Interpersonal
Key Operational Benefits of Global Mindset
- A more compliant approach to policies and more culturally sensitive practices. - Smoother coordination of complementary functional activities distributed across borders. - Faster rollout of new product/service concepts and technologies. - More rapid and efficient sharing of best practices across operational units. - A lower failure rate of employees' international assignments.
Three Elements of Developing a Global Mindset
- Appropriate knowledge, skills, and understanding. - Desire and motivation on the part of the employee to change. - Support from systems and management.
Edgar Schein Layers of Culture
- Artifacts and products: a culture's obvious features, such as food, dress, architecture, humor, and music. - Norms and values: A culture's shared and stated sense of acceptable behaviors--what is right and wrong. - Basic Assumptions: a culture's core beliefs about how the world is and ought to be. May be unspoken.
Stakeholder Perspectives in Global Organizations
- Customers' expectations of service will vary globally. -In a culture that values long-term relationships, suppliers might not understand being asked to reapply for supplier status periodically, but in a country where short-term results are valued, the request may be expected. -Employees in different countries often value certain kinds of benefits.
Examples of Feedback
- Decide what kind of feedback you need and then find the person most equipped to provide it. - The feedback discussion should closely follow the activity to be discussed. - Listen actively in the moment, and ask questions to make sure you understand. - Offer thanks. - Follow up with the person giving the feedback about your experiences in applying ideas and advice.
How to Create a Professional Network
- Deliberately think about who you want to include in your network based on weaknesses you want to develop. Identify business areas or groups that you want to know more about or why you want to establish contacts. - In all social situations, introduce yourself, ask about other's work and life, listen and remember. - Make yourself more visible. Attend conferences and workshops. Actively participate in meetings. - Develop in your own value. Work on becoming an expert in some area or on some topics. - Do favors. Networking is bidirectional; value flows to both ends of the connection. Look for opportunities when you can mentor and coach others.
Paths to effective Work Relationships
- Diversity in the range of your relationships--age, gender, background, ethnicity, and expertise. - Invest time and energy in developing and sustaining relationships - Develop an ease with "small talk" about non-work matters. - Look for openings for conversation, such as photos or references to leisure activities - Talk about yourself without dominating the conversation. - Learn to ask about others without prying into personal matters. -Be considerate of other people's time and obligations. -Wait for more opportune times for discussions.
HR Stakeholders
- External Customers - Internal Customers - Suppliers - Communities, political groups, religious institutions, and government.
Means of Communication
- Face-to-face (or small group) - Phone call - Voice mail - E-mail - Short messaging (texting, chat) - Social media - Written report - Oral presentation
Leading More Effective Staff Meetings
- Have a valuable purpose for a meeting and ensure that everyone understands this purpose. - Set a clear agenda with defined items. Circulate the agenda before the meeting and specify what individuals may need to prepare. - Limit meeting time to what is needed to address agenda items. - Start on time. Come early to allow social exchanges that strengthen relationships, but start covering the agenda at the published time. - For regularly scheduled meetings, consider ways to "change things up"--have a guest speaker, a special activity, or different location. - Take time to resolve conflicts, but postpone discussion of conflicts that may be difficult to resolve until after the meeting. - Review any decisions, and next steps at the meeting's end. Make sure individuals know their assignments. - Send an e-mail summary if needed for complex agendas. - Periodically, have a "meeting on meetings" to discuss whether the current approach is achieving the team's goals.
Signs of Effective Communication Within HR Team
- High levels of engagement reported in employee surveys - High levels of retention - Positive comments on the organization's social media channels. - Effectiveness of teams in meeting their commitments and department budgets and schedules/ - High levels of collaboration.
Planning Communication:
- How will the communication occur? - When will the communication occur? - Where will the communication occur? - Who will communicate? - What support will be required? - What media will be used? -How will audience feedback be managed? - What organizational rules will shape the communication?
Effective Relationships
- Improve the quality of communication. People get the information they need, but they also get an opportunity to develop a broader perspective on an issue. - Increase productivity by supporting collaboration and enabling efficient resolution of disagreements. - Create a positive work environment by fulfilling human needs for socialization and attachment.
Effective Listening Techniques
- Inviting the other person or people into the conversation. - Focusing on what the other person is saying. - Processing unspoken or nonverbal messages the other person is sending. - Being aware of the nonverbal messages you yourself are sending.
