For those in Asian countries, the exchanging of
business cards is symbolic; it symbolises the beginning of a relationship. In Japan, meishi koukan is so important they even have an etiquette for it. If travelling to that part of the world, ensure that you have a vast amount of cards with you (read below to understand why) as people formally present cards at the beginning of every first meeting. This is exceedingly important if you are on an extended business trip.

Read the tips below to understand what is involved with business card etiquette and then watch the selection of videos that I’ve come across online that teach the novice how to exchange a card. If the card exchange goes badly, well… not much hope for any successful business relationship in the future!

 Many people ask whether humour travels – sometimes it does, but more often than not it gets seasick on the way. Here are 10 things to consider on the topic of intercultural humour:

1. Humour gets rather seasick when it travels! Don’t be surprised if foreigners don’t laugh at your jokes
2. Each culture has its own sense of humour. Be aware of the types of humour appreciated by various cultures; irony, slapstick, linguistic, etc.
3. Some cultures have humour that seems infantile to others, or even grotesque!
4. Most cultures have a ‘type’ or a nation who are the butt of their jokes. Ask about that when you are on your travels.
5. Humour can be about nuances which are too subtle for other cultures
6. Humour often involves wordplay and colloquialisms
7. Different cultures have preferences for humorous topics; family, mother-in-law, politics, religion, sexist, blondes, etc. Be aware that what is acceptable in one culture is often very offensive in another. Listen and learn!
8. Some cultures use humour to diffuse tense situations
9. The ability to laugh at oneself is appreciated in some people, but astonishes others. How can you belittle yourself?
10. Don’t start your business presentation with a joke unless you are certain this is acceptable.  Many cultures believe it shows disrespect and demeans the event.

If you want to do international business on the web, consider the impact of culture on the understanding, interpretation, and use of your web-site. Things like colour, content, language, and even the tools we use are not accepted around the world in the same way – there are cross cultural differences. Here are just a few things to consider:

International Negotiations are a minefield. Often people believe that:

1. International deals will happen automatically if the correct government policies and structures are in place.
2. The successful strategies we use in meetings and negotiating on the domestic scene can apply to international settings.
3. Others’ perceptions and stereotyping of us won’t be allowed to affect the negotiations
4. Everyone likes to get down to business and focus on the end game: a legally binding contract.
5. The ‘rules of engagement’ are the same all over the world

 But it just ain’t so …

They don’t come funnier than this:

1. At a Budapest zoo: Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.
2. In a Belgrade hotel elevator: To move the cabin, push the button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.
3. In a Yugoslavian hotel: The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.
4. In an Austrian hotel catering to skiers: Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.
5. In an East African newspaper: A new swimming pool is rapidly taking shape since the contractors have thrown in the bulk of their workers.
6. In a Copenhagen airline ticket office: We take your bags and send them in all directions.
7. In a Bangkok dry cleaners: Drop your trousers here for best results.
8. French dress shop “We sell dresses for street walking.”
9. Tailor in Jordan  “Order your summer suit.  Because if big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.” 
10. Tokyo hotel posted this sign: “You are respectfully requested to take advantage of the chambermaids.”
11.  Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop: Ladies may have a fit upstairs
12. In a hotel in Athens: Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. daily.

The Finnish-British Chamber of Commerce organised a lecture together with the traditional Shrove Tuesday Lunch at Garbo’s Restaurant with over 30 participants.  Dr. Deborah Swallow, a cross culture specialist from 4C International Limited, gave us a presentation on how to present internationally.

According to Deborah Swallow presenting to international audiences has its own tricks. One should always keep in mind the expectations of the audience. Cultural differences in the audience affect greatly how people react to the presentation and whether or not the message of the presentation is received.

According to Dr. Swallow adapting your way of presenting according to the audience is the key in communicating the message properly. Understanding the differences is important because we need to meet the expectations of our listeners. Whether we want to sell a product or a service or introduce a change in working practices, we need to create rapport with our target audience.

The history of every culture shapes the way of communication for example; many of us can for example recognize the basic difference between the Finns and the Brits. Finns as Members of Nordic countries are concentrated on fact-based propositions while a British audience is instead eager to hear the benefits offered to them. In Nordic countries the communication is very informal when in the UK the titles are very important. A Finnish audience is also much quieter compared to a British one.

An audience is rarely an example of the two extremes, but rather somewhere between them. But one should be aware of whether your audience comes from an individualist or collectivist background, whether they think conceptually or associatively, and whether their language is expressed by doing, thinking or being.

According to Dr. Swallow Finnish people are seen to rely rather on logic with their attitudes and thinking than with emotional appeals. One should still keep in mind that emotions are an important part of communication in many cultures. For instance with Latinos you’ll have to win the hearts of the listeners instead appealing to their logic. Americans love giving powerful and emotional presentations. They aim to tell stories that appeal to the listener’s emotions. “Tell a story to your audience because it will last more than facts”- they believe.

Dr. Swallow also gave us few good tips of the usage of humour in international presentations. In the USA it is common to start a business presentation with a joke and it is a good way to break the ice. The French enjoy playing with language and admire those who can make linguistic jokes in French. In Britain humour is often used to connect with the listener and to create a rapport or to soften a conflict or a crisis. In contradiction, Germans dislike humour in serious business contexts and in Japan humour might be seen as a lack of respect for the situation.

However, Dr. Swallow advised us Finns to appeal to the minds and hearts of our international audiences and to keep in mind that being different does not mean being better or worse!

