CAREER ADVICE

By Ronna Archbold and Mary Harmon (Company: The Five O'clock Club). Internet Career Connection. Category: Success.

International success - acceptance!

The Ford Motor Company launched a marketing campaign for the Ford Pinto in Brazil with hopes that sales would take off at a gallop. But enthusiasm turned to embarrassment when Ford executives discovered that "pinto" is a Portuguese slang term meaning "small penis." Ford quickly changed the name to Corcel, the Portuguese word for "horse." Ford found out the hard way that learning customers languages, including colloquialisms, is vital to international business success. But, just enrolling in a crash course in another language won't do the trick. As more and more companies go global, astute businesspeople are finding that knowledge about other countries' cultures and customs can enhance their working relationships--and thereby affect their businesses' bottom line.

AN OPEN MIND AND A WILLINGNESS TO LEARN

Historically, Americans have been notorious for their ethnocentric approach to other cultures. Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "Foreign Children" from A Child's Garden of Verses, illustrates the point:

Little Indian, Sioux, or Crows,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanese,
Oh! Don't you wish that you were me?

While we have come a long way since the days when history books referred to "white man's burden" and "our little brown brothers," xenophobic concepts and language have been ingrained over the years, and often persist despite our best intentions. How many Americans, when learning of the Japanese custom of laying a beverage and sweet snack on loved ones' graves, can't help but think the practice senseless, silly, or just illogical? "Who is going to drink the beverage and eat the food?" they wonder. It might never occur to some Americans that our custom of placing flowers on graves may cause Japanese people to question how we suppose the deceased could smell them. In business, American corporations risk the same "Your way is inferior because it doesn't make sense to us," attitude. It is these underlying, often unconscious and unintentional beliefs that can undermine otherwise well-planned business efforts.

A SPIRIT OF ACCEPTANCE Americans have a disposition to arrogance

The key to insuring smooth international relationships, lies in cultivating an open-minded spirit of acceptance towards other people and cultures. This is in direct contrast to the missionary spirit, which carries overtones of preaching, converting and mastering, often with an arrogant and condescending attitude. While few people consciously approach international dealings with such a patronizing outlook, cultural mindsets can be firmly rooted. Since childhood, they've been ingrained through television, movies, jokes, textbooks, fairy tales, schools and religions. Attitudes communicated early in life can influence our beliefs in subtle ways. Take, for example, the children's stories and fairy tales which, in recent decades, portrayed heroes and heroines as blond-haired and blue-eyed and the "evil" characters as dark-complexioned. Acceptance and appreciation for other cultures requires willingness to explore and cooperate. However, Americans' "can-do" tradition of independence can equate exploring and cooperating with merging and compromising, and thus weakening. In reality, exploration and cooperation can lead to strengthening, appreciation and acceptance. There need not be loss of identity or compromised values.

Americans have a disposition to arrogance. Author M. Scott Peck, M.D.

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