[MUSIC] Welcome to the Culture and Presentations podcast, I'm your host Dr Rachel Harvey. An important part of my job at PWC is to help people develop the knowledge and skills they need to work in our culturally diverse economy. You just watched a video on how culture can impact your presentation. In the video, you learned cultural tips to take your presentation from good to great. In this podcast, you get to see what this looks like in action. You'll hear about cross cultural presentation experiences and strategies from three PWC professionals. Their stories cover a range of situations. We'll hear about presenting to an audience in a different country, and how in the same organization you might encounter different cultures. Finally, you'll hear how these three PWC professionals prepare for cross cultural presentations. The other day I spoke with Brian Dogan, he has 15 years of experience in management consulting. Though he grew up in the United States, his parents were German immigrants. He gained further cross cultural experience during the years he spent working in Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and Hong Kong. He shared a great story with me. Brian, thank you for joining us. It would be great if you could share a story with us about how cultural differences impacted a presentation you gave. >> Yeah, I'm happy to. In my career, I've been really fortunate, in that I've had the opportunity to work across a lot of different cultures, and I've always been fascinated by that. One story that comes to mind, is that my colleague and I were asked to teach a week long consulting course in Hong Kong. And, I was excited by that, because I'd never been to Hong Kong, and I had a lot of just natural curiosity around the people and the culture, and what was it like to do business in China, Hong Kong and so on. So, as good corporate citizens, my colleague and I actually prepared a really nice week long program to upskill about 20 China, Hong Kong consultants on a number of different topics. We eagerly showed up with our curriculum, we had our materials, we had a great plan, and we were really mindful of the fact that our audience was majority non-native English speaking. We were also prepared to try to avoid our Americanisms and we were preparing ourselves to answer a lot of question, and to be very clarifying and things like that. So we felt like we had a pretty good plan in place. So on Monday, we start, we begin our program and by design, our course was intended to be really interactive. So, within the first hours, we were just amazed and surprised by the lack of participation. Nobody had questions, nobody showed any signs of engagement, or even interest for that matter in our view. And, even when we would ask for probing questions, it was just silence. We, of course had a brief moment of panic there, we thought are we confusing people? Are we off the base? Or, people just not getting at? So all of these thoughts were going through our heads. At any rate, as the day progressed and we finally got to the point of a break. I head to to the men's room and to my surprise, about ten people followed me. So, there is a little bit of humor here, right? If you can imagine me standing in the corner of the men's room in Hong Kong, China with about ten guys standing around me and they're asking me loads of questions. So they were challenging me, they wanted my opinion and my perspective on all kinds of things. They were like completely different people. So I'm asking myself, like who are these people, and where were they 20 minutes ago when we were facilitating the course? A light bulb went off. Culturally, in some parts of the world, people are not comfortable challenging and debating with a quote, unquote expert, and that was me, in this case. So out of respect for me, in my standing as the expert on a given topic, they were being very mindful about. They didn't want to challenge me in front the room of people, or debate with me in front of others. They were simply digesting the fruits of our lecture in a very respectful way. So, I learned from that. And by design, we reacted quickly. And what we started to do is we incorporated more breaks, we revisited the design for the rest of our weeks for our session and we created more informal opportunities for people to be at ease. And that did spark a tremendous amount of discussion and questions, and people really wanting to get our individual positions and point of view on things. No one consulting now or presenting to an audience in China Hong Kong, I really try to keep that little story in the back of my mind. I think a couple of things that I would recommend to anybody in that situation of course research in advance. Don't make assumptions, we made some assumptions, and we didn't validate that. And I would always advise anybody that's finding themselves in the position of having to present to a different audience, consult with others that maybe have been in that position. Because I think that can make a really big difference as well. >> That's a great story, and some wonderful strategies that you just shared. Do you have any others that you've done in the past for different cultures, or do you have a general approach that you use when you work across cultures, or engage across cultural communication? >> Yeah, it's a really good question, and like I said, I was trying to be mindful, I think research goes a long way. You're not going to be the only person that's been in that position. And I think I get the best advice, like I said, from really trying to seek out and find people that have been on those shoes before. And they consultant, or person that's conducted business in other parts of the world, they all have great stories, and they've all learned something probably by making some mistakes. So I think reaching out, finding those people, and tapping into that you'll get a lot of great information. And I genuinely find that, people that do work cross border are also very keen and interested to talk about this topic. >> Those are wonderful, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, we really appreciate it. >> It's my pleasure. >> What I love about Brian's story, is it captures the nuances of being on the ground, working cross-culturally. And the agility as well as the preparation that it requires. Let's turn to our next PWC profession, Nicole Carlisle. She began her management consulting career with PWC Australia in her strategy and performance improvement practice. She then joined a US firm where she continued in an advisory management consulting. Given her extensive experience with organizational change, I asked her to share a story about how she tailored a presentation to fit different work cultures in the same organization. Can you share a story with me about how cultural differences impacts the presentation you gave? >> Sure, so, the one that comes to mind involves talking to different audiences within the same organization but tradition roles. PWC was asked to come in to all the radiology departments in the state, and digitize the whole system which would allow doctors, the radiologists, to quickly look at the medical images. So, part of our role, it was to support the change management of the implementation of these systems. And our job was to ensure that they'll use a benefit to the system while we were implementing the system. And then ensuring, once the system was implemented that all the work flows required for it to go seamlessly were in place. Essentially it is the same system and a system, therefore, a specific purpose, right? And, all the folks involved are interested in patient outcomes. But how they help achieve positive patient outcomes and diagnoses are all very different. So, even though they are part of the same organization, culturally, when we present it to them, it was very different. We had to speak to a number of these groups within the department. The radiologists, they're specialist doctors, looking at the images and coming up with a diagnosis. They're very outcome-driven. They're taking a number of data points and coming up with a hypothesis, a diagnosis of what the issue is, the problem is with the patient. So they're very number driven. When we would do our presentations, what resonated most was this high level, qualitative comments like, well, this is going to change patient outcomes. When we created these presentations, before the radiologists, we were very quant-heavy, [INAUDIBLE] number driven. It was, what are the patient outcomes with the new system? How many patients can we see? What's the turn around time? We provided a lot of graphs, a lot of statistics then you have the nurses and though in the same department their roles are incredibly different. It's to ensure that patient journey, that work flow is seamless so that we can get the image and radiologists can do their job. And so their focus is less on the numbers and it was more of like, what did this mean to my patient? What did this do to my workflow and all the people I need to manage around it? So we switch gears in the type of information that we are presenting. We have folks who are working 12 hour days. And, they can be at night shift, during the day. And so when you're presenting, you need to flex to that. You need to come to them. You can't just pull people off the line and take them into a presentation room. You bring your presentation to the coffee center. You're presenting to a group of folks who have been on their feet for 11 hours and it's their last hour, you need to make sure you bring coffee and doughnuts. In these type of clinical environments, you have to flex your presentation to the needs of the audience. >> When you walked into the organization, did you know that these different cultures existed or was it a process of learning about the organizations? >> We had a good idea because we do our homework. Before any other major presentation, we'd go on site, we do introduction. It's also about having conversation with those audiences before you present to them if you have that opportunity. >> You also ask your stakeholder. >> They're an incredible source of information. We had a couple of doctors on the team. And so, they are going to be patient focused. It's about patient outcomes and clinical numbers. And you gather all that intel and information and then you create a presentation that addresses those things. But, you do your first presentation and then you calibrate. So, we added some graphs and numbers. But there was a lot of energy when we discussed what their peers were doing and we're interesting in best practice. So that means, let's focus, let's bring it to the front. >> Do you use some strategies to figure out what the culture is of the different organizations? >> It's being open and paying attention. You can quickly tell, this is a hierarchical organization where I can't go directly to the C-suite. I need to work my way up the management chain versus this is more flat. Can I just walk into the corner office and have a conversation and not step on anyone's toes. If you listen for those types of things and take all that information, all the nuances and all the undertones of what you're hearing and add that to your presentations. >> I love what you just [INAUDIBLE]. I think you capture this wonderful dynamics and is there a strategy, in terms of working across cultures, that you want to share with us? >> Yeah, when you do give presentations, you are presenting information. But the only way you're going to do that well is if you take the time to listen and figure out who your audience is. Because even though you may be rolling out the same system in one department, there are three different cultures within that one department. So if you’re thoughtful and you focus on my job Is to get some information or knowledge across for the audience to do XYZ or to understand something. It goes a long way in terms of how you prepare and how you present. And be agile. When you present, it's about engaging with your audience. You need to figure out how your audience wants to receive that information. And I think that's what I would leave you with. >> That's great, thank you. I love the nuances of what it takes to first understand different organizational cultures and how to your presentation to those. Okay, our final PWC professional that I will be speaking with is Christina Sonaki. She has about 15 years of consulting experience in the deals practice. Over these years, she