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Cultural Interview Lessons From the Road

Republished with permission from WZ

By Chris Norris, CFI

The WZ Non-Confrontational Interview method has been a part of my career for over 28 years now, and I’m happy to say that I’ve been working for WZ for 19 years. Through the years much has changed for both myself and WZ. One of the biggest changes for WZ is the huge International reach we now provide with our training classes. Did you know WZ has operations in Latin America, UK and Europe?

The International division of WZ has provided interview training courses on six continents (the penguins are next!) and to delegates from over 140 countries! I personally have taught classes translated to French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, German, Mandarin and Arabic. Regardless of your travels, your organization’s global reach or simply the need to interview someone from another country, there is always one common thread to interviewing and teaching interview tactics around the world; the need to develop rapport.

When training Internationally, I always ask attendees, “What makes a good interviewer?” A variety of topics, traits, and characteristics often arise, but one response consistently comes forward no matter what country I’m in; the ability to build rapport. So, what is rapport? Rapport is creating a relationship in a very short period of time. How do you build rapport? Let’s take some lessons from my travels to help understand how to build rapport in a multi-national and multi-cultural environment.

Understand local culture

Understanding a bit about the culture of your subject will help you to understand the dos and don’ts of most interviews. Understanding simple characteristics like anticipated spacial proxemics, eye contact, posturing, potential fears, etc. will benefit your interview and your ability to develop rapport.

I remember my first trip to Kabul, Afghanistan. I was teaching a class of Afghan nationals working in an investigative capacity for the US Government. During the class I asked the group to shut their workbooks, as it was time for teacher to become student. I told them I wanted to talk about their culture and learn about them. We had a great discussion and it altered my training a bit, increasing our interaction and their understanding of the WZ method.

Learning everything you can about someone’s cultural norms and characteristics from on-line resources like the US Department of State can prove to be beneficial, but the best resource is simply talking to people. Getting information from someone raised in that culture can help you to prepare and be more effective in the interview room. Allow them to tell you some common characteristics to anticipate during the interview and even potential fears they may possess; which may be very different than your own.

Learn the language

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying try to conduct an interview in another language you just learned from a “Russian for Dummies” book. I mean, make an effort to say simple phrases and greetings. I’ve always made a point to learn how to say ‘hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘good-bye’, etc. in the local language. This simple, effortless task has huge meaning and is a great way to begin an interaction.

I’ve often been asked the question, “Aren’t people in country X typically rude to Americans?” My reply, “I’ve never experienced that…” and I believe is based upon me starting any greeting with “Buenos dias / Guten-tag / Bonjour / Hi-ya”. I remember once in Koln, Germany I approached an older gentleman sitting in a chair in an open square. In German, I said, “Hi, I’m sorry but I don’t speak German well, do you speak English?” He answered in German and I repeated myself. This happened a couple times until he said in clear English with a big belly laugh, “I said, your German is so good, why must I speak to you in English!?” We laughed and he was quite helpful, and my effort to know a bit of his language helped with rapport in that interaction. In fact, he walked me to my destination and made sure the person I was looking for knew that I only spoke a bit of German.

Know a few colloquialisms

“Yes Eugene it’s a real word!” During a conversation with my brother-in-law (Eugene) I was talking about colloquial language and colloquialisms. His response was “Nice made up word bro!” He didn’t believe either word was real or that most people are able to pronounce them correctly. Colloquial expressions vary from region to region and are an important way people identify with each other. Funny, how he now fits “colloquial” into his conversations and will send me a text afterwards to let me know he used the word!

The use of normal language and understanding of local phrases and more informal speech helps to connect with your subject. If you are interviewing your subject in English, understand some local colloquial English phrases; even if English is a second language. Remember, as a point of rapport, we tend to like people like ourselves. When you are using some colloquial phrases or words you begin to build a bit of a bond and present yourself as being more like your subject.

I’ve learned that telling someone in Ireland that dinner was “grand” or replying with a “thanks a million” can go a long way. Even telling someone I was “knackered” while living in the UK showed I was willing to immerse myself into local customs. Listen carefully and think about mimicking your subject; not patronizing, just altering your presentation and word choices. Taking time to adjust your speech and use simple colloquial phrases will create a more natural communication platform with your subject.

Become more animated

The use of non-verbal communication from an interviewer’s perspective is often overlooked. Think about animating your communication with more illustrators and body posturing that is more engaging. Your use of animation can help overcome many language or communication barriers you may experience. Think about animating your voice as well, putting emphasis on good and bad points and expressing empathy through your tone. These points will add clarity to your message.
Once, on a trip to Egypt, I was trying to order dinner with someone who spoke very little English. By using simple words (not slowing my speech or talking louder) and becoming more animated I was able to describe to him what I wanted. The order was placed and it was one of the best shawarma wraps I’ve ever had…nice and spicy, just the way I like it!

Smile!

One of the most important non-verbal communication tactics you can apply to your interviews is a simple smile. Smile when you initially greet the person. Smile when you begin the interview and attempt to develop rapport. Heck, you might even smile when you ask those difficult questions. Smiling in most cultures creates a connection and reflects and openness on your part. Smiling can defuse confusion, resistance and agitation. I’ve been fortunate enough to smile in 70 different countries in my life. Trust me when I tell you, a smile goes a long way to creating a bond.

