When working internationally, there are certain principles that are good to remember when things just don’t seem to be going right. The principle one is:

Don’t take things personally! This comes from personal experience…

Those of us who work in the field of cross-cultural relations and intercultural communication have witnessed too often the negative impact of an overseas assignment on family life. Now, a recent international survey provides evidence that a lack of spouse or partner employment opportunities adversely affects global mobility of highly skilled international employees, adding weight to the argument that more consideration should be given to these employees’ family concerns.

Undoubetedly, the spouses and partners of internationally assigned staff tend to be highly educated, with diverse professional backgrounds and nationalities. However, as part of a foreign assignment, they soon become a much under-utilised talent pool.

One employer cautions: “In my experience most employers prefer to ignore spousal employment issues. However, from my personal observation how well a spouse settles is key in determining how an employee will perform. If spousal employment is important to that couple, then companies ignore it at their peril.”

The study suggests that there appears to be a clear link between working and positive feelings about a foreign assignment:

• Spouses who are working are more likely to report a positive impact on adjustment to the location than spouses who not working.
• Spouses who are working are more likely to report a positive impact on family relationships than spouses who not working
• Spouses who are working are more likely to report a positive impact on their willingness to complete the current assignment than spouses who are not working.
• Spouses who are working are more likely to report a positive impact on their willingness to go on a new assignment than those who are not working.

Importantly, spouses who are working are more likely to report a positive impact on their health or well-being than spouses who are not working. One unfortunate respondent explained:

“The implications of not working on my health (especially mental health) are so vast that I will never consider relocating to such a country. I was unemployed for 1 year when I came here… and that was the most miserable year in my entire life. I will not repeat that, and my husband stands by my decision.”

The report concludes that a few focused and simple improvements on the part of employers and governments can make a triple win for families, employers and the countries in which they work. It seems, therefore, that supporting partner employment is part of supporting your own staff.

Footnote: The survey examined the views of 3300 expatriate spouses and partners of 122 nationalities, currently accompanying international employees working in 117 host countries for over 200 employers in both the private and public sector. It was undertaken by the Permits Foundation, based in The Hague and was sponsored by the Industrial Relations Counselors (IRC). Conducted during late 2008, it was published early 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.

The economic climate and globalisation has made industries more competitive so it is vital for organisations to have the right international skill set.  With the challenges of new markets, globally distributed remote teams,  the enormous changes happening in the workplace where people of all different nationalities are thrown together and different communication styles across the globe, it’s a sure bet that CULTURAL DIVERSITY is today’s business reality.  Our future clients and colleagues will be more likely to want to do business with us if we can demonstrate an authentic understanding for their culture, business needs and communications styles. You cannot afford to get things wrong!  International managers armed only with easy-to-learn, fast-to-recall cultural dimensions and differences will find themselves stereotype rich and operationally poor in today’s business reality of complex cultural organisations and culturally diverse customers. Ensure a positive difference for your business performance ,as well as for the people within it, by learning how to embrace cultural diversity profitably!

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.

In working with an international firm in Madrid recently, I was reminded of
the complexities of intercultural collaboration in global teams when working with virtual working arrangements.  Although we can understand certain cultural differences in working patterns and cross-cultural communication styles, it is inevitably the little things that trip us up unexpectedly…