or Working With Cultural Differences Takes Time

I’m currently in the Conscious Incompetence phase of my cultural awareness and how best to work in this new environment. It means I know I’m not doing a good job of it just yet and am aware that I need to change my approach due to the cultural differences. I’ve been through this before in moving to HK, however, Japan has taken it to another level for me.

I spend a large part of my day in meetings. This is partly cultural and possibly also my company here – I’m not sure how to weight each just yet. 

Meetings are mainly information sharing to gain support for an idea or to delegate. This is done one-on-one so people have the opportunity to individually raise concerns to save face of those involved. When all the one-on-one meetings have been completed, a team meeting can then be held to give a status update. Sometimes this can be done at the start to give an overview of the project – this seems to depend. On what it depends, I haven’t figured that out yet. It seems to be essential to continue with the one-on-one meetings throughout rather than just having a group update meeting. This again seems to be so people will share where they are up to and if there are any difficulties. This needs to be asked a variety of different ways to make sure that all the details are obtained. 

Language is part of this however, it is not the main part. 

A big difference between Australia and Japan is how much emphasis is placed on inference and understanding what hasn’t been said. I’m finding this difficult given I”m from a culture that would just come right out and say something and the non-verbal cues are different too. Silence in a Japanese context can range in meaning from “I agree” to “I disagree” and in between is “I’m thinking”, punctuated with a “I’m still translating what you have said into Japanese so I can then think about it in a language I’m more familiar with and will then let you know my thoughts, or not”. 

It’s quite fascinating. 

And time consuming.

My meetings tend to take longer than what I am use to as I need to make sure I’ve understood and that I have also been understood. I have now realised because it is a culture of inference, some people are also reading into what I am saying. The irony is, I’m not inferring anything, I’m being true to my Australian tendency to say it like it is! 

This means there is learning needed on both sides. 

The language part means some of the meetings I attend are with a translator. Something I would typically be able to work through in 30 minutes, would need at least one hour. Plus some additional time to check for understanding from a cultural perspective.

Where I can have a meeting all in English with my Japanese colleagues, these also take double time due to the tendency to infer things from what I have said where no inference was made. I find myself clarifying and checking understanding more frequently than I have had to previously. I also need to allow for thinking time in these meetings and where there is a group, side conversations in Japanese, as they discuss if they have understood me and come back with some questions either as a team or individually. 

I have noticed the way I talk has also changed. Early on, one of my team told me that I needed to make my sentences simple and not use extra words. I have to structure each sentence in the way they were taught at school as it makes it easier for them to understand me. It is interesting since from what I understand of Japanese sentence structure, it is only one way whereas English has multiple ways. This should make it easier for me to understand them when I know a few more Japanese words without them having to adapt.

Teleconferences are an additional challenge where I tend to act as a go-between to make sure that everyone is clear about what has happened. I only know if I have done it well after the meeting when my Japanese colleagues may discuss some issue or other that arose on the call that they may not have felt comfortable addressing then. This also happens for various reasons. It can be anything from not wanting to be the one to share bad news. not wanting someone else to look bad or them to look bad or the manager or leader of the project to look bad (when something isn’t on track, it could be a number of different reasons), they may not think it is their responsibility due to their own role relative to others on the call (this can result in no-one saying anything at times), they could be working on a way to resolve it so it isn’t an issue and they haven’t wasted anyone’s time in raising it. I’m sure there’s a few other reasons that I haven’t even considered.

Discussing an idea or a concept is interesting too as it seems in the Japanese context, the idea belongs to the person so any criticism of the idea, can also be seen as criticising the person. Not every Japanese person thinks like this, it’s a broad cultural generalisation. In the Australian context, once an idea is on the table, it is not seen as attached to the person and can be discussed freely. This difference adds another dynamic in how to evaluate an idea or concept to then implement.

This will get easier over time as I move into being Unconsciously Competent. It’s just taking a lot longer than what I would like. I continue to read, attend seminars and chat with others to improve my understanding and then practice and test out what I have learned. This was going to be my year of learning the piano and instead, I am learning how to work in a totally different environment.

One of the things both cultures have in common is after work beverages. 

In Japan, this has been nicknamed “nomunication”. “Nomu” means “to drink”. The rest comes from “communication”. Nomunication is where people relax after work and actually say what they are thinking, there is a lot less focus on inference so if I pay attention, I can understand a bit more about what is really happening both on a work front as well as from a cultural perspective. 

It is a time where the hierarchy disappears in terms of what is being said (the manager is always still talked to slightly differently than the rest of the team and will have drinks and food served first without the expectation of serving others) and it’s more relaxed and less formal. It’s very important for work relationships – clients and colleagues. There is the rule though of what happens after work, stays out of the work environment itself. This is a little different to the Australian approach where if someone does something a little silly while at after work drinks, they will be teased about this for years. Give or take a couple of days.

By the end of a work day, I’m exhausted yet I have always learned something!

* Thanks to INXS for the title to this post.