Twitter Interview With Silvia Cambié

Twitter Interviews – #CKinterview

Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Silvia Cambié. You can also find her on Twitter: @XCulture.

The transcript of the Cross-Cultural Twitter Interview with Silvia @XCulture is below

Silvia Cambié is a cross-cultural communication practitioner and a journalist. Her background includes reporting from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for major British and German publications (The European, Euromoney, Handelsblatt, Süddeutsche Zeitung) well as managing communications and public affairs for Brussels-based international trade associations.

Silvia is based in London where she runs Chanda Communications. She serves on the boards of two organisations with global outreach, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and The International Alliance for Women (TIAW). Silvia blogs about the cross-cultural communication challenges facing the business world at X-Culture and is read by an audience of 10,000 each month. She is the author – together with Yang-May Ooi – of “International Communications Strategy – Developments in Cross-Cultural Communication, PR and Social Media” to be published by Kogan Page and nominated for the Financial Times Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

This is a 2 part interview:

• Part 1 – The Blog Interview to get to know Bill
• Part 2 – The Twitter Interview where Bill answers 10 Cross-Cultural & International Questions

Silvia Cambié – Part 1

Here is the first part of the interview with Silvia.

Silvia, For those who don’t know you, can you please tell us something about yourself?

Silvia Cambié: I was raised in Italy, educated in Austria and spent my entire career working in an international environment. I speak five languages and have lived in Czechoslovakia, Germany and Belgium. I am now based in London where I run Chanda Communications and advise clients on stakeholder relations, cross-cultural communication and social media.

How did you pick up your cross-cultural skills?

Silvia Cambié: When I was a little girl growing up in Italy, I was fascinated by everything foreign. I even made up my own foreign language that I would speak to myself when nobody was around. In school I then learned German and English and that opened the door to an entire new universe. I discovered that I could see things from another point of view. When I spoke German or English, it was as if I had grown up in a different place and I had had a parallel life. That’s how the adventure began. But it wasn’t until I moved to Czechoslovakia right after the fall of the Berlin Wall to work as a journalist that I understood how important it is to be able to put your cultural background to the side in order to tune into a different one.

How do you use your cross-cultural skills in your job?

Silvia Cambié: The fact that I have lived in different places and understand the way in which different people think is of enormous help in my job. I work a lot with international organisations helping them with different aspects of their communication strategies. My multi-cultural background enables me to decipher behaviours and read between the lines.

Can you tell us about your blog?

Silvia Cambié: It was my co-author Yang-May Ooi to come up with the name XCulture for my blog. I had wanted to start a blog for a long time. Yang-May convinced me to launch XCulture two years ago. It has been a fascinating journey. I am a former financial journalist and was used to hide my feelings behind charts and figures. XCulture has helped me to find my voice. I blog about issues that come up in my work and topics I feel passionate about, like the economic empowerment of women and Corporate Social Responsibility.

Have you come across any cultural stereotypes that bother you?

Silvia Cambié: The stereotypes that annoy me most are those concerning the role of women in the Middle East. If one bothers to look at the facts, reality looks quite different. The World Bank estimates that 13% of all firms in the Middle East are owned by women. And women make up 4.29 million of Saudi Arabia’s 6.5 million internet users!

And do you have a favourite show that could help people understand cultural issues?

Silvia Cambié: I love Russell Peters, the Indo-Canadian stand-up comedian (http://www.facebook.com/RussellPeters). His show Red, White and Brown is a must!

Do you have a book you could recommend to help others improve their cultural insights?

Silvia Cambié: I like “The Opposable Mind” by Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Martin believes that people have the ability to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads at the same time. The result is what he calls “integrative thinking”, which applied to communications translates into the ability to consider two different cultural models without choosing sides.

Silvia Cambié – Part 2 – The Twitter Interview

This is an interview series of the people I recommend you follow on Twitter for the cross-cultural and international business insights in their tweets.

More Twitter Interviews

• Charmayne Paul – @psitutor
• Lucy Chatburn – @pocketcultures
• Doreen Iannuzzi – @DoreenatDMS
• Donna Jackson – @wisequeen
• Chris Cotter – @CotterHUE
• Jack Yan – @jackyan
• Bill Ward – @DR4WARD
• Thierry De Baillon – @t_de_baillon
• Seshu – @PicSeshu
• Neil Urquhart – @culturematters
• Klaus & Flavia Westerwelle – @transdomo
• Donagh Kiernan – @dkiernan
• Christian Hoeferle – @hoeferleconsult
• Caroline – @ohh_la_la
• Deborah Swallow – @DeborahSwallow
• Steve Roesler – @steveroesler
• Matthew Bennett – @matthewbennett

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