The myth of globalisation | Peter Alfandary | TEDxAix

I sometimes describe myself as a culturally conflicted Englishman I am first generation born in the UK I was educated at the French Lisa in London for 13 years I spent a lot of my childhood in Italy and 30 years as an international lawyer and I've always been fascinated by cultural differences but I think it was arriving in New York as a 21 year old student that I got my first taste of the oxymoron I'd like to share with you today Global Village not global village in the way brilliantly described by Marshall McClellan when he predicted the Internet in the 1960s but more as a word that we use an expression we use a lot now my New York experience was not momentous but it left a huge affect on me I spent my first day walking the streets in or the word awesome had not yet become fashionable and at the end of the day I decided to take a cab to have dinner with some family friends I knew about cabs I'd taken cabs in London and so I got into the cab and in my very English polite maybe apologetic way I said to the cab driver good afternoon do you think you could possibly take me to and I read him the address on the piece of paper he looked around his eyes had gone funny at this stage his brain was clearly working overtime his answer was unforgettable sunny Joe wanna go what don't you want to go well of course at this stage I was confused because I didn't want to go because I was expected for dinner but I thought for many days and many hours about that encounter rude confused was it me was it him and it made me realize for the first time how very different we all are and how differently we communicate that Sonny do you want to go or don't you want to go was followed by many other examples during my career as a young and not so young lawyer I remember as a very young lawyer negotiating with the Japanese and I went back to the office very proud they agreed to everything I said and my boss looked at me and said Peter are you sure oh yes they kept on saying yes and he explained to me of course that yes meant that they had heard me not that they agreed I realised with my Dutch my German and some of my American clients the directness doesn't necessarily mean rudeness a bit like my cab driver in New York and I also of course learnt that the English really do talk in a code that nobody understands I could cite many examples if we had time but one of them always reminds me of the Italian who when he was told by an Englishman but the Englishman was slightly disappointed by something the Italian said the Italian said why did he even mention it I explained that slightly disappointed in English meant extremely angry and probably you will never be forgiven I learnt about negotiations and the fact that displays of emotion of anger don't necessarily mean that a deal is off even walking out of a room I learnt about time now I'm one of these people who if I have a conference call at half past eight because I'm what's called monochronic I will dial in at 8:26 just in case the password doesn't work first time some cultures don't do that some couches time is how shall I put it a guideline the world won't end if the meeting starts twenty minutes late relax what are you getting so excited about I also learnt about lunches and negotiations so that in some cultures a long lunch in the Middle East in France for example can be an integral part of a negotiation and I always remember a Frenchman who once said that when his New York colleagues suggested that they have a working lunch with a sandwich he actually felt physically sick I learnt about the use of silence in Finland I'm still learning everyday you see my belief is that the idea that there's a global village is a myth there is no single village there are many villages on our globe we talk about global warming global economy global crisis global communication but village life village culture still rules I don't make any value judgement when I say that but I do believe that we have to stop believing in the quasi mythical powers of globalization and we have to start remembering how very very easy it is to misunderstand each other we live in paradoxical times and what I call the 21st century paradox has got two pillars to it the first is the dominance of English in certainly in the world of Commerce as the lingua franca of the world the second is our unrelenting and total reliance on digital communication both of those lead to what's called a cross-cultural dilemma the belief that because English is spoken so much and because it's so easy to communicate that we really do understand each other but we sit in boardrooms Brits Americans Chinese Russian French after negotiating English but do we always understand each other but often not we interpret subjectively we jump to conclusions we look at the world through eyes and lenses that are designed to correct our vision and not the other persons we stereotype we also think and react very quickly and the question we may want to ask ourselves is do we even talk enough we send one hundred billion one hundred billion business emails every day I sit in my own isolated cultural space in X in London in Paris in New York and I write my email and within seconds it arrives in another person's cultural space a space different to mine one where the context is different but email doesn't have a loopback there is no visual or even oral clue that my words may have been misunderstood my tone may have been misinterpreted I write that email in a vacuum unaware of cultural variables so culturally we're not global you see it's all about context it's all about the individual or the cultural group to which he or she belongs my context your context their context we communicate or rather we have contact but does contact mean communication you know it's a bit like internet dating you can meet somebody online but at some point you've got to have dinner with them and I also ask myself a question you may have asked have we forgotten the telephones were originally designed to have conversations on and to have dialogue are we relying too much on purely data at his origin cultural shock was a term which we probably remember used to describe that feeling of disorientation that an expat felt when they went for the first time to another country he or she experienced it firsthand and in situ but now something different has happened cultural shock has become invisible it's become virtual it's hidden behind our technology and the learning experience which we would have gained from either a conversation or face-to-face communication is missing the psychologist Paul bats living once said what is true is not what I say but what you understand I can't see you that well but I bet you if I ask the following question how many women in the room think that men always understand them how many hands go up not many interesting and if I then change the question say how many men in the room think that women sometimes don't understand us are there any man's had yet there are hands going up you see it's all about programming in this world of ours we're not all Macs or all pcs and even the same computer may have a different keyboard we need to focus now on creating new software so that those of you who are Macs in this room and those of you who are pcs in this room can communicate effectively and harmoniously and the key to that is cultural intelligence the key to that is understanding different cultures and learning techniques to adapt in order to improve it's not about taking away it's not about losing our own cultural identity cultural intelligence is about realizing quite simply that we don't all reason and think the same way that culturally we look at a variety of important things very differently risk uncertainty leadership power hierarchy relationships trust but it's also about understanding our own culture within those parameters there is a lovely saying the last thing the fish notices is the water he is swimming in cultural intelligence can be taught and I believe it is one of the key instruments to help us navigate the 21st century paradox my conviction is simple we need to make cultural intelligence part of our education system at all levels it must become a foundation stone we need to teach it in our homes we need to teach it in our schools in our universities in our business schools in our places of worship in our community centers in every one of our villages our children need it I need it you need it our colleagues need it and there I also venture an idea maybe our politicians and our leaders also need a strong dose of cultural intelligence yes this is a call to arms if you like we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to each other you know the dream in me believes that if we make cultural intelligence teaching at all levels part of the education system we may come back bigotry a bit more and increase tolerance who knows but at least let's make it part of our daily interactions the French writer or 20 sythetic savetti said something beautiful si tu de faire de moi more Flair my de Mulas e Tamaki she if you differ from me my brother rather than harm me you enrich me and so the next time you send an email or the next time you get into a cab or an uber in New York remember that your village does not represent v-world and maybe if collectively we all do that on an everyday basis we may we may create a better a richer and let us hope a safer world

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 614,948

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, France, Social Science, Culture, Globalization, Social Interaction

Id: xUYNB4a8d2U

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2015