In My Kitchen with Paula

Beyond the Plate: Communicating Across Cultures

• Paula Mohammed • Episode 19

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Have you ever been traveling and asked a local person a question and they are saying yes, but the meaning you realize later is no?

Join Paula as she dives into the art of understanding different communication styles, Paula serves up a hearty discussion on how different countries have different communication styles. She sprinkles in personal stories, insights from Erin Meyer's 'Culture Map,' and practical tips to help you connect with people from around the world. Whether it's navigating a bustling market or sharing a meal, Paula shows how a little cultural awareness can turn any travel experience into a dance of delightful connections.

HELPFUL LINKS

  • Get my free Travel Planning Tool
  • Read The Culture Map by Erin Meyers
  • Read Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage by Brown and Levenson

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SAY HELLO

In My Kitchen creates connections one dish at a time, by exploring culture through food. I do this through unique culinary workshops, speaking engagements, and of course, this podcast.

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Hi, I'm Paula Mohamed, and welcome to In My Kitchen with Paula. This podcast is a gathering place for culinary adventures who love to travel. Every week, we'll come together with chefs, cookbook authors, talented home cooks, and everyone in between to talk about their story and their unique dish. Using food as the vehicle, we'll take a ride into the ins and outs of their culture and country. Come on, let's get this party started. Hey everybody, I have some food for thought to share with you today. Uh, this past week I have had my head in Portugal as I curate two upcoming episodes, one specifically around the Alentejo region with a really interesting guest, Alfredo, from Freijo do Maio. Alfredo and I have been speaking on the phone and it's got me thinking more and more about communicating with people from other countries. So, And how important it is that we recognize that we all have different communication styles. And as someone who loves to travel and explore culture through food and other vehicles, I see it almost like a dance where I'm the one that waits, watches, and listens to recognize the style of the person that I'm interacting with, and then I take their lead. Have you ever been traveling in another country where you've asked a question and you're sure they're saying yes to your request or question, but in actual fact, you realize later it is a no, or they say they understand what you said, but they definitely didn't. Um, these are experiences that I have done. definitely had, and I hope in this short episode, I can bring some awareness around the idea that you can have stronger connections to the people you meet in your travels by understanding the communication style of the country that you are going to. It can affect your experience from asking for directions, to having conversations with people you meet, to shopping at the local markets, or asking for clarity on a specific topic. Through my practical experience with In My Kitchen, from starting the business and then evolving it through the pandemic, I had the opportunity to communicate with people from a variety of cultural backgrounds, uh, from doing business together, recipe developing, going through a vetting process together, providing feedback. Receiving feedback. I learned quickly how to navigate the different communication styles, and I feel so lucky to have had these experiences, and I recognize the unique position it puts me in, and I want to share what I have learned with you. It was all of these interactions, like interacting for different purposes, uh, communicating with, people from different countries, facilitating actually over about a hundred different online cultural culinary experiences during the pandemic where, you know, the silver lining was of that time. I actually really gained an awareness of how to be mindful in how we communicate with people from different countries than our own. So just to give some background on the early days of In My Kitchen, because I'm not sure how many of you, experienced In My Kitchen in the beginning or are aware of how we started. I was recruiting the best home cooks from diverse cultures to provide In My Kitchen culinary experiences in their homes. And what looked like, what this looked like is, I would find them or they would find me and there would be a an email exchange, and then a phone call, and then we would meet. I had a very specific vetting process, and it was done strategically to be step by step. And I did that so the potential host could have an opportunity to slowly savor what was happening. ruminate on it, think about if this was a good fit for them and move on to the next step before they had to really commit into the tryout that is much more involved. And it also gave me a chance to really determine if this was going to be a good fit for In My Kitchen. So we had the email exchange, coffee, a phone call before that, then a coffee. Then I would actually go to their home to see if the space was suitable to host six people for a culinary event. And then they would be invited to do an In My Kitchen tryout where myself and three to four In My Kitchen selection committee members, aka good friends and family, would go to their home and we would have a two hour culinary experience cooking together and eating together. How great is that, eh? I mean, that's a whole other story about how wonderful that was. Um, but I would actually curate a menu in advance with the potential host. In My Kitchen would pay for the ingredients. It had to fit into our standard budget price points. And we were basically vetting the host at this point and a potential menu that we would use. And then after all of that, there would be the moment of, yes, you're in, or sorry, it is not a good fit. And just to give you an example, when we were at our peak, uh, just before the pandemic, we had hosts from countries, let me think now, we had Spain, Japan, Qatar, Taiwan, Mexico, Trinidad, Finland, Raymond, of course, from Vietnam. Italy, um, oh, Iran, Leila from Iran. And I know there were at least two more that I can't think of at the moment, but I'm sure you can see that through this process there was a minefield of sensitive interactions. How do you tell someone their home is not suitable? Right? I mean, that could be very awkward. And it wasn't that we were looking for anything grandiose or big, fancy, quite the opposite. It just needed to be configured in a way that would be conducive to having six people there for hands on cooking experience and a sit down, let's eat together type experience. How does someone go through this process only to have the selection committee determine It is not the right fit. And how do you curate menus with someone where your goal is to create a menu that is balancing an interactive hands on experience with dishes that also tell the stories of the host and explore the culture, where oftentimes the host is thinking more about their favorite recipes and their favorite dishes that they want to share, and it could be a, uh, a beautiful stew, but it takes 24 hours. Cooking on a very low heat. Right? So there is these mind fields, if you will, that I was navigating. I quickly recognized that my favored way of communicating, which fit beautifully during my event production career, being direct and concise, wasn't going to work in all of these situations. Looking back, if I had not recognized that right away, that I needed to adjust my communication style. I probably, I know I would have offended some people inadvertently and that would just, that would, oh, that would just make me feel awful. I, I, I would not want that to happen. As you know, if you've been listening to our podcasts and participated in In My Kitchen events, I am passionate about connecting across cultures. It helps us to understand each other and our world. And it's why I started In My Kitchen. And when we're eating together and cooking together, I think it takes the pressure off our, of what our differences are in how we communicate. It bridges those gaps beautifully. And that is why I love using food as a vehicle to create connection. But we can't be cooking and eating together all the time. And when I started this podcast show and interviewing people from diverse cultural backgrounds, other countries, I knew being curious would not be enough. I feel I have a responsibility to be an excellent cultural communicator or communicating across cultures and make my guests feel comfortable and trust me as that is going to make a better experience for everyone, including you, my listeners. So this has led me to pair my practical experience and my own research, so to speak, from In My Kitchen with evidence based studies of well being, creating connections and intercultural communication. And this learning is still continuing and probably will never stop. Uh, actually currently I'm reading the book Culture Map by Erin Meyer, focused more on doing business across cultures, but you can, you know, what I'm talking about now and what she talks about in her book, they can cross. how you use them from business to travel to teaching crosses many platforms. Anyway, this book was recommended to me by one of our next podcast guests, Lara Victoria, and I'm only halfway through the book and so far I would definitely recommend this to anyone that wants to learn more about how people think, lead, and get things done across cultures. This book, uh, takes what I knew intuitively when I started in my kitchen and has literally mapped out the communication styles of countries on a low context to high context communication index. It's really interesting. So I knew through my, when I was started in my kitchen that I would be conversing with people. from different cultures, obviously different countries and needed to be sensitive to what I said and what I heard and be mindful of how we communicated and converse. Uh, so basically what Myers has done is these countries sit on an index or a scale where some are low context communicators and some are high context communicators. So low context would be like Canada, the US, Australia, we're, we're very direct, very concise. We follow up meetings with email summaries and high context is, as you can probably guess, is like China, uh, Japan, Spain. Portugal, where there's a lot more being communicated, not just in the words, but also in the what's not being said, and in the spaces in between the sentences, and the physical gestures and facial tones as well. It's, it's so much more complex. So after my experience with In My Kitchen and what I've been learning more recently in the fields of positive psychology and intercultural communication, I can confidently say, just as a caveat to everything, that no matter what, And like in all communication, kindness and respect will always prevail. If you show you are trying to understand and are not projecting your way as the right way all the time, I can promise you, you'll have a positive connection. The key though, is you may not get all the information you need and you may not obtain the outcomes you were hoping for. I am sure none of us want to end up inadvertently offending someone, right? So, uh, here's an example of something that Myers shares in her book, Culture Map, that shows how we can offend somebody. There is a meeting and people are in attendance from a variety of countries. After the meeting, an email is sent out recapping who is responsible for what action items. For those of us listening from Canada or the US, this sounds pretty standard and expected, right? However, from some countries who have a rich oral tradition and written word is less necessary, this email can actually be taken as an insult as they are thinking, according to Myers, Don't you think I know this? Don't you trust that I'm going to get this done? Why are you micromanaging me? Countries that have this style of communication are an example of high context communication countries like China, Japan, Korea, Africa, Okay, so what do we do? So in this specific situation, it can be as simple as the person who's sending the email out recognizing that it's a group of people from different countries with different communication styles and saying something like, Hey, everyone, a lot of information was given out today. I'm not always able to pick it all up at once, hoping you can just review what I've written below. Let me know if I've missed anything. Really appreciate it. Thanks. And what that does, just a slight little deprecating, self deprecating comment, it takes the possible negativity that you could project out onto somebody else, onto yourself and alleviates any kind of misunderstandings and helps people understand the why behind what you're doing. When traveling or doing business or anything that requires communicating with people from other countries, what I have learned is it really helps the relationship or connecting with someone if you have some understanding of where that country sits on the culture map. High context and low context terminology comes from Myers, but you don't need to read the book necessarily to start gaining an awareness of this. Just listening to this episode is going to automatically make you more aware and mindful. It doesn't take much to uncover a country's communication style. Watch, listen, and ask. Like I said in the beginning, it's like dancing with somebody, but not taking the lead. For example, are they using lots of hand gestures? That is a good sign. They're probably a higher index communicator. Listen to how things are said and what is exactly said, or more importantly, what is not said. And then reframe your questions, requests, etc. accordingly. Here's an example, a personal example of what I mean. On a recent trip to Japan, I was visiting a little island called Ikuchijima. and stayed in this fabulous, place. And the manager was this lovely woman who was so gracious and I really felt I connected with her and I really enjoyed meeting her. When we were leaving, I stopped and spoke with her and I asked her if she'd be interested to be a podcast guest. I'd like to have her as a podcast guest on my, In My Kitchen with Paula show. She said she was honored that I asked and gave me her card. She was very appreciative and again, very gracious. And I assumed from the positivity and the tone of this exchange that she wanted to be on my show. Uh, when I got back to Vancouver, I emailed her and I did get a response. and it was lovely and positive. I don't know if you have experienced this, but, You can tell if somebody is a high index or low index communicator often in how they construct emails. So high index communicators, there will be some pleasantries and sincere interest in how you're doing and then get into the, the challenge. the business of things. More low index communicators, direct communicators. It's, uh, like no pleasantries and this can just dive right into the business. And it's not lost on me that we can take this conversation into different directions and, you know, is this something that men do more versus women? I don't know. People who are in business versus people who, maybe are in. The arts are different industries. I don't know. But for this purpose, I'm looking at this through the lens of communicating with countries that we're traveling to. Okay, so let's go back to my example. So she had very lovely pleasantries in the beginning. And again, my, you know, assumption was that she was interested in being on the podcast show. There was a sentence after the, pleasantries that said she was worried her English was not good enough. And I sort of glossed over that, carried on and, uh, But I couldn't get her to schedule a date or fill out the podcast guest form. Eventually I just let some time go by and I reached out again and then I never heard back from her. And I was so disappointed because I really enjoyed meeting her and I couldn't figure out where our conversation went wrong. At first I thought perhaps she has a lot of humility and is very, being very humble and I should have reached out more and more and really, explained to her how much I wanted her to be on the show. And then I recalled a conversation, actually podcast episodes that I had with Naomi. So Naomi was one of our original In My Kitchen hosts, and she's from Kobe, Japan. And, uh, Naomi in our podcast interview talked a lot about how the Japanese are raised to think about the group, not in the individual. So putting the group first and the needs and wants of the community or the group versus your own. And it's actually frowned upon to put yourself out there and to be individual. So I wondered if this played into what happened with my podcast request. Also, now when I look back on the conversation, When I asked her in person, as I was leaving the hotel, or it wasn't really a hotel, but where we were staying, she never actually, not once, did she actually say, yes, I'd like to stay here. to be on your podcast show. If you recall in the first exchange, she said she was honored to be asked and gave me her card. And then over email, she was telling me she was worried her English was not good enough. And that's very typical of, non direct communication is, or high index communicators, is adding in some sort of self deprecating comments, which could be, you know, is what she said was kind of a very polite way of saying no, which Naomi has also told me is very typical in Japanese culture to avoid saying no. And silence can actually speak volumes here. Anyway, as I said, we could analyze the scenario in many different ways, but looking at it through the lens of connecting through our travels with the people in the countries that we visit. I think it's important if you're interested to take some time to get to know the communication style of the country that you're going to. Another sort of aha moment for me I've had around this is thinking about my dad when he was alive and his business dealings. So my father was from Pakistan and his business was with the Japanese. Pakistan and Japan, both being Asian countries, have similarities in their communication styles. They both have indirect communication styles, according to Myers, meaning that there is a lot said that is not spoken. There is a high regard for elders, and I know this from my experience with my father and our relatives, and what my father taught me about his experience with the Japanese. Both India and Japan make an effort to save face. The following is a quote from the book by Brown and Levenson, Politeness, Some Universals in Language Usage, in both Japan and India. People tend to avoid public embarrassment and preserve the face of others, particularly those of higher status, through indirect language and nonverbal cues. So, I now realize that this is comparing Japan to India versus Pakistan, but I think the similarities cross the borders here. My point here is I often say jokingly, my father was more Japanese than he was Pakistani. And in actual fact, I wasn't that far off. In terms of communication, they are very similar. I realize now that my dad's success in building such strong and lifelong relationships with his Japanese customers is most likely due in large part to the comfort level in how they negotiated and negotiated. Communicated together a natural understanding of each other and an ease that built trust and respect quickly. Well, I hope this has given you some food for thought, and I'd love to know what your thoughts are around this episode. Feel free to carry on the conversation with me. I would love to chat to you. You can email me at paula@inmykitchen.ca or find me on Instagram at In My Kitchen, Paula. And if you enjoyed this episode, please provide a positive review on Apple Podcasts. You just go to the show, not the episode. You go to the show and click the three dots on the right. And it really helps me to get our podcast show out there to other culinary adventures like yourself. Have a look at the show notes. I'll put in the books that I referenced in there and, um, catch you on the next episode of In My Kitchen with Paula. Thanks for listening.

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