A Global Mindset Makes the Organizatrion
- More proactive with respect to bench marking and learning from product and process innovations that take place outside its domestic borders. - More alert to the entry of nontraditional competitors into its local market. - More open to the concept and fact of diversity within the organization. This will create benefits of its own.
Developing and promoting a global mindset
- Study and understand your own culture and how it relates to others. (Become aware of stereotypes that people have about your culture and that you have about theirs.) - Study and understand global business trends and forces. (Stay current with international business and world events.) - Promote a global mindset within your organization. (Recruit staff with cross-cultural and language skills.)
Characteristic of a Global Mindset
- They drive for the bigger, broader picture: look for context and strive to understand the full set of issues. - They accept contradictions: Global managers accept uncertainty and understand how to use conflict management. -They trust the process to solve problems: process includes the systems, procedures, and norms of the organization that enable people to respond quickly. - They value multicultural teamwork: teamwork and interdependence are fundamental tenets of the global mindset. - They view changes as opportunity: Global minds are confident that they can create order out of seeming chaos. - They are open to new ideas and continual learning: always looking to improve and are accepting of others' views. - They are inclusive , not exclusive.
Th 4 T's
- Travel: Short-term travel assignments may help managers and employees gain experience, expand awareness and appreciation of different places and cultures, and become more visible and valuables. - Teams: Working on culturally diverse and/or international teams and projects is another highly effective way to help employees cross-cultural management skills. - Training: Training in other cultures can broaden employees' awareness and challenge their ethnocentric definitions of cultural norms. - Transfers: An intense immersion into another culture and can have a strong and lasting impact on individuals' relationship development and cross-cultural management skills as well as their acquisition of a global mindset.
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Communication
- Was the audience analysis complete and on target? - Did the audience react as anticipated? - What points did they seem most or least interested in? - Where did they get confused? - Where were they most engaged? What engagement tactics worked and which didn't? - How could feedback mechanisms be improved?
Audience Analysis Questions
- Who should receive information about this topic? How many distinct groups are there? Do they have different needs? - What does the audience know about this topic, and how much do they need to know? Are they aware or unaware of the issue? - How will the audience react to communication? (With surprise, confusion, resistance, interest?) - What rhetorical approaches will work best with each group? (hard, objective data? personal stories? providing information and letting audience decide?)
Collaborative Approach
-Both sides express their own perspectives of the disagreement. -They then paraphrase each other's positions to confirm their understanding. -Both sides (and the facilitator) brainstorm solutions in a positive manner and focus on solutions that both sides believe are workable. -All parties agree on next steps. -The facilitator works to end the meeting in a positive manner, emphasizing the advantages of the new solutions to each side and to the organization and the benefits of the collaborative approach.
Effective Networking
1) Finding people who have something you would like to share. 2) Having something yourself that other people would like to share i.e. expertise or experience, referrals, or organizational support. 3) Allocating time to make and maintain connections, even when there is no current need for support.
Networking
A process of developing mutually beneficial contacts through the exchange of information. May consist of internal and external contacts.
Culture
A set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and perspectives on how the world works. Hofstede: "software of the mind"-- mental programs that predispose us to patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Written Report
Advantages: - Allows full presentation of topic - Can reach a large audience and encourage thoughtful responses - Provides documentation of communication Challenges: - Takes time and care to create - May need to confirm to organizational expectations - Takes time to get a response
Oral Presentation
Advantages: - Can allow immediate question and feedback and adjustment of message - Can incorporate visuals, video, handouts Challenges: - Requires skill and time to practice - Requires time and expense to create support materials.
Social Media
Advantages: - Can be broadcast to large audiences - Reaches certain audiences efficiently and can illicit immediate feedback. Challenges: - May not reach all audiences - Requires review since the message will be widely viewed
Face-to-face (small group)
Advantages: - Provides immediate verbal and noverbal feedback - Useful for complex, sensitive issues (conflicts, negotiations, problem solving) Challenges: - Takes time - Requires good listening skills -Requires care to avoid conveying wrong message
Phone Call
Advantages: - Provides more opportunity for feedback, questions. Challenges: - Requires good listening skills since there are no visual cues - Faces more competition for attention - Takes more time
Advantages: - Saves sender time - Allows detail - Includes multiple parties easily - Documents communication Challenges: - Requires more care to create accurate message and convey correct tone. - Does not necessarily provide desired feedback - Can be missed or perceived as nuisance.
