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日本語 (Japanese)
Can cultural profiling be applied in facilitation for cross-cultural groups?
For facilitators who are often involved in facilitation for cross-cultural groups, an arguable question is “Should facilitators apply cultural profiling to facilitation?”
For example, when a facilitator facilitates a cross-cultural group which includes Japanese and Indians, should a facilitator take culturally characteristic traits of Japanese people and Indian people into account, and adjust the way to facilitate to their cultural traits?
There are established data and studies in the world that analyze differences in behavioral characteristics based on cultural backgrounds of different countries and regions such as Hofstede’s 6-D model of national culture and Erin Meyer’s Culture Map, which provide compelling insights based on a wealth of data.
Indeed, when I facilitate cross-cultural groups in a variety of settings, I find that each country has its own unique characteristics, and the famous research data mentioned above are generally accurate.
That is the nature of statistics, if you classify the people into groups based on some attribute, each group will have its own characteristics. It is the same thing if you classify people by country, by gender, or by age.
However, it is very interesting to consider how a country’s lifestyle, history, and culture affect its communication style.
As I gain the experience of facilitating diverse groups, I become more and more interested in how cultural differences affect communication styles, and I love discussing such topic with people from other countries.
Difference between individuals is more important rather than difference between cultures.
So, should we apply such cultural profiling in our facilitation? That is a different story. I do not take any cultural profiling into account when facilitating cross-cultural groups.
I have two reasons.
One is because I want to be more conscious of individual differences rather than country-specific differences.
It is true that when I haven’t been experienced in facilitating cross-cultural meetings, I was so surprised to see the differences in communication styles among different countries. There was a time when I was trying to figure out what kind of style can be seen and how I should approach them, referring to various research data and adapt appropriate countermeasures.
In many cases, it worked, but on the other hand, sometimes I felt as if I was biased and it went wrong.
In fact, I felt uncomfortable when I joined cross-cultural group session as a participant and a Non-Japanese facilitator(Mostly Westerners) quoted cultural profiling and suggested as, “Let’s communicate with the understanding that each group has these communication characteristics.” I felt disdainful, almost like racial discrimination as, “I don’t want to be categorized in such stereotype cultural profiling with the attitude as if looking down upon us, Japanese.”
I noticed what I did not feel comfortable comes from the sense of “I am who I am.”
As I have experienced facilitating cross-cultural groups, I have become more conscious of the fact that each person has totally different characteristic, rather than capturing characteristics in country-specific groups.
Of course, it is important to pay respect to the history and culture of the country to which the participants belong, and as professionals we are naturally prepared to learn about them well in advance. But I decided to rule out cultural-profiling by categorizing them into cultural groups and tried to focus more on the differences of each individual.
By doing so, I have been able to deliver stable facilitation, no matter what kind of diverse group of people I am facilitating.
Don’t prevent the chemistry that derives from cross-cultural group setting.
Another reason is that I do not want to prevent the chemistry that occur in cross-cultural groups.
For example, let’s say you are facilitating a mixed group of relatively quiet Japanese and a very active Indian group. As you can imagine from experience, at first the rhythms may not mesh like water and oil, or there may be a sort of chaos.
In that case, facilitators tend to think of a balancing or tuning approach, such as trying to energize the quiet Japanese, or slightly restrain the overly active Indians, which may seem to work, but this can lead to a lack of a kind of group dynamism.
Positive interaction in cross-cultural settings does not easily come out. The clash of different cultures could sometimes bring conflict, confusion and stagnation.
However, when facilitators leave it to the participants, they can eventually be influenced by each other’s different communication styles and their individual behaviour can change, or they can try to build relationships in a difficult situation, which can lead to interactions that were not seen before.
I believe these are chemistry that can only happen when different cultures collide.
I believe that facilitation adapting cultural profiling will turn out to be facilitation that tries to balance the cultural differences based on the notion that cultural differences should bring disharmony.
This might prevent the chemistry that derives from cross-cultural group setting.
There is no right answer to facilitation. It is important to always deliver the facilitation that is needed in the situation.
I believe that the uncertainty of what kind of facilitation is needed in cross-cultural settings is one of the attractions for facilitators.
Therefore, I enjoy the more exciting and unscripted facilitation in cross-cultural settings, where no one knows what happens.
