Early on in my career, I had the unique experience of living and working in India for an Indian company for 2 years, despite being born and raised in the USA. This experience was full of both fun and novel challenges, not the least of which was adapting to a very different culture and way of working.
1.Time and Scheduling
Being from the USA, I was accustomed to certain styles of working: strict adherence to schedules, being outspoken and direct in meetings. Yet India was a different ballgame.
It wasn’t uncommon, while working for a large entertainment company in India, to wait over an hour past the scheduled meeting time for the meeting to start. While unlimited servings of chai during waiting were welcomed by me, it was still frustrating to feel that time was not respected and kept to. However, this flexibility with timing was one thing I had to get used to and accept.
2. Work Culture
In India, the culture is much more relational than in the West. While I was used to things getting done quickly and transactionally, work in India was based so much on who you knew, how well you knew them, etc. Thus, it took more time for projects to get done, with more socializing and unclear communication around money and logistics. The best way to describe it was “passive-aggressive” in a way – one had to glean what the other person was saying without hearing it directly, and act accordingly. This experience improved my ability to learn to read between the lines of a situation and understand the “hidden message” of someone’s behavior, which has actually improved my work in organizational culture later on.
3. Relationship to Authority
At the same time, in India, I had to learn that respect for elders and seniors at my company meant that I had to follow certain cultural norms around communication. While I was used to speaking my mind and challenging authority with my own thoughts in the US, I had to tone this down much more in India and learned the art of “yes and” with much more nuance. It was a good exercise for me as well in learning how to be much more diplomatic and pleasing in my speech. I also became aware of small nuances, like that it was rude to cross my legs during meetings and indicated disrespect, which was quite a surprise to me. \
4. Language Barriers
While I am a native English speaker, our team spoke mostly in Hindi, which was a language I had to pick up during my time in India. Although they understood English, it was clear that speaking in Hindi would increase the effectiveness of our conversations and help me to adjust to feeling part of the team more. Over time, I was able to learn the language and even pick up some of the idioms and colloquial phrases, which helped me to feel closer to my team.
Fitting “Out” Instead of “In”
However, I found that there were some things that being from the USA, I was unable or unwilling to change. For example, rather than forcing myself to not cross my legs(a very difficult thing to do), I decided to address it openly with my supervisor and team and explain that it meant something very different in American culture.
While learning to adapt to a new culture was an important piece of working in India, it was equally important to hold on to what was important and unique about me, coming from the USA. Sharing my own cultural norms around time and doing business was important, if at the very least, for letting them know that this was a big adjustment for me. Thus, while “fitting in” is important, I believe it is also essential to bring our own flavor of work and not stretch ourselves beyond our capacity in order to “belong.”
For example, when I found much of the work with data was being done manually, I introduced data analysis tools and helped train our team in them. Also, by letting my teammates know my own norms with time, I noticed they gradually began to improve their own timing and were less late for getting started on meetings. It is through this sharing and respect for eachother’s ways of working that we truly learn to collaborate and find the best ways.
My early work in India informed my work later in the USA in so many ways. For one, so many of my clients have had global teams, and I’ve been able to utilize my expertise working across cultures to enable them to find alignment in ways of working. But even in my work within US teams on culture, I’ve been able to utilize the emotional intelligence and mental flexibility I’ve gained from working abroad to facilitate change.
Everyone of us is on a spectrum in terms of the ways we communicate and work, and a lot of it is determined by the dominant culture in the country we live in. As work becomes increasingly global, it is more and more important to learn how to work across cultures and identify the best ways of working, through respecting eachother’s norms and finding ways to integrate different styles.