Peel the onion

Today to her (wife’s) surprise, I volunteered to cook dinner. I am not that expert in cooking; however, the easy recipe is of course Khichdi, easy and fast to cook. You only need rice, dal, spices, tomato, chili powder, salt, onion etc. You can add ginger, curry leaves, coriander and garlic to make it tasty. Finally, I could cook the Khichdi. My wife and son enjoyed eating that. While preparing for the Khichdi, thought came to my mind, that isn’t in our life everything is like Khichdi and onion? The same taste as Khichdi and different layers like onion? When you peel one scale, you get another in onion and we have a lot of ingredients in life like Khichdi. Our life is full of emotions like different spices.   

When we go in deep, we have different meanings in life. Such layers are everywhere in life. While communicating and understanding human beings you can use the metaphor of onion. Outer layer sometimes is fragile, sometimes rigid, sometimes dirty, but as you peel the layer, you get different insights.

Human beings are made up of upbringings, culture, value systems etc. overall surrounding and society has an impact on our lives. In emotional intelligence, we always use the word, “empathy, understanding the perspective of another person”. However, it is interesting to understand how those perspectives are built over a period of times. Sometimes, it is necessary to build trust by tearing layers and self-disclosing and sometimes just being curious and making another person included to understand him/her.       

Different researchers and authors have come up with different theories around the onion and that is very cool to understand. Few are related to the culture; few are related to change management but underlined philosophy is the same.     

In case of organizations, organizations also have their own personalities, i.e. culture of the organizations. The outer layers are composed of the patterns of behaviour observed while interacting with employees and managers. The next layer encompasses the beliefs, norms and attitudes of that culture. The middle of the onion represents the underlying cultural assumptions and values. As the most hidden layer, these aspects of culture are much harder to recognise and understand, but all of the other layers are built upon the center of the culture onion. Therefore, careful analysis and a better understanding of the different layers as well as how they interact and influence each other is necessary.

You can very much analyse those behavioural patterns of human beings and also employees in the organization by applying this model. Sometimes the underlying reason of behaviour may be totally different than what we assume. Even though we say that values and upbringing decide the behaviour, it is also the experience a person has in the specific situation in past and recent. Responses are always interpreted and manipulated differently. The question is how we are accurate in understanding those. You can be closed to accurate by peeling the onion.  

Please read the print replica of my latest book written for leaders on amazon kindle, Vitality in Human Resource: Adding human dimensions in HR processes

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organization)    

Internet & internationalization: A Window to the World

In the era of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter we actually have become global citizen. The virtual travel is very much possible. Different people, nationalities must have in your friend list. Do you like to learn from them? How you do your research on Google about different countries and culture?   

Is it important to know the world in which we live and learn about far-away lands? What is the impact of acquiring knowledge about other countries and cultures and becoming a "window to the world"? If we develop an attitude of learning about others and an open mind in our interactions with other cultures, we are taking another key step towards success.  

All of us — whether we are able to travel because of our jobs or through our own finances or we are unable to leave our homes, cities or countries but travel through internet-cyberspace — can be "windows to the world." 

A Means of Communication 

A window not only allows air and light to enter a house; it may also reveal the wonders outside to those inside. A window is a means of communication and every human being should become a "window" within his or her family, people, and culture. 

From our homes, we can become virtual travellers, using the Internet to expand our cultural horizons. We can learn more about other countries perhaps by placing a world map on the wall in our room or office and focusing on a new country for a period of time. We can familiarize ourselves with each country's geographic shape, politics, culture, cuisine, religions, important places, economy and flag. We can mark the map to show each country to which we have “travelled." 

Prepare before you travel 

Those of us who travel physically can prepare before our travels by reading a good book about the place or places we plan to visit. We can also take along an album of good photos of our family, a good book with photos of our country, and some small but valuable gifts that communicate something about our country and ourselves to the people we plan to meet in our travels. 

The right attitude 

But the most important element to become a "window to the world" is our attitude, our way of thinking, feeling and acting when we interact with people from lands and cultures different from our own. 

Here's an acrostic for the word RESPECT, listing the seven key areas we need to master to become a "window to the world." We can develop these skills if we want to raise our poly-cultural quotients and become more effective in international relations. 

