People and Organisation

How to overcome cultural barriers at work?

22.07.2018 at 19:59 h / Edited 02.09.2018 at 09:06 h
Solved

Gyulyay QA Engineer at Confidential

3

Hi, all! Currently I'm working in a multicultural environment and the past few months I'm facing some cultural barriers which I don't know how to handle.

The working environment is far more disorganised and stressful what I used to.

People I work with are sometimes too straightforward, direct and assertive. A sense of urgency often is created. Mostly issues are discussed through direct communications instead of emails which leads to lack of transparency and enough information for resolving the specific issue. In addition since people have more flexible view of time, the use of time tables and agendas is decreased even when they are created somehow everyone expects things to be done a bit before the estimated time.

Good thing is that that environment is not too formal and can freely communicate with any rank of management.

I'm just wondering how can overcome the cultural differencies and to reduce the stress I have at work.

Thanks in advance for the ideas!

Gyulyay

Answers

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Solution

Paul Founder & Management Consultant

2

Visual Management 

The easier it is to see current activities and priorities, for example a post-it based grid with days across the top and lists of activities in order per day allows team members to see at a glance your workload. Especially if you can estimate / indicate the scale of each activity with time or complexity etc. 

 

Link to Principles

When working in in an informal but assertive environment, it can be empowering to frequently refer back to the principles of the company. If these are not explicit, you could write what you believe them to be. 

Urgent and important 

By showing what you’re doing (urgency) and why you’re doing it (importance) then the difficult conversation of saying no can be viewed as positive. 

 

E.g. I’d love to help get that decision confirmed today but that decision will need to be made next week. As you know it needs financial approval, you can see I’m  scheduled to present to the CFO next week so I’ll get the decision next week. We can’t start the programme until next month, so the timing of the decision is really ok.

Taking the decision is really important for the company as it is a large risk financially and as you see from the list of principles here, all financial decisions should be at the correct level. If the risk was smaller, we could just get on. 

Colin

2

Sound advice. Such environments are often characterised by frequent informal meetings with nothing being documented or recorded. For example, no agreed follow up actions. I would also make sure that my line manager was aware of my experiences and responses and asked to validate my approach. Try to document this, and any other responses from them. If you continue to find the environment stressfull then, while striving to suceed there, I would also be actively looking for other opportunities. It is not your job to single-handely fix a broken system of management.

Gyulyay

1

Thank you very much, Paul! Visual Management worked for me! At the end of each working day I was sending lists of 'Done' and 'Remaining' tasks as well as time estimation. Next day new tasks were comin and the backlog was constantly increasing and it was not hard for the management to see the workload. I suggested them to have only one contact person from the back office who will receive all site requests and send them to be ordered by priority in that case some tasks for dropped due to very low priority. At the end, a month later, I'm getting less tasks so I have achieved a little victory thanks to your advice but there are still a lot to be done. Thank you once again!

Chuck LEAN Business Consultant

0

Hi Gyulyay

5 Ways to Overcome Cultural Barriers at Work

  1. Learn a few key phrases. Because clear communication is essential for effective functioning, it is necessary that each of your employees understand what your clients and customers need. ...
  2. Learn your client's culture. ...
  3. Promote appreciation of cultural differences. ...
  4. Be open to trying new things. ...
  5. Be accommodating.

I hope this helps you.

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