Cultural Differences & Cultural Diversity in International Business

Stephen Frost is Head of Diversity and Inclusion for KPMG UK. He served as Head of Diversity and Inclusion for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games from 2007-2012. He was educated as a Hertford College Scholar at Oxford University and a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University. He also teaches inclusive leadership at Harvard Business School and an extended class at Sciences Po in Paris. He advises several organizations and governments worldwide and is the author of the book The Inclusion Imperative.

Audrey Mezas is the Dutch owner of Expat in Amsterdam. She is an Expat/Executive Personal Assistant to athletes, professors, families, international entrepreneurs and business executives. The difference between Audrey and say a relocation company is that she delivers "tailor-made personal" service for each of her clients and accompanying them almost everywhere they need to be. Audrey also trains teams in Executive Excellence and has moved 17 times and lived on four continents. Audrey is the "Expat in Amsterdam."

Jeri Weber, a US American lawyer knows about the demands of the legal profession and working with other cultures. She spent the first 18
 years of life viewing the world through her US perspective.

About This Week's Guest Insourcing and cultural differences with Bart van Loon After volunteering for the United Nations in the aftermath of the Kashmir Earthquake in 2005, Bart realized the potential of the South Asian labor market in Europe. Ever since he is building long-lasting professional relationships between companies and employees spanning the globe. His tips to become more culturally competent are: Always realize that when it comes to communication this is a shared responsibility. It is a 50% sender and a 50% receiver thing. Don't stereotype when you're dealing with individuals. When you're dealing with one person, you're not dealing with the "average" person from that culture. So be careful with this. Have patience when you're dealing with someone from another culture. Take for instance the English language (or for that matter any language that two people share to communicate): The first time a Brit speaks to someone from Pakistan, (s)he might face some difficulty in understanding. But give it some time and before you know it you won't even hear the differences in accents. Interview Links Links that are mentioned in this episode: Bart's personal website: http://bbbart.be Email: bart@zeropoint.hr Build Your Cultural Competence In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories. Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories. To subscribe directly using iTunes or Stitcher, Click here, or here (or click any of the images below). How To Get In Touch With Culture Matters I'd love for you to get in touch. There are a couple of ways you can do this: Email me at chris.smit@culturematters.com Send me a Tweet: @chrissmit Finally Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast. I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast! Insourcing and cultural differences on Culture Matters

Effectively working with Remote Teams About This Week's Guest Hugo Messer talks about effectively working with remote teams Hugo Messer has been building and managing teams around the world for over 10 years. His passion is to enable people who are spread across cultures, geography, and time zones to cooperate. Whether it’s offshoring or nearshoring, he knows what it takes to make a global collaboration work. His 6 tips to become more culturally competent are: Focus on creating one team or one partnership. Invest time in this and try to get away from an "us versus them feeling". Take time to think about how you will work remotely. Do this before you actually start executing and working. When you're developing software, use an iterative framework like Scrum. Make the process incremental. You need people with empathy on location to find ways to get across the cultural hurdles. Use daily "standup" meetings. Get together (virtually) every day for 5 to 10 minutes to re-align where everyone is. This way you can truly build a remote virtual team. Everyone in the team must be on the same page. They should all be aligned with each other. Interview Links Links that are mentioned in this episode: To get all the ebooks that Hugo wrote: http://ekipa.co/ebooks Email: hugo@ekipa.com An earlier podcast with Lisette Sutherland on how to work with virtual teams Build Your Cultural Competence In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories. Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories. To subscribe directly using iTunes or Stitcher, Click here, or here (or click any of the images below). How To Get In Touch With Culture Matters I'd love for you to get in touch. There are a couple of ways you can do this: Via this website: Just use the “Ask Your Question” tab on the right of the screen and leave a voicemail Email me at chris.smit@culturematters.com Send me a Tweet: @chrissmit Finally Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast. I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast! Effectively working with Remote Teams on Culture Matters For more on this, click here.

About This Week's Guest Jeroen Ketting Jeroen Ketting is a Dutch business advisor, author, and speaker who has helped hundreds of companies succeed in the challenging Russian market. His thought leadership and contributions to the public debate have made him a sought-after expert on Russia for both governments and the media. His thought leadership and contributions to the public debate have made him a sought-after expert on Russia for both governments and the media. Ketting's extensive Russian network, experience, and practical advice are invaluable for companies looking to do business in Russia Ketting's extensive Russian network, experience, and practical advice are invaluable for companies looking to do business in Russia. His 3 (plus a bonus) tips to become more culturally competent are: Only deal with Russia if you enjoy dealing with Russians in Russia. Look at the country and its people as a glass being half full, rather than half empty. You'll be more effective and efficient if you leave your own viewpoints behind, but with that, you don't have to become Russian (you can't and you won't). You play soccer/football with soccer/football rules. You don't play soccer/football with rugby rules. Play "the game" like the game should be played in the country that you're playing it. Make sure you get introduced to Russia. Business cards alone won't do it. Understand what you're getting yourself into. Follow a course, get a workshop, get some coaching, and read a book. Start before you're even in Russia with this. (Bonus) Try to understand and accept (the Russians); don't be judgemental. Interview Links Links that are mentioned in this episode: Simply Google "Ketting Russia" This will bring you the website: http://www.thelighthousegroup.ru/gb/ Otherwise, get in touch with me and I will give you the details of Jeroen. Build Your Cultural Competence In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories. Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories. To subscribe directly using iTunes or Stitcher, Click here, or here (or click any of the images below). How To Get In Touch With Culture Matters I'd love for you to get in touch. There are a couple of ways you can do this: Email me at chris.smit@culturematters.com Send me a Tweet: @chrissmit Finally Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast. I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast! Culture Matters

