HR-chefen nr. 4 2013 - What’s Special about Being Danish?

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“What’s Special about Being Danish?”

Your company’s expanding international business gives you a busy meeting schedule this week. Tuesday you welcome new co-workers from Ukraine, Latvia and Somalia, Wednesday you lead orientation sessions for visiting IT project team members from India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Then Thursday you prepare your senior export sales people to host new customers arriving over the next few weeks from Russia, China, the U.S. and Brazil.

By Richard R. Gesteland

From experience you know it’s important that international visitors coming for the first time get a briefing on Danish culture. Each arrival needs to learn the key differences between Danes and his or her own culture. You’d prefer to have a bicultural expert with you at each of those meetings, right? Of course you would…but stop dreaming!

So this article provides you with a shortlist of key differences drawn from 20 years of teaching and research in Denmark as well as the hundred-plus workshops conducted for companies in Jutland, Zealand, Fyn and Lolland.

Richard R. Gesteland After an international career with eight management assignments in six different countries Richard founded the Global Management consultancy in the U.S. He has lectured and conducted workshops for companies in Denmark since 1993. His Cross-Cultural Business Behavior is the CBS Press’s best-seller and his four co-authored books are also published in Denmark.

Companies based in Denmark find that their project leaders, expatriate managers and others with international leadership responsibilities must adapt their Scandinavian management approach in order to meet the differing expectations of counterparts around the world. And new non-Danish employees integrate more smoothly when they understand how their own values and behavior fit with Danish co-workers.

Here are the three cultural differences that consistently cause serious problems for international visitors as well as for Danes doing business in today’s global marketplace:

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personal relationships. Until then the Indians assumed their Danish supplier was not really serious when they demanded payment by email and phone.

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– Danes along with other northern Europeans and Anglo-Saxons tend to be task-focused while some 90 percent of the world’s people are relationship-focused.

– Together with other northern Europeans and Anglo-Saxons, Danes generally communicate in a low-context, direct manner whereas the rest of our planet’s inhabitants often prefer high-context, indirect language.

– Danes and their Scandinavian cousins are strongly egalitarian compared to the 99 percent of the world’s people who are more status-conscious and hierarchical.

Task-focused Danes Meet Relationshipfocused Counterparts Like other task-focused people Danes depend mostly on email, phone and Skype for international communication. Their neglect of face-toface meetings causes misunderstandings with relationship-focused counterparts who expect that important, delicate issues will be negotiated in person.

Unfortunately relatively few Danes seem to be naturally skilled in developing personal relationships with people from other cultures. This social handicap complicates the job of hosting foreign visitors as well as integrating new international employees into the workplace.

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For example, a repeat client from Zealand requested workshops on how to welcome new co-workers from abroad and how to host business visitors from India. Another multinational based in central Jutland succeeds with these challenges by organizing lively social events for new international staff and by finding volunteers to mentor each one. They also arrange special housing for overseas business colleagues visiting from China, India and other countries, taking into account their varying meal preferences.

Another company – this one with an amazing 70 percent world market share in its niche – found itself unable to collect payment from their Indian customers and licensees. Invoices remained unpaid for as much as a year. At our suggestion the firm sent a senior staff member to Mumbai. This adaptable Dane spent two long weeks getting to know her local counterparts, eating curried rice, sipping tea and drinking beer. A few weeks after her return to Copenhagen the Indians had wired payment for all of the past-due accounts. They paid up because this time the Danes met their customers’ and licensees’ expectations by discussing the unpaid invoices face-to-face and building

Tip for deal-focused Danish negotiators: Expect to spend as much time with your relationship-oriented international counterparts at the dinner table as you do at the negotiating table.

Direct vs. Indirect Communication High-context business people around the world often confuse Danes by automatically responding to yes-no questions with Yes even when they really should answer with a negative. This is the number one issue raised at many of our workshops in the Nordic region. For example, you ask your project team leader in Brazil, Russia, India or China, “Are you on schedule? Will you deliver the project next week as promised?” To your frustration, the answer is almost always, “Yes, no problem” but the delivery is still likely to be late.

So what’s going on here? Let’s remember that in the majority of the world it is culturally difficult to say “no” to a customer. High-context people also seem to hope that a miracle will happen, so maybe they can indeed deliver on time.

In cultures using indirect language there are three possible meanings of “yes.”

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1. “I hear you, keep talking.”

2. “I understand you, keep talking.”

3. “I agree with you. We will do it.”

So how do we know which ‘yes’ really means Yes? Three possible answers for low-context Danes: 1. When the “yes” is said firmly and without hesitation, it means delivery may be on time.

2. When your counterpart adds detailed, logical reasons for his or her confidence, it means delivery will probably be on schedule.

3. When you have developed a personal relationship with your counterpart in faceto-face meetings, you can be as confident about timely delivery as you would if a tested Danish supplier were to reply “yes.”

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You don’t have a personal relationship with this counterpart? Then the solution is, do not ask yes-or-no questions. Instead ask openended questions which allow you to gauge progress on your project. Better yet, spend more time with your international counterparts both in their country and at your home office for immersion in the strange, low-context Danish culture. Total immersion is just as effective for learning a new culture as it is for learning a new language.

Two tips for interacting with new coworkers from high-context cultures.

– Remember that your natural frankness is easily misinterpreted as rude, disrespectful and arrogant behavior.

Two tips for interacting with new co-workers from high-context cultures.

– Remember that your natural frankness is easily misinterpreted as rude, disrespectful and arrogant behavior. So try to avoid replying to a request with a blunt “no.” Wait until your new colleague has learned enough about your low-context culture.

– Save ‘black’ humor for use with your Danish colleagues. All humor translates

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badly; the use of irony tends to be taken as an insult by high-context people.

in East and Central Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America where Danish leaders operate these days.

Egalitarian Danes Meet Hierarchical Counterparts Danish project leaders and expat managers tend to suffer culture shock on their first leadership assignment in a hierarchical culture.

At home employees are expected to know how to do their jobs independently, without close supervision. But the vast majority of the world’s cultures have hierarchical values, and that means subordinates are accustomed to the kind of leadership that Danes would regard as micro-management.

What about new co-workers who immigrate from hierarchical cultures? They of course also experience culture shock. Common complaints are, “I often cannot understand what my Danish manager want me to do” and “They don’t give clear instructions on what to do or how it should be done.” Interactive training helps Danes as well as nonDanes understand how egalitarian assumptions differ from hierarchical assumptions and how to make the necessary adjustments.

Consider for example three bright Danish engineers who are former students of mine. All three have recently had extended management assignments in the U.S. and they all expressed great surprise at the amount of detailed direction their American workers expected. And yet Americans are among the most egalitarian people in the world – much less hierarchical than people

In conclusion, my colleague Marcos Vieira offers this tip for Danish leaders who work with hierarchical staff: “Yes, you are expected to ‘act like a boss’. But that does not mean being rude. Gather all the information you need to make a decision and then communicate in a polite but firm manner. That way no one will challenge you and you will be considered a good leader.