Voice Mail
Advantages: - Saves time (when used to relay content, not make direct contact) Challenges: - Does not provide feedback or confirmation of understanding.
Short Messaging
Advantages: - Saves time for both parties. - Can be broadcast to announce information (promotional or emergency) Challenges: - Limits content that can be communicated. - Can be missed or perceived as intrusive.
Inviting the other person or people into the conversation.
Allow gaps to develop in which the listener can speak. Avoid interrupting or talking over the speaker. Ask questions that encourage people to speak
Concessions
Both sides find wants that are not essential to agreements.
Risky Tactics
Bullying, manipulation, or deception, such as deadlines ("this is a one-time offer"), brinksmanship ("take it or leave it"), or low-/high-balling (making ridiculous, probably unacceptable demands).
Reducing Unnecessary Conflict
Can be eliminated through clarity and communication--by establishing ground rules for conduct, clarifying authority and responsibility, setting objectives with input form all stakeholders and team members, considering the possible effects of decisions and actions on others, creating avenues for communication, and monitoring and checking on team members periodically. Team leaders can also reduce levels of conflict by acting fairly and consistently--—by being positive and unifying team members behind a common goal, paying attention to group stress levels, being attentive to group differences and the potential for interpersonal conflict, distributing opportunities among team members, treating all team members respectfully, and avoiding favoritism.
Conflicts
Can derive from disagreements over how to do a particular task, or it can relate to personal differences, such as culture, cognitive and communication styles, or a need for control or dominance.
Seeking Feedback
Can help identify gaps between expectations and performance. Can correct "blind spots"--misperceptions in how we view others and how we think we are viewed by others.
Task Conflict
Can sometimes lead to discovering better ways to do things--more efficient approaches that save time and resources or more innovative approaches that produce better results.
Reframing
Changing the way an audience sees or feels.
Three Aspects of Cultural Intelligence
Cognitive (thinking, learning and strategizing): Developing a knowledge of cultural differences and similarities and being able to use that knowledge to determine how to best handles a cross-cultural situation. Motivational (effectiveness, confidence, persistence, value congruence, and the level of attraction towards a new culture): Enables one to genuinely enjoy cultural differences rather than feeling threatened or intimidated by them. Behavioral (including an individual's range os possible actions and responses to intercultural encounters): enables one to be flexible and adapt in multicultural contexts.
Hard Negotiators
Committed to winning, even at the cost of the relationship.
Intragroup COnflict
Conflicts occurring inside a team.
Intergroup Conflict
Conflicts within a team may be related to task or personality, but conflicts between groups are frequently about competition for limited resources or conflicting goals.
Cultural Setting
Created whenever two or more people get together to perform some task. Occur at work, home, schools, a house of worship, or a place of recreation.
Secure and Grow a Safe and Robust Talent Supply Chain
Ensure a supply of leaders who are globally competent. Monitor the workforce potential in developing countries. Select employees who can best assist in meeting the organization's goals. Be aware of demographic trends that affect talent supply. Develop a strong employer brand.
Effective Facilitators
Excellent listeners. They can interpret and confirm what the group is saying and use this content to drive the conversation further. Must also be good observers of nonverbal messages and group dynamics.
Strategic Perpective
HR must be able to balance the priorities of headquarters and subsidiaries.
Perspective Taking
Helps negotiators anticipate reactions to proposals to overcome negotiating obstacles.
Edward T. Hall Cultural Theory: High-and-Low-Context Cultures
High-context culture: a statement's meaning includes the verbal message and the nonverbals and social and historic content attached to the statement. Low-context culture: A statement's meaning is encoded in its words only.
Preparations
Identify critical needs, wants that could be concessions, and possible demands form the other side. BTNA Tactic: best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
Internal Customers
Include a number of roles in the organization. Senior management: HR data on workforce capabilities and costs. HR expertise in identifying and management and risks related to HR acquiring and retaining talent, developing talent pools, managing relations with third parties. Board of directors: Rely on HR to attract senior management talent, support succession plans, develop competitive and compliant compensation plans. Functional leaders: Rely on HR for staffing, development, and employee relations. Employees of the organization: seek economic stability, fair and transparent treatment, safe conditions, fulfilling work, and opportunities for development.
