Business Etiquette Training...

I attended a business etiquette training program, which was organized by 'Global Adjustments'. The first thing that struck me was the business this company was catering to! Do you know that all this explosive growth has resulted in a lot of 'flux'. MNCs are setting up shops (IT, manufacturing, pharma etc.) in the country and a lot of expats are coming into the country and on the other side there is a huge 'onsite' outflow from India (typical of an IT company!)

One thing that is common in both the cases is that the 'individual' is getting exposed to a completely diferent 'CULTURE' and there is some level of adapting and adjustment that is required. Global Adjustments, based out of Chennai, are addressing this specific need in the market. They teach expats Indian culture and we are taught western culture.

It was a great experience listening to the instructors Shanti (had lived in the US for 20 years), who focussed more on the communications part and Ashok (with his experiences from US, France and Japan), who focussed on the cross cultural differences.

A large point of our time was spent on actually 'defining' culture. When Ashok asked us to define culture, we found it really hard to come up with an answer (Can you define culture??). But at the end of the session i believe there were 2 key terms which can be associated with culture- 'accepted by the community' and 'in transition always'. The transition aspect is really critical for India,since we are getting exposed to the western culture and we are trying to adapt to their style in order to succeed in business.

Some of the key examples which were given to highlight the cultural differnces:

- French people are totally shocked to see Indian men holding hands and walking on the streets.(They feel how can India have so many Homos?? :D)
LOgic: Holding hands is considered to be symbol of friendship and warmth and not Love! i.e why in the western world we find lovers holding hands and that is not the case in India (though we are changing).

- Expats find it difficult to digest the fact that we use hands for eating.
Logic: We belive food is God and we also believe that hands are our own responsibility and we need to keep them clean. Whereas expats depend on knives/forks which are cleaned by someone else (not under your control!).

- French people are low on masculinity and Americans are 'high on masculinity'. This implies that french people 'Work to live' and hence you will find them taking long lunch breaks (sometimes 2-3 hrs) and taking a month off from work to enjoy life. Americans on the other hand 'Live to work' and their lunches are '15 minutes' break (they were the ones to introduce the concept of 'fast food'). If you ever get to handle a french client, do make sure that you never try to schedule a weekned meeting (that is just out of question!!) and the meets will also have a lot of non-official discussions.

- Americans/Brits are low on 'uncertaininty avoidance' which means they are ready to take risks and the French are the comlete opposites. It is evident from the fact that US/UK have already accepted outsourcing and they are moving ahead whereas French opposed the 'Mittal Arcelor' acquisition.

-Japanese never mix Rice and curry. They feel if you mix it you are making it dirty!!

I will keep adding other examples as and when i remember them.. :)

Other take aways from the course: 4 course continental lunch :D

BottomLine: You can take an Indian out of India but not India out of an Indian!