• Respect: Recognize the differences among countries and cultures, but avoid the tendency to criticize based on our own reality. Ask tactfully and politely about what looks different in order to learn. Never say something is “bad,” “wrong,” “dirty” or the like. 
• Elasticity: Develop the ability to open yourself to something new, to be flexible, to sample a new food or try a new dance, to sing a country song, to visit an open market, and to dare to try new things. 
• Synergy: Seek a flow in your relations with people from other cultures. Remember that when we unite our talents with those of others different from us, the result is greater than the sum of the parts. Synergy multiplies results and prevents unnecessary conflicts. 
• Purpose: Establish a clear purpose when you travel or interact with someone from another culture to ensure the relationship flows harmoniously and everyone benefits from the interaction. 
• Emotions: Foster nourishing emotions, such as serenity and joy, to ensure any trip or inter-cultural relationship is productive. 
• Care: Plan and organize your meetings with people from other nationalities or cultures with care to ensure the effectiveness of those encounters. Take time to show you care. 
• Time: Respect other people's time. In some cultures, time is considered an extremely valuable asset, and respecting other people's time shows respect for the people themselves. 

Being a "window to the world" helps us become better persons and better professionals, able to recognize diversity and to take advantage of it, not only for our own benefit, but for the collective benefit as well. Mastering the areas above will help us become more effective international visitors, guests, hosts, providers, partners or customers.  

He is like me syndrome ….Liking Bias….

Mirroring is the common behaviour during meetings, public

forums etc. In this pic, two leaders seating here are mirroring

Mr. Obama.     

Recently, I was just spending my time at Shopping Mall in Shanghai.  People have lot of spending power. There is a craze of all Apple products which are very costly even in China. However now a days it is a status symbol to have the i-phone and i-pad, whatsoever cost may be. I was just doing the window shopping and observing the people behaviour  including of salespeople.  What is the consumer behaviour?

One of the interesting behaviour , I observed, is “mirroring”. Salesperson was trying to copy the gestures, language, and facial expression of his client. If the buyer speaks very slow and quietly, scratching his head,  salesperson also copies the same behaviour of the buyer. This behaviour makes him likeable in the eyes of the buyer and the deal is more likely. What advertisements do? They project the same behaviour of consumer to attract them.  This is a “Liking Bias”.

Are you culturally intelligent?

You all are aware about IQ and EQ. Right? What’s about CQ? I am not sure, because we do not bother much about the CQ or cultural intelligence. Off course, companies use this term frequently and use as catchy phrase in trainings and development programmes. Not so much old, it is a new approach to work in globalised world. Cultural intelligence is defined as the capability of an individual to work effectively across different national, ethnic and organizational cultures.   

If you are working in multinational dynamic work culture, you need to develop the CQ. In past this factor was not much considered, perhaps due to the limited interactions with diverse people. However now a days organizations function in matrix environment and have multiple reporting structures. If you are in a leadership role, then you do not have the option without being culturally intelligent.   

And if you are culturally intelligent, you may not get the opportunity to get the leading roles in such companies and this is applicable in Indian MNCs also. You may have training programmes on this. You may read books or column in some theoretical magazine. These all may give you the perspective on customs like food, greetings, gifts and sometimes language and behaviour. The main question behind cultural intelligence is, why do some people easily and effectively adapt their views and behaviors cross-culturally and others don’t? Your honest engagement with that question can determine whether or not you work successfully in our rapidly globalizing world.

What is right in Indian context may not necessarily right in other cultures. As even, in India, we have different cultures at different states and we struggle to meet the expectations of these people due to their cultural differences. You can consider challenges to be culturally intelligence.    

To go ahead, you need to assess where you are right now. You can check your CQ level and decide the strategy to be culturally intelligent. Second question is how you are keen to understand the CQ perspective. Do you believe and acknowledge the different cultures and diversity? If you believe in so, you need to show the interest in different cultures. There are different issues involved in diversity. CQ knowledge is your knowledge about the culture and its role in doing the business, performing your role.

You have to find out your ways to understand the culture, your strategy to adapt and act on the diverse issues in culture.