Professional Network
Includes people inside and outside one's organization, colleagues from the HR profession and from other disciplines, face-to-face and virtual relationships.
Effective Feedback
Includes specific examples of actions that have been observed--statements that have been made, reports that were late or incomplete, nonverbals that send send contradictory messages.
Impactful Communication
Integrates: -An understanding of the audience's needs and perspectives. - A clear message. - Effective Delivery At the center of impactful communication is the communicator—the perception communicators create of themselves.
Explicit Cultural Characteristics
Language, dress, or manner
Agreement
May be legal instruments or verbally expressed understanding. May be offensive to some cultures, who view it as a sign of lack of trust.
Conflict Resolution
May involve negotiation (as in collaboration and compromise), or negotiation may involve conflict (as in internal struggles over resources or objectives or external relations with suppliers).
Principled Negotiation
Negotiators aim for mutual gain, applying a process developed by Roger Fisher and William Ury called interest-based relational negotiating or integrative bargaining. Emphasized the need to focus on the problem instead of personal differences and on mutually beneficial outcomes rather than hard positions. Principled negotiators can separate people from positions. They identify common interests and make them a goal of the negotiation. They are also creative: They come to the negotiation prepared with different options that may satisfy both sides. In principled negotiation, the goal is a win-win solution, requiring some sacrifice of position from each side in order to gain meaningful points.
Persuasion
Negotiators seek mutually beneficial options rather than trying to win the other side to their own position. Negotiators should focus on discovering interests rather than staking out--and clinging to--distinct positions.
Feedback
Part of a communication loop that helps message receivers confirm their understanding of the message;also helps align perceptions and reality.
External Network Contacts
People outside the organization with whom you work regularly, colleagues in other companies, or connections through professional associations such as SHRM.
Internal Network Contacts
People with whom you interact on a regular basis in the course of your work. May also be an internal stakeholder in the organization who shares interests and can provide support.
Information Exchange
Positions and needs are explained by both sides. Thorough understanding leads to more-balanced agreements. Referred to as perspective taking.
Negotiating Process
Preparation Relationship building Information Exchange Persuasion Concessions Agreement
Negotiation
Process in which two or more parties work together to reach agreement on a matter. Involves distinguishing between needs and wants.
Stakeholder Concept
Proposes that any organization operates within a complex environment in which it affects is affected by a variety of forces or stakeholders who all share in the value of the organization and its activities.
Develop Policies and Practices to Manage Risks
Provide for the health, safety and security of employees. Protect the physical assets of the organization. Protect intellectual property. Protect intangible assets. Audit the organization's policies and practices to make sure that they are compliant and effective and are being enforced. Monitor breaches of compliance: financial, ethical, employment-related
Develop a Global Organizational Culture
Provide training that improves cultural awareness and adaptability. Develop processes to promote communication and the capturing and sharing of knowledge and experiences.
Synergistic Approach
Recognizes the differences in negotiating styles across cultures and uses those differences to craft agreements that allow both sides to win.
Framing
Reflects the process of getting an audience to see communicated facts in a certain way so that they can take a certain action.
Effective Framing
Requires clarity and explanation. - Articulating the objective and desired outcome of the communication. - Identifying the benefit to the audience. - Identifying the key points of the message and sequencing them in a logical manner. - Providing an explanation of and evidence for each point that helps the audience see these facts in the desired frame.
Communities, political groups, religious insinuations, and government
Shared interests: -Communities: see an enterprise's value as a source of employment and neighborhood enrichment and stability. -Political groups: seek support from the business community in making changes in laws and regulation. -Religious Institutions: seek support for their own community's goals and can benefit from improved employment opportunities and corporate volunteer programs. -Government: value "good corporate citizens" that build communities, strengthen economies, and support the rule of law.
Suppliers
Short- and long-term staffing suppliers, vendors providing or managing benefits, or internal functions like IT that provide necessary support. Value economic stability, fair treatment, and control over their business.
Interpersonal Conflicts
Sometimes disguised as task conflicts. because the real issues are not being resolved, the conflict may linger and distract teams from important work. Require that at least one of the parties in the conflict has emotional intelligence and skill in negotiating.
Develop Meaningful Metrics
Take a systematic and disciplined approach to measuring and ope rationalizing strategic goals. Align human capital to achieve strategic goals. Demonstrate the value HR brings to the global enterprise.