The reason these tactics work in terms of rapport-building is they help you share a bit more common bond; even though you might be from different cultures and parts of the world. You begin to develop a sense of who the individual is and you share common traits. By sharing common traits and interests, you tend to build rapport because you become much more like them than they realize. Giving someone an opportunity to discover a common interest with you helps you build that relationship in a very short period of time. It helps you build rapport.

To interact more effectively with people from different cultures, check out our IntelliCulture course!

Reading Hairstyles?

We focus a lot on reading people’s nonverbal behavior, but is there something to be read into about our hair also?

This is precisely what Humintell’s Drs. David Matsumoto and Hyisung Hwang argue in a recent paper. Essentially, while past research has argued that emotional expressions can reveal one’s culture, they argue that differing hairstyles, which are often culturally-linked, confounds these impressions and significantly shape our identifications of other people’s nationalities.

Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang are responding to past research (Marsh et al., 2003) which found a distinctive “accent” between Japanese national and Japanese-American expressions. Essentially, this research asked participants to identify the subject’s nationality (Japanese or American), based on their facial expression. When participants were able to do this, it was attributed to fundamental cultural differences in the form of expression.

However, this may have ignored striking confounders that are not linked just to the facial expression.

For context, when we see a person’s face, we process a host of information, such as their facial structure, expressions, and other artificial features, like piercings, glasses, or hairstyle. Each of these have important impacts on our assessment that are often hard for researchers to untangle.

It was these artificial features which Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang turned to in their study. Because hairstyles often differ between people in different nations, even if they have cultural ties, they developed an experiment to see if this accounted for past findings.

After collecting almost 200 students, they exposed them to a series of images displaying basic emotional expressions on Japanese faces, including the photographs used in the previous study to divide between Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans. However, half of the photographs were edited to switch hairstyles between the groups, giving Japanese nationals American hairstyles, for instance.

Once the participants were divided between “original” and “switched” groups, participants were shown a series of images and told that some were Japanese nationals and others were Japanese-Americans. Then, upon being shown each image again individually, they were asked to mark the nationality of each.

As hypothesized, hairstyles did impact evaluations for Japanese nationals and reduced the accuracy for Japanese-American neutral expressions. While it is interesting that Japanese-American emotional expressions were not impacted, it is clear that hairstyle plays a significant role.

This necessarily challenges the idea that emotional expressions have a certain “accent” or “cultural dialect.” Instead, many of those differences could be attributed to proclivities to artificial features, like jewelry or hairstyles.

Not only does this demonstrate the importance of universal emotions, as they really are universal, but it also serves as an important lesson for anyone trying to read emotions across cultures. Our brain immediately picks up on these artificial features as it holistically recognizes the face and emotion, so it might take some training to learn to disentangle them!

Silent Political Power?

Many commentators are keen to read into the nonverbal behavior of political leaders, but is that even really possible?

After Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki last week, it’s safe to say that they completely dominated the news cycle. In a presumable effort for a fresh take, the Washington Post interviewed nonverbal behavior experts, concluding that Putin was the “clear winner” of a “battle for nonverbal dominance.”

This leads to two pressing questions: is it really possible to analyze nonverbal behavior in those settings and, if so, did Putin really win?

First of all, nobody can really say there is a “clear winner” to any nonverbal interactions. This is especially true when somebody is just watching their behavior in the news.

Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto dismissed much of such commentary on the Putin-Trump summit, saying “Whenever there’s a big meeting of leaders, you see all the body language ‘experts’ on TV with interpretations. But the reality is little of that is validated by science.”

This is not to say that we can’t pick up on some nonverbal behaviors, but they have to be carefully distinguished from mere “noise.” Moreover, they can only ever be indicators rather than tell-tale signs of emotional states.

The Washington Post interviewed Dr. Carrie Keating of Colgate University who emphasized how the leaders walked, their gestures, and the extent to which they paid attention to the audience in an effort to analyze the social dynamic. Keating stressed that the most important feature was Putin’s ability to talk first and longest, which she claimed established him as the dominant man in the room.

Dr. Matsumoto did agree that experts can look into certain nonverbal behaviors and microexpressions, pointing out such subtleties as fleeting looks of contempt or disgust, as well as Putin clearing his throat in an apparent effort to control the dialogue.

However, Dr. Matsumoto emphasized that “there are real limits” to any sort of deduction about internal mental states. Expressions must be carefully dissected and coded in a scientific fashion, and the context matters: “You can’t compare Trump walking into meeting with Putin or standing at podium, for example, to video of him sitting down with Angela Merkel. They’re different settings and actions,” he explained.

Followers of this blog know that nonverbal behavior can tell us a lot about an interaction, but it is not a simple process. Yes, we can derive a wealth of information from observing Putin and Trump’s body language and expressions, but it is difficult to figure out which ones signal something interesting and what are just noise.

Similarly, we must be cautious about making claims about somebody’s internal state from their non-verbal behavior. An expression or gesture may suggest that they are lying, but it cannot definitely tell it. This is especially true with people we don’t personally know, as comparisons to that person’s emotional “baseline” are critical.

Still, this is not to say that people can’t learn something about politicians’ motivations and emotions by watching them. In a series of posts during the election, Dr. Matsumoto presented numerous approaches for reading between the lines when following the news. Similarly, this handy quiz helps show us how subtly opinions can be passed off as factual statements.