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"now you have to improve your accent, then you have to look certain way." Culture is a likely intermediate step. I'm not into watching other people play sports, or top40 music, or drinking beer as a hobby, or watching TV for 8 hours per day, or going to church, and that occasionally makes it difficult to relate to people who have their entire life revolve around those topics (aka stereotypical Americans). I speak perfect midwestern "newscaster" English (Guess where I live? We all sound like that around here, so its no competitive advantage.) However it is still hard to relate in small talk. True stories : "What did you do Sunday, we went to church, went shopping and bought the latest Miley Cyrus cd do you have it yet? Then I got drunk sitting on the couch watching football all afternoon for nine hours and three six packs, still kinda hung over this morning". "Um, well I went for a 4 mile hike around sunrise before it got warm, then hacked around on my computer for most of the day, spent some quality time in the workshop soldering together a little micro controller project with my son, went outside and watched a really cool thunderstorm around dinner time, then watched some youtube video series about dwarf fortress and laughed at the host's antics (LOL he made a hole in the floor next to his well into the ceiling of a lower level, then managed to flood his well, then tried to wall up the flooding corridor with the hole still in the floor, then as usual the dwarf built the wall trapping himself on the flooding side LOL F-ing dwarfs), then the host panicked.) This is usually followed by crickets on both sides as we consider each other's lifestyles insanely boring and a total waste of time. I find it best to size someone up and if they look like a boring bubba type then simply avoid all small talk about culture, but sales/CEO/manager types cannot. When conversations like this happen to me, its merely funny, but when a CEO tries to talk to a business partner this has serious financial costs. The problem with a Korean dude wanting to spend the first 15 minutes of the sales meeting talking about his epic starcraft battle last night is not just the accent. |
For example, you could ask questions about the interests of the person you're talking to - "Really? I've not listened to much Miley Cyrus, I must admit. Which of her CDs would you recommend?". You could draw parallels between their entertainment and yours - "Yeah, we spent a lot of the afternoon watching video too! How was the football?". You could sympathise with any complaints they're making - "Aww, man, you're having to do this meeting hung over? That sucks. Can I grab you some water or something?".
It's definitely a problem, though, agreed - and it's something that's very worth thinking about if you're doing business cross-culturally.