had traveled to over 30 countries and has interacted with different stakeholders, work cultures ranking from executive boardrooms to manufacturing facilities. Over these years, she had traveled to over 30 countries and has interacted with different stakeholders, work cultures ranking from executive boardrooms to manufacturing facilities. Recently, research and strategy she uses to prepare for cross cultural interactions and presentations. She also shares an experience that she has that shows how factors such as gender impact cross cultures experiences and creates their own unique dynamic. Christina, I'd love to hear stories about, how cultural differences impacted a presentation you gave? >> Sure, so I have one particular story that I'm remembering. I was a directoress, and I had a brand new associate with me. But the associate was a male, and I've had times where I might ask a question, and the client responds, but responds to the male in the room. I found that was a little interesting because I'm not seeing the questions you would think they would respond back to me but because I'm a female they weren't. And it was just something that I had to deal with out there, I don't see as often but it just they happened in more than once. So, I don't think that's a bad thing, just something that might happen if you're a female. >> Very interesting. >> And I don't know if it's because we're at a manufacturing plant where they're just not use to having women as leadership around. And this was only certain countries where I saw it happening. >> So there might have been a mixture of work culture as well as a gender culture, working together. >> And the biggest thing for me is not to take it personally. I see it as more of an issue with maybe them not being exposed to women in the workplace who are women in more leadership positions, and it's nothing that I saw as me doing wrong. >> Is there a story that you can share about something that went wrong? >> This wasn't me personally but it was someone that was in the room with me had stomach issues when we were traveling so they had some Tums and we could have just taken the Tums. They offered it to the room, and because in certain cultures, it's polite to take what you've been offered without knowing what it was, that we had someone at our client site take one and just sucking on it and you could tell from their face that they were really not enjoying the Tums. So, I think just being aware of that. [LAUGH] A good thing. >> Do you have any strategies that you use? >> I would just say preparation, reading the room, being agile, and being able to change. So if you see something as maybe not going in the best direction based on how the questions and answers are going, just switching, being able to switch gears. And, either switch to a different topic or move on. I think that the being able to that was very important. Being aware of my own facial expressions. Knowing what those are, so that one, I make sure that I am not doing anything that would be inappropriate and then also too that I can understand that maybe what their expressions are. I've had a few meetings where we even have a translator. And, sometimes the translator is not really experienced in what we do day to day, they're usually not. So, we have to first take time and think about how we want to get the message across to the translator so that the translator can then translate to the client or to the person that we're presenting to. >> After presenting and doing meetings in 30 different countries. And you're starting day one of your 15 years, what would you tell yourself about communicating across culture? >> So understanding what the different nuances are in different countries, so that you're not doing something that may be considered offensive. And then you're also acting in a way that it was in line with what they would expect. I think it's very important to be aware. I know that there's meeting that we have and once we've been able to understand their background and kind of adapt, we do have better meetings and getting better and better result,. And then also building that rapport or trust that they maybe looking for. So, I think it's very important to be understanding of where they're coming from to make sure that we can build that good relationship and really make it the most productive everything could be. So I think really that research and then being prepared is really key. >> This is wonderful information. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. You've really hit on so many important points and I've learned a lot in the process. The stories that Brian, Nicole, and Christine shared with us really bring to life how culture impacts presentations and communication. They also showed us that working cross-culturally is a skill and it is a skill we all need to develop to be successful. The first step in developing this skill is increasing your self-awareness. This means understanding how your social and cultural background shapes how you think and behave. This includes identifying your biases and blind spots, we all have them. Second, you need to educate yourself about the cultures of the people you work with and meet. This knowledge will help you recognize where cultural differences might impact your interactions and how to adjust your communication style. But remember, learning about the general characteristics of a culture is the first step. Every situation is different. Third, learn from others about how they successfully work cross culturally and use your own experience to create new strategies. And remember, never be afraid to ask someone more knowledgeable than you about a culture for help. Fourth, realize you will make mistakes. Anyone who has ever been in a cross cultural situation knows this. They can be challenging, stressful and uncomfortable. But just remember, those feelings are completely normal. So, I just want to thank Brian, Nicole and Christina for taking the time to speak with us and share their stories. Remember that you are on an exciting journey. Besides learning to work cross culturally, you will learn about yourself and the world around you. So remember, keep learning and always be open and curious. Thanks for listening. [MUSIC]
