Insights Into Cultural Understanding

One of many many things that I learned traveling and training in China and Taiwan is that there are significant opportunities for those of us in the educational and training industries to contribute and to learn from the Chinese. The people I met are industrious, hard working, passionate, and making money! The women right up there with the men in their drive to succeed and their no-nonsense manner.

Some of the business people don’t have the educational background they wish they had, though they would never let you know it. Some women are still dealing with the conditioning that they are “less than” because boys were deemed more valuable. (This too could be said for Anywhere, USA/World. ) So get studying, get packing, and get busy getting ready for educational and other super-opportunities with a superpower.

I met this women shopping in the Huge mall in Shenzhen. She is a master at knowing which tea is best for what reason. She learned this from her parents and served us tea in her shop. By the way, the Shenzhen shopping mall was bursting with shops selling “Gucci” and other luxury purses, wallets, etc., clothing, jewelry (check out the jade), home furnishings, and more all at exceptionally low prices. It was a fun place for me to practice buy-ology.

There is also a photo of the view from windows of InVision, a re-organized company I am assisting in getting off the ground in Asia.They have a full range of cutting edge business seminars, as well as personal and family transformational trainings all led by world class master facilitators/trainers/educators.

Their core team’s photo is below and that’s me in the center, with the black slacks on. (More on InVision in a future post.)

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Color symbolism changes from culture to culture. One of my Chinese colleagues told me that wearing all white clothing is a definite no-no when going to a party for an older person because for the Chinese, white is the color of funerals and death. White is used to express sorrow and grief. For this reason, she explained, Chinese brides wear red, beige, or if wearing white, mix it with another color.

The opposite of white is red. “Red, a bright, auspicious color associated with warmth, life and the Fire Element, denotes good fortune and happiness. It emerges as a sacred and vitalizing color used on festive occasions. In China, the color red not only serves to express joy, but also to ward off evil influences. The Chinese regard red as the “lucky color.” At Chinese New Year, children in Chinese families are given little red packets or envelopes packed with money or treats as tokens of good wishes. (At the office blessing I went to for the Chinese New Year, the staff and I were also given red packets with money inside.) The color red is also featured prominently in the clothing and other ritual objects pertaining to the traditional Chinese wedding. In fact, Chinese brides wear red dresses and wedding invitations are printed on red paper.” Good to know when going to a party or wedding.

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From Mary Teagarden, a professor of global strategy at Thunderbird, the Garvin School of International Management, in Phoenix, AZ: “What is essential in a global environment is the ability to work with individuals, groups, organizations, and systems that are unlike our own,” she says. “We must also understand what differentiates people and what unites them. Understanding that tension—how are we alike and how are we different—is a critically important starting point.” And here are three success factors she identifies: “(1) a belief that differences matter; (2) openness to new and different ideas; and (3) cognitive complexity, or the ability to focus on both the “hard” and “soft” metrics in an organization—the hard quantitative side along with the softer, people side.”

Dr. Teagarden states it loud and clear: Diversity training is a global commitment. It truly goes beyond race and gender!

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