Global Mindset
The ability to take an international, multidimensional perspective that is inclusive of other cultures, perspectives, and views.
Cultural Intelligence
The capacity to recognize, interpret, and behaviorally adapt to multicultural situations and contexts.
Communicator-Message Link
The communicator can be ineffective in articulating the message because: -It may be sent to the wrong person. -The information may be wrong or insufficient or not what the receiver needs. -The communicator's attempt to appear confident may appear as rudeness. - The message may rely on technical, historical or cultural knowledge the receiver does not have.
Receiver-Communicator Link
The feedback loop does not operate well. - There's no feedback loop e.g. there is no question and answer period after a presentation, or a contact is not included in an e-mail. - The communicator does not understand or respond to feedback.
Tactical Perspective
The group must find a way to focus their separate disciplines and professional backgrounds to develop programs that can deliver measurable success and that can work in different cultural and sociopolitical contexts.
Conflict Resolution Tactics: Collaborate (or confront)
The leader and those in conflict accept the fact that they disagree and look for a "third way," a new solution to the problem of the conflict. Since both sides contribute tot he solution, this may be seen as "win/win" conflict resolution.
Conflict Resolution Tactics: Compromise
The leader asks those in conflict to bargain-- altering positions on different issues until a mutually acceptable solution is defined. The solution relies on concessions. For this reason, it is often referred to as "lose/lose" conflict resolution.
Conflict Resolution Tactics: Assert (or force)
The leader imposes a solution. One side wins and the other loses--hence the term "win/lose" conflict resolution.
Conflict Resolution Tactics: Accommodate (or smooth)
The leader restores good relations by emphasizing agreement and downplaying disagreement.
Conflict Resolution Tactics: Avoid
The leader withdraws from the situation or accepts it, leaving the conflict to be resolved by others or remain unresolved.
Processing unspoken or nonverbal messages the other person is sending.
The listener's nonverbal can signal the way the listener is receiving the message-with interest, opposition, or enthusiasm. Nonverbals include facial expressions, gestures, and rate pr pitch, pr volume of speech. Can also include posture.
Message-Medium Link
The message may be sent at the wrong time or in the wrong manner or form. - An email about an event is delivered too early and the event is forgotten. - A recipient overloaded with emails does not see a critical one. - A proposal with grammatical or formatting mistakes damages the credibility of the message and the communicator. - Attendees at a virtual meeting cannot follow a complex presentation.
Focusing on what the other person is saying.
Thinking about the message being communicated right now, not what you will say as soon as the other person stops talking. Also means showing physical signals of interest in what you are hearing. E.g. an active listener maintains, soft, attentive eye contact with the speaker and may nod encouragingly.
Medium-Receiver Link
This receiver may misunderstand the message. -Interruptions or physical conditions (e.g., noise, discomfort) damage comprehension. _ Different languages and expressions challenge understanding. - The receiver's expectations differ, and the message becomes confusing or dissatisfying.
External Customers
Those receiving or purchasing the organization's products or services and those who seek a return on their investment in the organization.
Unethical Negotiating Tactics
To offers to cut costs by avoiding regulations or using unqualified suppliers or to offer bribes or demand quid pro quo arrangements.
Characteristics of Good Working Relationships
Trust and openness. Effective work relationships are mutual.
Relationship Building
Trust is built with the exchange of personal information that reveals character. Tactics focus on creating atmospheres that encourage comfort and openness.
Develop a Strategic View of the Organization
Understand how the entire organization creates value, participate in organizational strategy development, and develop an HR global strategy.
Use and Adapt HR Technology
Use technology to increase the efficiency of HR programs and integration with the organization's information systems.
Impactful Communicators
Use their words, bodies, and their voices as an element of the message. Includes: - Posture and movement - Gesture - Eye contact - Vocal qualities
Soft Negotiators
Values the relationship more than the outcome and will back down on issues in the interest of reaching agreement--even if they are no longer getting what they need.
Implicit Cultural Characteristics
World views and cognitive habits.
Being aware of the nonverbal messages you yourself are sending.
Your own tone of voice and posture can convey your feelings about what you are saying. A confident tone and strong eye contact can convey your commitment. You can shape the other person's reaction to what you are saying by mirroring the other person's nonverbals.