Finn-British Chamber of Commerce (published March 2009)

Most Westerners get confused about when a “Yes” means “Yes” when interacting with people from the East. Now, it seems there is more to get confused about, with a study revealing that even facial expressions can be a source of confusion too. This time it is the East Asians who have a tendency to misinterpret more than Westerners.

It would appear that people from different cultural groups observe different parts of the face when trying to interpret expressions and this leads to the misinterpretation. East Asians tend to focus on the eyes of the other person, while Western subjects take in the whole face, including the eyes and the mouth. Westerners tend to correctly identify the emotions in both white and Asian faces. East Asians are more likely than Westerners to read the expression for “fear” as “surprise”, and “disgust” as “anger”.

This is even reflected in the differing “emoticons” – typographical characters used to create rudimentary faces in emails or text messages – used by the two cultures. Eastern versions focus on the eyes, and western ones change the mouth to depict varying emotions.

The findings suggest that the communication of emotions is more complicated than had previously been believed. Rachael Jack, the psychologist who led the study, said: “Understanding facial expressions of emotion is an essential skill for effective human interaction and although many consider facial expressions to be the universal language of emotion, our research questions this and highlights the true complexities of cross-cultural communication.”

However, it is important to highlight here that in eastern cultures it is less socially acceptable to display negative emotions so they are not atuned to interpret negative facial expressions as they are rarely seen. Western societies are very individualistic, allowing us to express personal opinions explicitly – good or bad.  This is not acceptable in the East.

All in all, the study adds weight to what interculturalists have known for years: that what have always been considered to be “universal” expressions (by those in the West) do not take into account cultural differences.

The Study: Researchers at Glasgow University compared the way 13 Western Caucasians and 13 Korean, Japanese and Chinese participants interpreted the same set of facial expressions depicting seven main facial expressions: happy, sad, neutral, angry, disgusted, fearful and surprised. They used eye movement trackers to monitor where the participants were looking when interpreting the expressions. A computer programme given the same information from the eyes as the East Asian observers was similarly unable to distinguish between the emotions of disgust and anger, and fear and surprise.

The paper, entitled “Cultural Confusions Show that Facial Expressions are Not Universal,” is published today in the journal Current Biology. It states that the Eastern participants used a culturally specific decoding strategy that was inadequate to reliably distinguish the universal facial expressions of fear and disgust. It concluded that information from the eyes is often ambiguous and confusing in these expressions, with consequences for cross-cultural communication and globalisation.

For the first time in the whole history of the world we face the phenomenon of, not just globalisation, but CULTURAL GLOBALISATION. But does it really exist and, if so, so what?

Undoubtedly cultural values and identities are being shaped and reshaped with the media playing a significant role in our daily lives. Many of our ideas about the world, our understanding of what is happening everyday and, it can be argued, even our values come from beyond our personal experience – they are formed by what we see and hear via the media.

We receive ideas about the world as ‘packaged’ or ‘bite-sized’ versions of events and issues straight from the media and we just know this has a strong influence on individuals and ultimately society as a whole. With the spread of the media to even remote places on the planet, its influence brings out important issues concerning the affect on national or local cultures and their responses. Young people of the MTV generation around the world probably have more in common with each other than with their parents. But MTV reflects the attitudes and values of western countries, especially America, and is argued to be contributing to the homogenisation of global culture – which, according to research, is expanding rapidly.

Cultural globalisation is a result of the economic activites in developed countries of news and entertainment – the media that produce televison programmes, music and movies and distribute them across the world. This happens because THEY can, whilst other nations can’t. American dominance in this respect is uppermost because of a powerful economy and because of the English language. Even the statistics on book translations shows the number of American books translated from English far out weighs those being translated into English. However, this American dominance would not have come about without the economic power of the big corporations.

In some countries, American television constitues 50% of the programs as the host country does not have the resources to fund the cost of production and distribution of their own. Expensive, blockbuster American movies have been a dominant force but are seen to represent ‘a type of homogenous, uniform culture permeated by western capitalistic values… full of elaborate technical effects and focus on stunts, action, and violence instead of character and emotion’.  Undoubtedly, action movies are more easily understood in non-English speaking , diverse cultures  – in other words they can travel.

To a large extent CULTURAL GLOBALISATION is happening by default – because of econimc advantage. That of the US.  However, all is not lost. India has become the world’s leading producer of fiction films, with Bollywood circulating films to Indian Asia, Indian Africa and the UK. France, too, has retained a strong film industry which has received Government subsidies.

If Cultural Globalisation is an accident of econmic power then we can argue that as other countries rise in economic power Westernisation or Americanisation will lessen and the world will be treated to a greater variety of media input.

I recently suggested that Barack Obama could be seen as a role model for Cultural Intelligence, but it is not only the Leader of the U.S. that needs this but all of the Leaders of our culturally complex companies. Leaders will need to develop intercultural communication skills and a new skill set  for deep contextual understanding of what takes place when people interact across several kinds of cultural differences in a modern global company. They will need to develop a Cultural Intelligence based on a deep sensitivtiy that enables them to value, motivate and mobilise culturally distinctive workforces. They will also need the ability to be open to new ideas and practices, loosening boundaries and finding creative ways to integrate new ideas ‘back at base’. There are exciting challenges ahead for all those who manager culturally complex organisations. Remember though: good intercultural communication is not only for ‘over there,’ overseas or in foreign parts – it’s also for here on our doorstep – with our customers and staff from many diverse backgrounds. Cultural Diversity is everywhere.