Collaborating Across Cultures
Executive
Summary:
Learning to collaborate creatively
with people from other cultures is a vital skill in today's business
environment, says professor Roy Y.J. Chua, whose research focuses on a
key measure psychologists have dubbed "cultural metacognition."
Working on a $30 million historical epic about the Tang Dynasty to
be set in China, Hollywood screenwriter David Franzoni struggled to make the
story appeal to Western audiences. Then Franzoni hit upon an idea: tell the
tale through the eyes of a foreign-born general who served as the right-hand
man to emperor Xuanzong and his consort.
"To the extent that creativity is about the
recombination of existing ideas, then combining ideas that haven't been
connected before creates the potential to produce something new and
useful"
The plan didn't make it past Chinese
government censors. According to a recent article in
the Wall Street Journal, the idea was nixed on grounds that the
treatment was too sympathetic toward the general, An Lushan, portrayed in
Chinese history as a villain who ultimately betrayed the emperor. The script
was accepted after Franzoni rewrote it to portray the general as a
"snake."
The story illustrates a common
challenge to Hollywood filmmakers as they attempt to break into China's more
than $2 billion-a-year film market—and to businesspeople in all industries as
foreign markets become increasingly important to their business strategies.
Cultural misunderstandings and different ways of operating (government control
over filmmaking, for instance) can lead to unforeseen setbacks and delays,
threatening the success of creative business ventures.
Vital
skill
Learning to work with people from
other cultures in order to collaborate creatively is a vital skill in today's business
environment, says Roy Y.J. Chua, an assistant professor in the Organizational
Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School.
"I've always been fascinated by
how culture changes the way people interact and innovate, and how collaboration
is affected by intercultural relationships and intercultural trust," he
says.
There's no doubt that the confluence
of diverse cultures can create opportunities for innovation—think of the
Crusades and the Renaissance, or of Japan revolutionizing the auto industry.
"To the extent that creativity is about the recombination of existing
ideas," Chua says, "then combining ideas that haven't been connected
before creates the potential to produce something new and useful."
The question is how to reap the
benefits of that while minimizing the inevitable misunderstandings.
Chua uses a combination of survey
and experimental research to focus on a key measure psychologists have dubbed
"cultural metacognition." The term refers to a person's reflective
thinking about his or her cultural assumptions. It seems to have a strong
effect on how effectively people collaborate across cultures, Chua says.
"I often compare it to the
heightened awareness you have when driving in a foreign city, where you will
pay more attention to the road signs and traffic signs. It's this kind of heightened awareness and reflection about
what I think about other cultures and how other cultures think about me that
helps cross-cultural creative collaboration."
Testing
cultural metacognition
How does cultural awareness lead to
more effective innovation? Based on previous studies, the researchers focused
on the role of trust in that equation, distinguishing between two kinds:
"cognitive trust," an intellectual appreciation of another person's
skills, abilities, and reliability; and "affective trust," an
emotional belief that another person has one's best interests at heart.
"Affective trust is especially
critical in creative collaboration because unlike collaboration that merely
involves the sharing of labor, creative collaboration requires sharing of new
ideas," Chua says.
"Given that new ideas are often
undeveloped, they are risky to share," he continues. "Sharing a bad
idea might cause one to be ridiculed. Conversely, a good idea might be stolen.
Only when there is high affective trust would two partners be willing to freely
exchange new ideas."
When dealing with someone from their
own culture, the managers' cultural metacognition had no effect on either types
of trust. For contacts from another culture, however, those with higher
cultural metacognition developed higher affective trust in their partners and
were more willing to share new ideas with them; cognitive trust, meanwhile, had
no correlation with cultural metacognition.
"When working with a stranger
from a different culture on a task that rewards creative collaboration, high
cultural metacognition in one of the two individuals gives the pair the
potential for affective trust and creativity," Chua says. "This
potential, however, is only realized if the partners have a personal
conversation to build affective trust. Pairs that didn't have the chance to
build trust did not become more creative as a result of their cultural
metacognition."
"As long as one person is able
to connect and adjust to the other party, then that is sufficient for them to
collaborate," Chua says. In other words, if one person is able to grapple
with his or her cultural assumptions, then that person can spur a fruitful
collaboration without the other person necessarily even realizing it.
A
learnable habit
The good news is that cultural
metacognition is not fixed, but rather it is a mental habit that can be learned
over time and through different circumstances. "People who have a
culturally diverse social network tend to have higher cultural metacognition,"
Chua says. "The fact they have to deal with people from different cultures
more causes them to question their own assumptions more."
For those who don't have a
culturally diverse network already, he recommends consciously seeking out new
cultural experiences. However, such activities need to be genuine to work.
"You want to deeply involve yourself in cross-cultural
interactions"
"It's not just going to a
foreign movie or eating culturally different food," he says. "You
want to deeply involve yourself in cross-cultural interactions."
Chua stresses that it is important
to always engage in active inquiry and observations, and be mindful that your
assumptions or interpretation of a given culture might not be accurate or
applicable in a given context.
One way to do this is by keeping a
journal and writing down thoughts after each interaction with someone from
another culture. This can help people see patterns in their interactions with
culturally dissimilar colleagues, eventually leading to more mindful
interactions. That, in turn, can lead to enhanced affective trust that makes
cross-cultural creative collaboration more effective, whether the goal is to
sell a product overseas or launch the next Chinese-American blockbuster.
Michael Blanding
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