About This Week's Guest Bjoern Lasse Herrmann Bjoern was born in Germany, and has become a recognized entrepreneur and expert on data products for businesses, performance benchmarking and business ecosystems.Most recently his team & Most recently his team & he set out to decrease the massive failure rate of businesses by transforming the business world from instinct driven to data driven. The first product Compass.co (no M!) now serves thousands of E-Commerce businesses around the world. His tip to become more culturally competent (there's only one) is: Be really interested in the other culture. In other words, don't be interesting, but be interested. Open up and engage with the other culture(s) you're working with. Interview Links Links that are mentioned in this episode: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjoernlasse Twitter: https://twitter.com/bjoernlasse Build Your Cultural Competence In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories. Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories. To subscribe directly using iTunes or Stitcher, Click here, or here (or click any of the images below). How To Get In Touch With Culture Matters I'd love for you to get in touch. There are a couple of ways you can do this: Via this website: Just use the “Ask Your Question” tab on the right of the screen and leave a voicemail Email me at chris.smit@culturematters.com Send me a Tweet: @chrissmit Finally Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast. I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast!

About This Week's Guest Paul MacAlindin Paul MacAlindin is an internationally renowned conductor and author of "UPBEAT: The Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq". He led the orchestra from 2008- 2014 in Iraq, France, Germany, and Britain, solving enormous hurdles of culture, language, and education along the way. The National Youth Orchestra of Iraq is by far the most challenging and rich intercultural experience of his career. UPBEAT is out on August the 18th 2016. His three tips to become more culturally competent are: Know yourself culturally. Realize that you're the fish in your own bowl and that you might not know enough about your own culture. If you do this, you can realize that you're different than the other person but you can still work together. If you can, learn another one or two languages. Although not easy, it helps tremendously in overcoming cultural differences. Learn to laugh at yourself. Remember, when it's about culture, it's not about them. It is about you! Interview Links Links that are mentioned in this episode: LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/conductor Twitter: @paulmacalindin Email: macalindin@hotmail.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/macalindin/ Build Your Cultural Competence In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories. Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories. To subscribe directly using iTunes or Stitcher, Click here, or here (or click any of the images below). How To Get In Touch With Culture Matters I'd love for you to get in touch. There are a couple of ways you can do this: Via this website: Just use the “Ask Your Question” tab on the right of the screen and leave a voicemail Email me at chris.smit@culturematters.com Send me a Tweet: @chrissmit Finally Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast. I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast!

About This Week's Guest Global Business with Professor Erin Meyer Erin Meyer is a professor and INSEAD, one of the top international business schools, and the author of the best-selling book “The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business”. She is here to speak with us today about how national cultural differences impact day-to-day interaction. Her three tips to become more culturally competent are: Learn as much as you can about the culture(s) you work with. When you work with more than one culture also make sure that you understand the relative differences. In other words, how does one culture perceive the others and vice versa? Be humble; Humility is everything. Make no mistake, every culture has one or more benefits. By being humble, you might discover just what it is. Be curious. Even if you have lots and lots of experience and if you think "You Get It". You can always learn more. ABC=Always Be Curious. Interview Links Links that are mentioned in this episode: Website: http://erinmeyer.com Build Your Cultural Competence In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories. Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories. To subscribe directly using iTunes or Stitcher, Click here, or here (or click any of the images below). How To Get In Touch With Culture Matters I'd love for you to get in touch. There are a couple of ways you can do this: Via this website: Just use the “Ask Your Question” tab on the right of the screen and leave a voicemail Email me at chris.smit@culturematters.com Send me a Tweet: @chrissmit Finally Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast. I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast!

About This Week's Guest Alfredo Behrens Alfredo strongly believes in drawing management lessons from indigenous organizations to increase the efficacy of teamwork. He offers a Brazilian Carnival Parade training module to this effect. Alfredo holds a Ph.D. degree awarded by the University of Cambridge, he already lectured at Princeton University and London Business School. He currently lectures with Harvard Business School Publishing and FIA Business School in São Paulo. Alfredo collaborates with environments such as the Harvard Business Review and the Financial Times. He authored over 30 articles besides several books, like "Culture and Management in the America"s, published by Stanford University Press, 2009. His three tips to become more culturally competent are: Self-awareness. How well do you know yourself in relationship to the other(s)? See foreign films. It will give you an overview of life in a different culture. And it's cost effective as well! If you can, travel. But don't go for the all inclusive package deals. Instead, make sure you go out and speak to the local people. Interview Links Links that are mentioned in this episode: Email: 0800Alfredo@gmail.com Website: http://alfredobehrens.com Build Your Cultural Competence In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories. Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories. To subscribe directly using iTunes or Stitcher, Click here, or here (or click any of the images below). How To Get In Touch With Culture Matters I'd love for you to get in touch. There are a couple of ways you can do this: Via this website: Just use the “Ask Your Question” tab on the right of the screen and leave a voicemail Email me at chris.smit@culturematters.com Send me a Tweet: @chrissmit Finally Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast. I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast!