Cindy King's International Business Blog » perception

Cultural Perceptions Of Women Online

Cindy King — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:00:57 +0000

Women have to pay close attention to cultural differences in perceptions. Many times when you make a cultural blunder you don’t realize you’ve made one until much later after the damage is done. Sometimes you never learn of your mistake. And often you’ll realize your mistake when you see the damage it’s done. This is particularly true of non-verbal cross-cultural communication challenges.

I’ve had a couple of reasons recently to think about the cultural differences in how women are perceived and I’d like to share one of these stories with you. I’m fairly sure the woman in this example did not realize the different perceptions people had of her photo.

First Impressions Online Go Farther Abroad

We all know the importance of the first impression we make. And when you have a successful online presence it’s natural to want to reach international audiences too.

But what happens when you’ve jeopardized your international success just because you did something too close to the line of what is socially acceptable in your own country. And it turns out to have a different impact in other cultures.

Wrong Assumptions

First here’s a little background information to keep in mind. As you can see, I’m a woman and I grew up with American television.

You might think that I react to American women the same as other Americans. Well the trouble is that I’ve worked with many different nationalities and I’ve learned to understand how others perceive things differently.

At the time I started blogging I noticed another woman who also started at about the same time. She was in the same networking sphere as I was. So naturally I stumbled across her blog a few times and clicked on her about page.

Too Much Skin Sends Clear Signals

There was a rather seductive photo of a woman… it was a head shot taken from an angle above. You could see lots of bare skin. She was obviously wearing a strapless dress, except you just couldn’t tell there was a dress in the way the photo was taken.

The photo clearly stated that this blogger wanted to appeal to men. And the men in my social networking group liked her. But I was not who she wanted to connect with.

Sorry guys. I don’t have a link for you. The photo is no longer there. Besides I just don’t like giving press to people unless I really like them. This is yet another way where my culture differs from others.

When Different Cultures Pick Up Different Signals

This presentation of herself would have impacted both men and women from other cultures in different ways. Of course in many cultures she would have had a certain popularity with the male readers. But popularity based on what?

Some cultures may simply consider it an artistic photo that did not match the content of the blog.

In Muslim countries this particular photo would probably have been considered pornographic.

The rules of seduction vary in different cultures and these rules of seduction can impact all of our communication. I personally do not take offense with a photo of a woman in a sleeveless dress. But a woman in a sleeveless dress in a very suggestive pose does tell me that she is after someone else to read her blog and I lose interest.

Success And A Change In Direction

Almost 2 years later, this blogger is still there and her blog is growing very nicely.

I revisted her blog recently and noticed the bare skin photo was gone. There was extra text: text describing an “all American girl” type lifestyle.

She’s obviously trying to change her image. The trouble is that I still remember the bare skin photo just a short while ago. There was a disconnect.

I wonder what challenges she’ll face in adjusting the first impressions her original readers had. And I think she’ll have more troubles establishing credibility for this new image within the international community.

Show Respect For All Of Your Audiences Right From The Start

This raises the question of showing respect and following basic cross-cultural communication guidelines to all of your audiences right from the start. Here are two things that could have made a difference in my eyes.

Clarity helps wrong assumptions on both sides. If this photo was a photography class assignment, a short mention of this together with some explanation on the connection to the rest of the blog content would have helped. It would have helped to keep a good impression with at least a portion of the international audience.

Maintain consistency for better credibility. The stories I got from the two different about pages did not seem to come from the same person. There’s probably a good explanation, but the transition was too brutal to maintain credibility.

This is just a little bit of effort to make to protect your reputation and credibility with a larger international audience.

What do you think?

Do women have a harder time to manage their online credibility?
As a woman, when would you wear sleeves online to avoid offending a wider international audience?
Do you consider an online photo in a sleeveless dress a cultural blunder?

Getting Acquainted With Your Cultural Baggage

Cindy King — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:00:46 +0000

How To Develop Your Cross-Cultural Skills

E arlier this week I tried to help someone on a forum, but I ran into some communication hurdles. Now, there is only so much you can do in writing and there is only so much time I can spend on a forum. So, when after a few attempts I realized that this person had some “baggage” creating barriers to our conversation, I decided to drop it. This was not the time and place to go any further. We really needed a face to face discussion to have a meaningful conversation.

This incident reminded me of the importance of getting acquainted with your own cultural baggage.

The Interference Of Baggage

In the case above, this person lived with a painful disease and she had created ways of dealing with this pain that impacted her communication in general. In addition, her baggage came in the way of others wanting to interact with her.

You know what I’m talking about right? If you pay attention, you will occasionally notice people with “baggage”. You may know of people who have gone through a lot and who have not yet finished the healing process. And there might not be challenging life experiences behind this baggage. Some people carry baggage that impacts their communication because they consider themselves too short, too tall, too skinny, too fat. It can be anything really. But the point is that communication is not easy because this person has baggage that gets in the way.

Now that you have an idea of what I’m referring to with regards to “baggage”, let’s move on and look closer at cultural baggage.

What Is Cultural Baggage?

Of course we all have cultural baggage that comes with our own culture. Although this can lead to some interesting observations, let’s look at cultural baggage as it impacts cross-cultural communication. Along the lines of what I outlined above.

The main problem with our culture baggage is that we tend to make wrong assumptions. We have assumptions about ourselves, our family, friends and the world around us. These assumptions are based on our own experience. And we tend to think this is the only way of doing things. We rarely question our assumptions because they seem so natural to us. These assumptions relate to what we find polite, kind, respectful, friendly… you get the picture. And they also relate to our own life experiences, as I mentioned above.

Because these assumptions are based on our cultural background, heritage and environment, they can quickly become unnecessary baggage and get in the way of cross-cultural communication.

You have two options to deal with these assumptions.

1. First Develop Awareness For Your Own Cultural Baggage

The first step is to realize and acknowledge the cultural baggage you carry around with you and to identify the specific pieces of baggage you hang onto that impact your cross-cultural communication.

The cultural baggage you carry with you impacts:

How others perceive you
The quality of your communication
The success of your international business relationships

So you need to be aware of how you come across to others. And this means developing a keen awareness of the the cultural baggage you carry with you. This will help you to see when others have cultural baggage that interferes with your communication. This knowledge will help you to understand other cultures and also to find the suitable path for effective communication.

2. Learn When To Unload Your Cultural Baggage

It’s natural to assume that you must get rid of all of the excess cultural baggage interfering with your cross-cultural communication. But this is not the solution.

You don’t need to give up who you are in order to be good at cross-cultural communication.

Knowing your personal boundaries. With practice you will learn to identify your personal boundaries for what feels comfortable to you. There are no rules except good cross-cultural communicators know their boundaries well and learn how to avoid getting so close to these boundaries to stir up negative feelings. This might be feelings of aggression, dislike and not accepting to be associated with someone.

Placing your cultural baggage aside. Curiosity is often a good way to forget your own cultural baggage. As you focus on the other person it is often easy to keep your own cultural baggage within. But in some cases you may need to temporarily set a cumbersome piece of baggage down for a moment or two. All you need is a few minutes. Enough time to find the right path of mutual understanding and direct your communication into easier areas.

Sometimes your cultural baggage can be helpful to you. This is usually the case when you have let the communication go beyond the boundaries you are comfortable with. Although you can find comfort in holding onto your cultural baggage in these circumstances, this does not help you to improve your cultural skills.

To improve your cross-cultural skills you need to make the effort of learning more about your boundaries and how to put aside the most cumbersome pieces of baggage for just a moment.

And you can also progressively learn to carry less baggage with you.

Lighten The Load

Cross-cultural communication is not always easy in business. You have little choice in who you have to deal with. For some people the path towards developing the right mindset to build strong international relationships is a long one. And it can be tiring in a profession where you have to constantly adapt to different cultures.

The good news is that the more international experience you have, the more you’ll understand different cultures. And this understanding helps you to learn more about yourself and your own cultural baggage.

If you encounter the same or similar communication problems, spend some quiet time thinking about the baggage you bring to the encounter and how this impacts your cross-cultural communication. As you progressively acquire more self-knowledge you can lighten the baggage you carry with you little by little.

Once you learn to recognize cultural baggage you’ll also notice how the people with strong cultural skills master their own cultural baggage very well so that it does not impact their cross-cultural encounters.

What do you think?

Have you ever had a conversation turn sour because the other person had too much baggage?
How familiar are you with your own cultural baggage?
Do you know if your cultural baggage is raising unnecessary hurdles in your cross-cultural communication?

Cultural Perception Of The Use Of Information

Cindy King — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:00:34 +0000

Cultural Perceptions

A question on LinkedIn sparked some thoughts on cross-cultural challenges in communication based on different cultural perceptions and levels of acceptance. The question was about:

People who deliberately withhold knowledge or dangle tempting bits of information over your head to go one-up.

Of course, there are people who like to share their knowledge and others who prefer not to. And there are also those who actively conceal information for various reasons.

The Cultural Thumbprint

From a cross-cultural viewpoint, there are also different cultures more prone to seeing good reasons to withhold knowledge or information.

As a cross-cultural marketer, I notice cultural differences in people who like to withhold information. This is intriguing.

Are there cross-cultural communication issues here?

Individualism Versus Collectivism Cultures

You can use Geert Hofstede’s cultural behavior scales to try to understand this.

In my personal experience, the people who blatantly withhold information for their own personal benefit usually come from cultures with a high “Individualism” score. But this is only my personal experience, and I interact quite a bit with these cultures.

It should be easy enough to establish a cultural connection if you look into strong “Collectivism” cultures. You would naturally assume that any use of this sort of tactic would have an adverse effect on the “offender”.

A Change In Generations

Again from a marketing standpoint, it is obvious that we are now living in a customer-centric world. Our behaviors and expectations have changed and will continue to change in the future.

Personal tactics of withholding information for power just will not continue to work in the current context.

Of course, there are some people who seem to be naturally inclined to be social bullies. But being a social bully in today’s world will not get them far.

Information For Personal Gain

How do people use information or knowledge for personal gain?
Are there cultural differences?

I do think there are some differences in cultural acceptance of how people use information. The cultural perception will create different barriers for what people can get away with.

Even so, there are also other, more personal, factors or skills that come into play.

And what do you think? Please share your thoughts below.