I don’t mean this in any disrespectful way but pigeons in England are unbelievably fat. Looking at them, it’s hard to understand how they can actually leave the ground at all, let alone remain airborne long enough to reach a garden fence or a tiled rooftop.
In fact, it’s hard to understand a pigeon’s day altogether. I think that each morning must begin with a conversation a bit like this (to borrow from the four vultures in the 1967 version of Jungle Book)…Pigeon 1: “what d’you wanna do?”; Pigeon 2: “I dunno…what d’you wanna do?” Eventually, it seems they always settle on the same plan – namely, to peck holes out of the grass lawn outside my window. They’re here everyday, rain or shine, just pecking in the grass. Occasionally, and at great effort, they rise, clear the neighbour’s fence, and land on the lawn next door…where they continue to peck.
A return to my home country after many years away has afforded me the opportunity for some cultural reflections which I share here because I think they illuminate the unfathomable complexity of communicating across cultures. I’ve referred to a quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw in a previous blog but it’s pertinent here: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” As I watch myself and my wife, who is from Hong Kong, respectively re-engage and engage with British culture (a term under review as an oxymoron) some things appear to me, as if for the first time.
Picking on the pigeons was a cheap shot but their relentless grass pecking is an example of something that was always observable, during my 50 years of life in this country, but which I didn’t notice at all. I find now that I notice so much, too much, too many things that I need to process. A train or bus journey in Asia was a happy island of ignorance for me. In Hong Kong, in particular, conversations raged with passion and vigour all around me but I understood none of it. After I became accustomed to this, I found it peaceful; I understood not, so I judged not. Even the body language was often too subtle for me to translate, so travelling became something I did alone – with hundreds of other people.
Back in my own culture, I am overwhelmed by what I understand. It’s a sensory deluge of information. Instinctively, I can’t help but profile everyone around me, from their conversations, their accents, their clothes, their faces. Prejudice, in the true sense of the word, surges within me, I am flooded with it.
Watching my wife deal with what is a totally new experience for her (holidays apart) is even more fascinating. Her English is fluent but we discover that it isn’t ‘idiom fluent’. I really don’t know if all languages are the same but English is saturated with idiomatic expressions which draw variously from history, sport, literature, warfare and the media. If you were born in Hong Kong, what are you to make of a sticky wicket; going over the top; the unkindest cut of all; taking it on the chin; lobbing in a hand grenade; a marmite thing; remember, remember the 5th of November; meeting your Waterloo or watching the Beeb?
I mean, it’s an almost uncrackable code, isn’t it? She’s been particularly fascinated by the simple process of saying ‘goodbye’ to people. In Asian English (actually absorbed into Cantonese), this is a generally simple matter of saying ‘bye bye’ which works in a wide range of settings from the formal to the informal. I remember it struck me as slightly amusing and babyish in 2009 but I use it automatically now (perhaps to the amusement of others). In England, taking your leave has many forms and each form has many sub forms. Take, for example, the use in parting of the words ‘see you…’ To date, I have been able to list 16 variations of this usage and these are the unhelpful explanations (all my own interpretations) that I have offered to Wendy…
See you…goodbye
See you in a second…goodbye for now, I’m going to speak to/see you again shortly
See you in a minute…goodbye for now, I’m going to speak to/see you again quite soon
See you in a bit…goodbye for now, we’ll be seeing each other again soon, probably today
See you in a while…goodbye for now, I do intend to see you again before too long
See you soon…goodbye for now, we’re in the same orbit and will encounter each other again
See you next time…goodbye and there will be a time when we definitely meet again (used for dentist, hairdresser, masseur etc…)
See you again…goodbye, I want to signal that I’d welcome another encounter
See you later…goodbye, for any length of time from a few hours to forever
See you on the flip flop…goodbye, I don’t have any plans to see you again but it’s likely our roads will cross again at some point
See you around…goodbye, it’s unlikely I will see you any time soon
See you when I see you…goodbye, I might see you but I won’t be surprised if I never clap eyes on you again
See you in church…goodbye, seeing you again is pretty unlikely
See you on the other side…goodbye and good luck because you’re going to need it
See you in another life…goodbye forever
See you on the moon…it’s really not going to happen
What does this mean for our chances of being understood when communicating across cultures? The fact that an English person reading my definitions might well dispute the explanations above illustrates the fact that intracultural communication is difficult enough; intercultural understanding relies on something much more intentional on the part of the communicator than simply broadcasting in their preferred style.
Another really surprising discovery about our English experience is that Wendy has lost her navigational superpowers and I have assumed the google cloak of invincibility. Put us together in a shopping Mall in Hong Kong, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur and I am as spatially aware as a toddler. After entering any shop in any Mall, I leave that shop with absolutely no clue of the direction I had been travelling when I entered it. Ask me to find the car and we might be in the Mall for a week. Ask me to rendezvous at a given shop and I wander the levels forlornly, searching with the desperation of a thirst-ravaged mariner seeking a glimpse of land. Find the supermarket in a new Mall, Wendy can do it; remember the place where we bought nice noodles, Wendy can find it; drive to a new location – Wendy can find the car park.
But in England, the prevailing conditions have turned upside down. Navigating roundabouts in a car are trials of confused uncertainty for her; remembering a route that I can recall from one drive can take multiple reinforcements for her; instinctively knowing where the Post Office will be in a town centre has no intuitive compass for her.
Suddenly, I understand how deeply cultural fluency lies within us and how very, very hard it is for others to learn what we know, because we simply know it. Wendy knows how to navigate Malls because she grew up around them. I know how to find my way around a country town in Warwickshire because the cultural design principles are embedded within me.
Leaders in multicultural organisations have to learn to slow down. Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow highlights the difference between his System 1: Fast, intuitive, automatic thinking and System 2: Slow, rational, calculating thinking. When we communicate from System 1, we assume that our audience is operating with the same frame of understanding and can translate our meaning, our inferences and our idioms in real time. This is rarely the case, even in a monocultural setting.
Four simple tips:
- Slow yourself down – think about how you are presenting to others
- Avoid humour, metaphor and colloquialisms when giving important information
- Check for understanding – get your whole team into that habit so that they check with you as well
- Follow up important conversations with simple written summaries, allocating responsibilities and giving time frames
If we hope to be understood, we have to remember that our roundabouts are someone else’s shopping Malls, that see you on the moon is not a serious proposition and that November 5th is just another day of the week to anyone not born somewhere around 51.5000 degrees North and 0.1167° degrees West.
See you later, alligator.
