Cultural Profile Assignment: My Hypothetical Team (Essay Sample)

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Cultural Profile
My hypothetical team for this study comprised of members belonging to the Chinese, Germany, and America cultures. The three aspects that are the basis for my analysis are trust, communication, and disagreement. To begin with, cultures depict a great disparity in issues pertaining to creation of trust in a workplace. There are two types of trust namely affective and cognitive trust. Whereas affective trust is based on the feelings of closeness shared between two individuals, friendship, and empathy, cognitive trust arises from the confidence that both parties have in their counterparts’ skills, accomplishments, and reliability. This implies that in cultures that are task based such as the U.S, Germany, U.K, Australia, and Denmark, the most likely form of trust that will be created among them is the cognitive trust. On the other hand, in cultures that are relationship based such as the Chinese, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Nigeria, trust is building from the creation of relationships that go beyond work relations and involve a form of friendship. Creation of trust is however synonymous with communication. Just like trust, communication styles vary significantly across cultures. Communication primarily encompasses ways in which people from different cultures converse, communicate, and perceive the world around them. In this regard, effective communication is attained when individuals in an organization comprehend the existing disparity in business beliefs, customs, and strategies within the organization and across different cultures. This is the aspect of business that is normally referred to as cultural competence. In addition, employees should consider different factors that affect cross cultural communication namely high context versus low context cultures, language difference, power distance, and non-verbal differences among others. Lastly, multicultural staffs are prone to disagreements that are mostly founded on ethnocentrism whereby the individuals from the minority groups perceive that their input in the workplace is disregarded in favor of that of individuals from dominant cultures.
As mentioned earlier, I chose three behavior skills namely trust, communication, and disagreement for which the interaction of my team of three will be analyzed. To begin with, trust between the three will be based on cognitive and affective trust whereby the Chinese culture is known for building trust on the basis of emotional closeness whereas the German and American are known for building cognitive trust that is founded on confidence in the other individuals competency, skills, and reliability. This implies that trust between the German and the American will develop easily for the reason that the two individuals will regard each other as professionals with the requisite skills to achieve success in their assigned task. As follows, the Chinese might feel excluded from the team owing to the fact that formation of trust between the individual and team members will be based on more than professional competency. Hence, it is upon the American and German to understand that the cultural disparity between them and the Chinese in reference to creation of trust and foster a relationship that will create emotional closeness, and friendliness between them and their Chinese counterpart.
Communication between the team will be affected by highly affected by the aspect of high and low context cultures. Again a significant disparity will be witnessed between the Chinese and the American and German. This is because whilst the Chinese are regarded as high-context cultures, the German and American are considered the low-context cultures. Low-context culture refers to a culture in which communication is direct and individualistic and employees’ base decisions on facts. High-context on the other hand are affected by trust, thus effective communication is synonymous with high levels of trust (Congden, Alexei, and David ). Non-verbal cues will equally affect communication between the team members since diverse cultures utilize cues differently. While extreme gesturing is considered as the norm is some cultures, other cultures might perceive it as rude. For instance, in the U.S pointing a finger while giving directions is acceptable whereas in China such an act is considered rude and Chinese employees will opt to with an open hand, specifically with the palm facing upwards. Similarly, whereas, the German and American might regularly use eye contact to signify straightforwardness and honesty, the Chinese might consider it an act of rudeness. Therefore, it is paramount for the three team members to understand the differentiation in gesturing to imply certain directives in order to facilitate communication and avoid disagreements.
In multicultural teams, it is imperative for members to determine whether they will disagree openly or result to a private channel for feedback. In this regard, the Chinese will opt for a concept referred to as “Mianzi” which is translated to mean face in English. This is a concept in the Confucian society which includes the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese whereby members will opt to maintain group harmony by avoiding confrontational situations that might leave their counterparts feeling incompetent and disgraced (Oetzel 239 ). This is simply because the Chinese just like the Korean and Japanese believe that preserving the image of one’s counterpart is more important than openly expressing one’s belief or opinion. On the contrary, the German and the American will show little reservation for open criticism although the Germans are more direct with negative feedback as compared to the Americans. The Germans have a business and work concept referred to as “Sachlichkeit” that denotes objectivity whereby an individual argues against a position rather than the individual representing the position (Oetzel 241). As such, in circumstances were a disagreement ensues, the Chinese should understand that the German is debating against an idea rather than the individual. On the other hand, the American and German should understand the value of saving face for the Chinese consequently, they should be subtle in their criticism. In the area of disagreement, the American and German show a great similarity, hence, disagreements from the onset might prove to be more productivity to their work. The Chinese on the contrary might have the impression that the two are ganging up against him, which will in turn create tension and animosity subsequently hindering the overall group productivity. The situation is however reconcilable if the parties can compromise on their different per...