The modern interfaither (part 2): Preparing for interfaith dialogue at the strategic level

Even the best can get cross-cultural comunication wrong

During a visit to China a couple of years ago on an MBA field trip, we attended a very prestigious business school to hear a lecture on cross-cultural communication. We arrived by bus and the dean of the school drove up to us in his chauffeur driven limo. He met with our lecturers, themselves very esteemed academics at a top ranked business school, and I watched as they exchanged business cards in the customary Chinese fashion. Each would present their own card with both hands, receiving the other persons card in the same way, and stare at it in appreciation. The longer the stare, the more honour you give to the person whose card you're holding. To do otherwise would be to dishonour the person you have just met. I was always quite proud that my card got a longer stare the Chinese business executives who we met because, where as my colleagues came from business, mine read PC 21299 Dan Stork Banks and had the name of my police force. It was so confusing to our hosts trying to figure out who I was and where I came from that I was greatly honoured with an extra long stare!

I felt quite offended however when my lecturers returned to the bus and the dean whisked off in his limo without them. We all met a few minutes later at the b-school reception building. After a tour and a meal, which in China included of the heads and feet of various birds & fish, we sat in the lecture theatre. Around us were indigenous MBA students, the future champions of Chinese industry and politics. As the lecturer proceeded to teach us how to engage across cultural barriers effectively, I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable how he we was belittling our own culture. When he finally referred to one of our lecturers, with a twinkle in his eye, as “the pretty lady”, believing it to be a complement (her face told otherwise), I realised that this lecture was ironically an example of how not to engage across cultures. Next, to my horror, my own economics professor then stood up and lectured the Chinese students on their anti-Japanese xenophobia and why China must let go of any claims on Taiwan. This awakened the government spooks in the room who started started scribbling furiously and the dean became increasingly redder in the face with outrage. By now I was wondering if I was going to be arrested before leaving the China. Both schools had created an uncomfortable PR disaster. They knew the theories behind cross-cultural communication, but they had failed to examine each others culture sufficiently before meeting. The consequences were that it irreparably damaged the relationship between the two premier institutions.

Culture and interfaith understanding

In this post I want to look at how understanding cross-cultural communication strategically is vital to both successful interfaith dialogue, or for organisations, such as the police, who wish to engage with hard to reach religious groups. Culture can be a difficult term to pin down and I do not propose to do so here. Most people have an internal sense of what it means anyway. But if it helps, my favourite description of culture is “the way we do things around here.”

Most religious people have conducted interfaith dialogue at sometime in their lives. This might have been with a work colleague of another religion, between religious student bodies at university, or maybe even between different denominations of the same religion. Interfaith dialog can be both person-to-person, between organisations, and even between religious countries. No matter what level it is conducted at, culture has a massive influence on the success or failure of the discussions. What people are willing to acknowledge, give up, change their mind on, offer, agree & disagree over etc. is deeply culturally dependant.

The Strategic Level

When getting involved in interfaith dialogue, the cross cultural element must be identified at the strategic level. Johnson & Scholes (1999) helpfully break down the antecedents of culture so that negotiators can have a fuller understanding of who they will be working with. I have adapted their model to be useful to faith based groups:

1. The Paradigm: is the set of assumptions about the religious group which is held in common and taken for granted in your organisation.

2. Control Systems: the ways that the religion and its institutions are controlled. These might be theological, financial, operational, and rewards systems (spiritual and temporal) etc.

3. Organisational Structures: this includes both the structure defined by the organisation, and the unwritten power-lines that indicate whose contributions are most valued e.g. religious leaders, trustees, or national governments etc..

4. Power Structures: The pockets of real power in the religion such as pressure groups, influential congregational members, & scriptural interpreters etc.

5. Symbols: the visible representation of the religion and the particular institution including art, dress codes, architecture etc. and includes both the formal and the informal.

6. Rituals & Routines: The daily behaviour and action of people that signal acceptable behaviour. This determines what is expected to happen in given situations, and what is valued by its leaders.

7. Stories & Myths: The past events people talk about inside the religion. Who and what the religion chooses to immortalise says a great deal about what it values and perceives as great behaviour.

Breaking down the culture of your opposite number into its component parts allows risks to be identified early on and the sources of problems to be identified. But this is not a one way examination, seeing your own culture in this way also helps to get a handle on how you will be perceived by those you negotiate with.

However during engagement of this type, high level analysis is not enough. In my next post I will examine Cultural Intelligence as a means of relating at the personal level.