Bridging the cultural divide

Implicit cultural assumptions can create huge differences between people. To help lawyers overcome barriers, diversity and cultural awareness training may be the way forward, says John Trimbos

An emerging trend in management training for lawyers is in diversity and cultural awareness. At a basic level, this may consist of equal opportunities training for all staff, the importance of which should not be underestimated following high-profile employment tribunal cases in the press.


Such training is often negative in orientation, in that it focuses on behaviour - like discrimination - to be avoided. A more positive spin is to provide training that highlights the benefits of diversity and encourages people to look at the world through the eyes of other cultures.


The main difficulty with cultural diversity training is that the subject is so deep and wide-ranging that it is hard to know where to begin - and where to stop. Pressure of time means that people demand compressed 'quick-hit' training programmes, and a subject like this is almost impossible to do justice to in just a few hours.




Understanding values


To illustrate this, imagine that you are flying to a country for the first time, for a business trip or a holiday. You look out of the aeroplane window - and what do you notice? You may see buildings, signage and so on. Having made your way through the airport and into the city, you would observe the operation of norms and values - the way people interact with one another, customary greetings, whether people are tactile or reserved, business etiquette and so on.


Much cross-cultural training focuses on this slightly deeper level, and there are many highly readable books on how to do business and get by socially in different countries. However, there is much more to cultural understanding than that.


Underpinning these norms and values are basic implicit assumptions that govern the way we look at the world. For those readers who are new to this area, a fantastic introductory book is Riding the Waves of Culture by Fons Trompenaars (The Economist Books, 1993). This book and similar texts draw on a vast body of research globally exploring these assumptions.


For example, samples of people in various cultures were asked to consider the following dilemma. You are being driven by a close friend who is doing 35mph in a 20mph zone; he hits a pedestrian. There are no witnesses apart from you, and his lawyer says that if you testify that he was doing 20mph you will save him from serious consequences. Does your friend have a right to expect you to testify in his favour?




A friend in need


The results are fascinating. Almost all respondents in north European and north American countries said the driver had no right to expect you to testify for him, since these are 'universalist' cultures where the primary focus is on the rule of law and the social need to obey such rules.


However, respondents in countries from South America and the Far East answered differently. Many of these cultures are 'particularist' where the emphasis is on friendships and relationships, so that their primary orientation would be to stand by their friends in their hour of need.


If you make the scenario more extreme, say by killing the pedestrian, then the results become more extreme: north Europeans and north Americans would say that the driver definitely deserves to be prosecuted and convicted under the law, whereas respondents in other cultures would be even more inclined to stand by their friend in his extreme need.


This is just one way in which implicit cultural assumptions can create huge differences - and barriers - between people from different parts of the world.


For practitioners this can be significant in various ways. For lawyers working in global practices they may be dealing with transactions that straddle continents and cultures, or indeed they may find themselves doing business in different parts of the globe.


Even high street lawyers who never do business outside the UK may find that they have clients who come from very different cultures than their own.


Let us look at one more example from our global survey results. Several respondents were asked if they considered it permissible to show emotion openly at work. At one extreme, we have Japan where it is considered highly unacceptable to show emotion at work, closely followed by the UK and then other north European countries.


At the other extreme, we have Italy, France and the US, where it is more acceptable to express emotion, and this exposes one of the main differences between north European and north American cultures. You can see how, for example, members of a project team from these countries might undergo something of a culture shock at their first team meeting.




View of the world


See if you can guess which countries the following sets of words describe: friendly, egalitarian, fun-loving, party-going, colourful, informal (country A); morose, stiff-lipped, hierarchical, dark-clothed, repressed, pessimistic (country B).


Can you guess the countries? In fact, both sets of words describe the British, but seen through the eyes of a set of Koreans and Spaniards respectively.


The next time you deal with a client from a far-flung place, remember that his view of the world is likely to be very different from your own.


John Trimbos runs Trimbos Training, a consultancy that specialises in skills training for lawyers. He is a past chairman of the Legal Education and Training Group. He can be contacted on trimbos@trimbos.fslife.co.uk or 07812 249991.