I had my first Cross Cultural Clash in Spain in 1973 at the age of 20 as the newly appointed (and totally green) Sales Manager of Grand Met’s Castellana Hotel in Madrid. I innocently suggested to the General Manager from Gran Canarias that they should regularly clean up the floor of the 5-star bar where all the local businessmen met for their mid-morning tapas. Within 15 minutes of opening, the floor was always strewn with greasy paper napkins, lemon wedges, prawn and crabs legs eyes and antennas, chicken bones and olive stones. As a recent drop-out of Bispham Catering College, I couldn’t believethat the health and safety inspectors had not closed the place down! I was ignorant of the fact that the prestige of Madrid’s most popular tapas bars was largely due to the depth and variety of the overflowing tapas residue on the floor!!!
Needless to say I didn’t last long with the wily “Canarias” GM who insisted that my job was to sell rooms and events of his hotel, whereas my performance back in the UK was measured by sales that I made from Spain to Grand Metropolitan hotels in the rest of the world.
Two years later, serendipity and synchronicity found me working throughout North Africa as anInspection Engineer for a large American Corporation in Nigeria, Gabon, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya (based out of Malta). In my first assignment inWarri, Nigeria. I was shocked to see how the “Texan Rednecks” treated the local workers – insulting, cussing and kicking them!
I decided to make friends with the labourers in my team and I was beginning to feel I had earned their trust and respect and was becoming a “favourite”. That all changed one day when one of the foremen decided to test and overstep “my” limits when I invited him into the staff house for a glass of water and he went straight to the fridge and grabbed a beer. I tried to keep my cool and imagined that my colleagues had granted him this privilege. However, I completely lost it and angrily grabbed from his lips the cigarette that he had just taken without permission from a packet in a colleague’s bedroom, watching me “insolently” all the time to see how I would react!
“That’s Enough!!” I shouted!
2 minutes later I was nearly lynched by a crowd of angry natives calling me“British Colonial Pig” and other insults. They knew what to expect from my “rough” and “rude” American colleagues and accepted it as part of the “banter”. I had lived-upto the Brits’ reputation of beingduplicitous and untrustworthy!
I then metRichard Lewis in 1975 at the Linguarama TEFL training he gave at Canterbury University and subsequently worked as a teacher and Business Development Manager with him in Madrid until 1981 when I moved to Chile with my Chilean wife and 2 small children.
Due to the political, social and economic climate at that time (Pinochet/Curfew etc) Richard turned down my offer start a school for him in Chile which promptedme in 1982 to set up my own training business, International Business Consultants,from where I continued to promote residential English trainingto senior Chilean executives atRiversdown House.
In Spring 1991 I received Volume 3 Number 1 of Richard’sCross-Culture Magazine titled “The Cultural Gulf” featuring a great cartoon of Sadam and George snarling at each other from either side of the Gulf and a brilliant article on how inevitable the war was because of the lack of cultural awareness on either side. For several years I received the Cross-Cultural Letter to International Managers which I eagerly devoured, and in 1994, or thereabouts I organized a Cross-Cultural Seminar at AMCHAM CHILE featuring our top comedian at the time, Coco Legrand, (Not unlike the late Dave Allen) who poked fun at the Chilean idiosyncrasies. However, I never succeed in getting enough interest in the subject to bring Richard back to Chile to give a seminar….
Following my life-changing, serendipitous purchase ofStephen Covey’s”The Seven Habits…” in a bookshop in Miami 1995, I had a synchronistic meeting with Tom Morell who held the franchise for Covey Leadership Center in Latin America.He had invited me to a magical Seven Habits Training in Rosario Argentina. I returned to Santiago with the proposal to become licensee for Chile in my briefcase.
In 1996 we launched CLC Chile(subsequently representing Franklin Covey) and for the next seven years we enjoyed amazing synergy with Puerto RicansTom and Walter and all their regional partners from Mexico, Panama,Venezuela,Peru,Colombia, Argentina, Brazil andUruguay.It was here that I learnt to dance and sing“Macarena” and other tropical rhythms and had my first experience negotiating as a multi-cultural Latin Team with our North American colleagues, largely from Utah.
In 2006, due to a major shake-up ofFC’sbusiness model for Latin America, I decided to change boats and team up with Joseph Grenny and his co-authors of Crucial Conversations, with Vital Smarts ( today Crucial Learning)This deeper dive into Habit 5 has been extremely rewarding and has given me the opportunity of corporate training in Spain, the UK andthe UAE
Dubai in 2017, was a major turning point. Facing 15 different nationalities was the first time I encountered Cross Cultural resistance to a globally recognized training programme.
- 1 hour into the 2-day programme, after sharing a video of a mild-mannered boss providing feedback to a team member, an Egyptian delegate “aggressively” stood up to “complain” that this methodology would not work with his team as such a mild approach would not have any impact with his team or for that matter in his company! The message had to be delivered forcefully with appropriate gesticulation and reference to “Allah”!
- 2 hours later a charming Thai lady timidly raised her hand to inform me that the video showing a Nurse giving feedback to a doctor who had been rude to her would be totally unacceptable in her culture. Although all the “Linear Active” and “Multi-Active” delegates loved the video, all of the “Reactives“were concerned about the “loss of face” that they might inflict upon the doctor.
Fortunately, I was well prepared, having recently attended a Cross-Cultural Facilitator Training in The Lewis Model with Richard Lewis, Michael Gates and Caroline Lewis at Riversdown House!
I told both delegates that I would address their concerns after the lunch break and during lunch hastily prepared a 15-minute presentation of The Lewis Model in which I thanked both delegates who had “spoken up” for giving me the opportunity to address the importance of cultural awareness and that it would be a terrible mistake to just translate the American “script” for a Crucial Conversation” into their own language. With this awareness of the Cross Cultural factors they would have to decide on the best way to empathically communicate their concerns. Serendipity andSynchroncity had again come to my rescue. If I hadn’t been in desperate need of “Respite Leave”,having cared for my aging and infirm parents for nearly 3 years back in the UK, and chanced upon the ad for the course atthe amazing Riversdown House, I wouldn’t have attended the Cross Cultural Training.
Thanks to the success of this first Crucial Conversations course in Dubai, I was invited back in 2018 and this time came better prepared and had mapped out all the participants according The Lewis Model,considering their cultural backgrounds and their organizational roles on a poster.
I gave a 15-minute condensed introduction to the model and how I had mapped them all, together with the nationalities represented in the videos and my own British /Chilean mix. The moment I noticed a doubt, it was sufficient to point to the poster and they immediately re-aligned and adjusted without further explanation.
We returned to Chile in 2019 just in time for the Social Uprising… followed by the Pandemic. The bottom fell out of the training business, so I decided it was time to see what semi-retirement felt like. Whilst working as Vice-Chair for English-Speaking Union (a British based ONG that I had helped launch in Chile in 2005), I became acutely aware that in Public-Speaking and Debating an excellent command of English is no longer sufficient. An awareness and sensitivity to Cross Culture was vital. I therefore began expanding my network in the field via Linked-In.
My friendship with Michael Gates led me to read a post by dear Irina Yashkova about her work with NASA as interpreter and Cross Cultural Advisor for the International Space Station for the last 25 years. I woke up at 2 am with the idea of bringing her and Michael to Valley of the Moon in the Atacama desert to raise the awareness of the importance of Cultural Intelligence in Latin America as it engages with the rest of the world.
For the last 18 months we have been discussing with Michael Gates, