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I hope you had a great weekend. I’d liked to address a difficult topic this morning. I hope that nobody reads this post the wrong way but I am getting a bit sick of the standard activity in just about all training programs on the topic of cultural difference and what you can then do to provide some flexibility. This might be just my experience but I think we all get it now. Maybe not everyone (sad) but with the overwhelming majority of Australian audiences I find it a boring and pointless exercise to ask people to list the cultural differences in their workplace and then the strategies that they can use to reduce any friction in the same workplace.
We all get it. We all work in very multi-cultural workplaces and 99% of the time this does not cause any issues. We all accommodate for each other. It doesn’t take much of an effort. In fact hardly any effort at all. For the morons out there who can’t cope you are going to have a difficult time working anywhere as that is now the norm. Constantly pointing out the differences just seems to make it more difficult as you become hyper aware of any differences and then start getting paranoid about what you are saying and doing. We are all just people. The younger generation is very aware of this, it’s just some older people who are dragging the chain on this issue. Of course somebody may say that some cultural aspects such as being female in certain workplaces may need specific attention and I would agree but again, in the training room you are generally already talking to the converted. Specific strategies for specific workplaces for specific people. Don’t treat us all with the culturally blind brush.
How about in future, rather than discussing differences, we just discuss how to work with people more effectively, building rapport and trust for example. A lot more productive and useful for the modern workplace.
Ok, rant over.
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