The initial expectations
Two years in IIT have given me
the opportunity to interact with people from different cultures across the
country as well as borders. I like interacting with people from various
backgrounds. I like knowing about them, their lifestyle, their habits, their
way of thinking, etc. When I enrolled for this course, my aim was to better my
understanding of different cultures and build upon the exposure that I had
earlier. I wanted to know about the dos and donts which one should take into
account while interacting with people from various cultures. Also, we do have
some stereotypes about a certain community even before we interact with them.
So, one more objective was to know more about these communities to avoid stereotypes.
To become successful global managers, one needs to be aware of and sensitive to
different cultures, so I expected the course to be more aligned towards cross-cultural
management in organizations.
One thing I knew before the start
of the course was that it won’t be similar to other courses. So, I came across
the first aberration when we were asked to address our Prof. by her first name.
I liked the idea and the openness it brought with itself. We became comfortable
right from the beginning. Second aberration was the concept of sitting in a
circle. Must say, we were not used to it, but eventually it turned out that it
was a must for the course as we were learning from each other from discussions
and it was easier to discuss with a circular seating arrangement.
CPQ
I came across an unheard term
called ‘CPQ profile’ during the first few classes. I must say that I was not
expecting any survey or questionnaire mechanism to create my cultural profile
at such a detailed and deep-rooted level. I agreed with most of the things that
were mentioned about me in the cultural profile analysis. The main learning
from the questionnaire was the way the parallels were drawn between various cultures
considering various orientations and dimensions. After knowing these scores one
can make references as to why people in some cultures are the way they are!
Movie Review
This was the assignment which I
liked the most. I love watching movies and it was something that I really
enjoyed. We took a movie “Lost in translation” which mainly represented
American and Japanese culture. In the movie, one could actually draw parallels
from what we had learnt about these cultures in the class. I had never watched
a movie so critically. It was interesting to notice the minutest of details to
develop an understanding about the culture. One thing which I found very
peculiar about Japanese was the information density of their speech which is
the lowest in the world. Japanese have to speak a lot of words to communicate a
lot less information as compared to other cultures; something which I clearly
saw in the movie.
Dakshin Chitra
After interacting with so many
exchange students, it was time for us to know a little more about our own
culture and surprisingly there was a lot which I didn’t know and was happy to
know after the visit. Although, the visit was mainly focused on knowing about
cultures in South India, but in our presentations we covered cultures across
the country. After seeing the presentations, one can easily notice how diverse
we are in terms of culture in our country.
Stereotypes
I think it’s very important for
any manager or leader to avoid stereotypes to become successful in any industry
or country. One of the best learnings of this course was the exposure we got to
various stereotypes people have about different cultures or communities. Sometimes,
it was noticed that people of the culture towards which we hold a particular stereotype
might not accept it and even take offence. For eg: The look on one of the Chinese
professor’s face when someone said “I have heard in a guest lecture about China
that Chinese are money-minded” and our (Indians in the class) reactions when
other cultures perceive us to be non-punctual. I think it’s crucial to
understand that every individual is different, what may hold true for someone
may not hold the same for the other, irrespective of the culture. At the same
time, one should always be prepared with some dos and don’ts for any culture.
Guest Lectures
It is always good to know about
one’s particular culture from a person who belongs to the same culture. We got
to interact with so many people from different cultures who shared their
valuable experiences with us. Good thing about those lectures was that the
guest speakers had exposure to different cultures, so they could understand what
we needed to know and how are we or people from any other culture are different
from them.
Other Learnings
Case Studies
I think the case studies were
very relevant and business oriented. They were as per my expectations as I had
mentioned earlier that I wanted to see how cross-cultural interactions fare in
an organizational setting.
Exchange students
I never had this opportunity of
interacting with so many students from across the world under one roof. The
discussions had so many angles brought in by different sets of people. This
made the discussions very rich in content.
Feedback for the course
I think the course was conducted
in the best possible manner it could have been conducted. If I have to suggest
anything, I would say that more industry professionals can be brought in for
lectures to talk about their organizations and how they handle culture issues (For
Eg: Nicolai Opolzer from COWI). More lectures from experienced professionals
will be very relevant for the students.
Final feeling
First thing that comes to my mind
is that I took a good decision to take this course. I feel very rich in terms
of my knowledge and exposure about various cultures. I now know the dos and don’ts,
the sensitivities, the minutest details, the food habits, the lifestyles and what
not of various cultures. I feel like a much more learned man in terms of
cross-cultural interactions and management after doing this course.
I thank Prof Viji and all the
students for these wonderful two months of ‘learning with fun’.
