliate with personnel or business contacts because they speak English. It is totally wrong to assume that speaking your language indicates intelligence, business know-how or local competence; it is only an indication of language skills. Evaluation rarely helps in trying to understand or communicate with people from another culture.
To sum it up, what you should consider to have an effective cross-cultural communication is to assume difference until similarity is proven rather
