Cultural Bridging
First 100 days working in Corporate China
First days are always a special challenge. First days in a new project in a new country in a completely different culture are definitely not less of a challenge. While trying to adapt to the new professional environment, I made several observations that many people with a European working background will make. Hence, here is a short excerpt on some of these findings.
Work uniforms – common in lots of corporations especially in rather conservative manufacturing companies. During my first visit to the Chinese part of the joint venture in a small town close to Beijing, I had brought two suits for my week there and that was about it. After a few hours during the first day there, I felt extremely overdressed as everyone else was wearing work uniforms. I later reduced my style to business casual which didn’t cause as many looks anymore as before and made me feel a bit more comfortable.
Sweatpants and sneakers – both are omnipresent. During my first rides in the Metro in realized how many people wearing sweatpants and sneakers here. In the Metro this observation was not unusual. However, during the first few minutes at the office I noticed the exact same thing. Many people in China wear sweatpants and sneakers even in a business environment.
Lunch naps – something I thought about doing from time to time in Germany already and in my first job in Germany I do remember catching myself to take a quick nap after lunch in the lounge area. In China this afternoon lunch does not seem to be stigmatized but appears to be very normal. People even buy special desk pillows for this that are designed for the afternoon desk nap. Coming back from lunch you will see many people taking their regular power nap. Considering that the German habit to overcome the afternoon dip would be to drink one or two espressos regularly, the Chinese way seems a bit healthier.
Separating business and private persona – the clear separation between business small talk and the personal world with your private space is not so clear in China. Private social media accounts (WeChat) are exchanged and used for work purposes; communication happens on a very different level. The first 100 days were not enough to understand how the communication works, so much for my initial observation.
Business communication via email – a quick email to a few people with some open questions for a management slide that you created and which content you discussed in the last meeting? This does not seem to go a long way. Decisions – even if formally agreed – require about 10x more communication and alignments than they do back home in Germany. Email – in most cases – is regarded as a management tool, not as the communication tool that it is in Germany. Discussions and open questions should be aligned with a quick call, WeChat messages, DingDing (apparently used the same way we would use Teams or Skype communicator as modern forms of digital business communication within companies) or personal 1:1 meetings – separately, with every person involved in the process. The email should only be used as the final tool to communicate the final version of a document after having gone through the communication process described above. Here, an indirect tone, rather formulated as a slight suggestion should be preferred.
Not everyone uses Microsoft products – where you would generally assume – or not even think about – people use Microsoft products like Outlook, Word, etc., this clash hits you slowly, especially if you work for a Western/Chinese Joint Venture and you are communicating with the chinese shareholder. First observation is probably the unanswered email or the missing notification whether the counterpart has accepted a meeting or not – or sometimes even missing the meeting entirely. Then you might find the fonds and formatings being slightly off in a shared Word or PowerPoint file. Only after quite some time you will learn that they don’t want to put you off or offend you as you might think after the fifth meeting without anyone showing up. Simply speaking, not everyone uses Microsoft products. There seem to be a range of other office softwares on the Chinese market that are popular – Hence, when people don’t answer your meetings it might be because they are not used to the „cultural norm“ of accepting or declining your meeting invite or even using Outlook at all. In my case, the company had installed MS Office on the computers of the Chinese colleagues in order to enable them to work with us more easily – but noone really cared about the programmes and therefore didn’t use them. We had to learn the hard way.
Bringing along treats from your weekend and holiday trips – something that is sometimes found in German working culture – but not really manifested – as well is bringing treats or snacks with you for your coworkers after returning from a weekend trip or a holiday. Based on my short experience, food plays a major role in Chinese culture and Chinese love to try new kinds of food. Hence, when coming back from a trip there is almost an expectation to bring along some small treats from the area you visited for the colleagues to try. It’s a great bonding mechanism and helps with initiating some small talk about your trip.
Small talk – in the very beginning I had a conversation with a few colleagues about the difference between small talk in China vs. small talk in the West. It was argued that in China small talk at work does not exist. The random 2-3 sentence talking situations about weather and the weekend at the coffee machine are perceived odd. Instead, when wanting to talk to a person, you need to approach them with a specific topic. After having observed and interacted in a bit of office chit chat for some time now, I feel that it does not really differ from my view on small talk. Initiating conversation with people you vaguely know and start talking about the weather or the weekend still works well here, at least in an international company in a large city like Shanghai. However, one question that always leads to confusion – but in the end also to small talk about the oddness of the question – is the classical anglophone “how are you?”. The question about feelings and personal well-being is perceived as being rather personal business, so a lot of Chinese are a bit uncertain as to how to react to this question. As mentioned above though, being open about this cultural diversity also leads to some interesting small talk and ice-breakers.
The above differences and similarities are of course only a description of my first 100 days in China. This list is neither conclusive nor objective. Additionally, not being able to speak or understand Chinese definitely creates a barrier between myself – the foreigner – and the Chinese colleagues around me. It makes bonding and understanding the culture much more difficult.
Nevertheless, I think that being aware of some differences in the beginning, helps to stay open-minded. I learned that I need to be much more careful about behaviors or rules of engagement that I have established in my western mind. I need to be more attentive and challenge or question these structures in order to understand and overcome misunderstandings in business situations.