Micro-Case Seven: Sub-Cultural Issues: Intent Versus Impact

This case was provided by Elizabeth Kujava and Christine Day

Case Seven, Sub-Cultural Issues: Intent versus Impact, underscores the concept that cross-cultural and sub-cultural dilemmas do occur, in spite of the best of intentions. Communicators need to take responsibility to be aware, ask questions, and learn details prior to communication.

Professional meeting facilitator Rebecca Dumont was driving back to Minneapolis the morning after an unproductive, tense meeting in northwestern Minnesota. She was thinking about the encounter because she was totally befuddled by what went wrong. She intended to be effective, but the impact of what she did was quite different from her expectations. Elsewhere in the past, she had considerable success facilitating meetings, but this time nothing seemed to have worked. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, in a big, loud family, she had recently moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota. The day previous to this apparently unsuccessful meeting, she drove over 250 miles from the Twin Cities (as the Minneapolis-St. Paul area was called) to a very small town in the northwest corner of Minnesota to facilitate a crucial meeting between a non-profit agency and a group of local Native Americans, who communicated with silent gestures and a slight nod of the head. The meeting topic was about a crisis caused by a health care clinic service now offered which was contrary to the Native Americans values.

An hour after the meeting started (with it scheduled to run for another hour) Dumont had shivered as she faced the room full of people. The social temperature inside the meeting room was not much warmer than the midwinter weather outside. The meeting was punctuated by long periods of silence or times when Dumont (rather than the participants) did all of the talking. The people were polite but seemed unwilling to participate in the discussion by speaking or even giving general opinions on how the group felt as a whole. This certainly differed from the loud, boisterous culture in Georgia, her home state, where everyone had something to say about everything. Dumont had tried calling on people directly, but that did not work. However, peoples emotions were evident from the glaring facial expressions and the frosty non-verbal messages conveyed as many chose to sit silently with their arms crossed. Dumont had no doubt that the people there knew a significant amount about the current crisis, but for some strange reason, they were unwilling to speak.

Dumont had tried to maintain her role as a neutral party, speaking objectively and impersonally, relying on facts, data, and other specific examples. She had planned carefully for the meeting from choosing to dress in her best business suit to preparing a specific, time-bound agenda. Without trying to be overbearing, she used her best managerial voice as she concentrated on moving the agenda along, focusing on the present problems with the hope that the evenings meeting could provide some quick solutions. She realized that she had just met all of the people in the room, but she tried to smile frequently to let them know she was here to help. Even though the lack of audience response made Dumont uncomfortable with the meeting process, she had still tried to pay attention to the cues in the room. Frustrated, she finally ended the meeting 30 minutes early.

As the meeting broke up, Ryan Jones, a young employee from the non-profit, came up to Dumont. Since she thought the community situation was becoming tense, Dumont was curious about what Jones might have to say. She wondered why he had not spoken up during the meeting, but chose, rather, to come up after it to comment. Dumont immediately detected what she felt was an attitude on Joness parthis arms were crossed, his eyes were focused on the ground, and he did not speak immediately. When Dumont had just about concluded that Jones had nothing to say, he started to speak, slowly and thoughtfully, with emotion in his voice: We truly do need to consider the past and its implications on this decision. Dumont had a hard time listening to this comment because Jones seemed to have missed the point. Dumont had tried so hard to keep the meeting focused on moving forward, not looking back. She shrugged her shoulders, let Jones finish talking, and then packed up her bag and left the meeting.

It was years before Dumont came to realize the strong lessons that evening taught her. Looking back she realized that she was caught blind-sided by a sub-culture of which she was completely unaware. She also realized that during the meeting, she was unable to be open to a quick adjustment, something that all skilled facilitators needed to be able to do. She now knew that she needed to add depth to her facilitation skills and that she should carefully avoid stereotyping associated with cultures. These were important keys to effectiveness in any communication situation.

Discussion: Responses to the questions should be business-related and analyzed through the lens of the LESCANT model and Hofstedes cultural dimension model.

Q1: Dumont came to the meeting with a lack of awareness of the sub-cultural dynamics of the communication style and the assumed values of the audience. What should Dumont have done BEFORE the meeting to create a more successful outcome? DURING the meeting? AFTER the meeting?

Q2: Victor and Day (2013) believe in the importance of cultural context in the global application of organizational practices. Relationship building, organizational structure, specific processes, practices, and global culture have a fluid interaction that impacts the dynamics of any give situation. Resolution can often be found in the specific effort of those involved to forge a bond of harmonizing expectations. What harmonization should have occurred in this situation? What additional communication skills and sub-cultural understanding skills should Dumont have brought to the meeting?

Q3: What specific communication, cultural, and facilitation skills could she have used that night? What other details would have created a more successful meeting (see Native American communication expert Teuers publication, Everything you wanted to know about Indians but was Afraid to ask 2012)? What issues does Teuer point out that could carry across to many other cultures and sub-cultures?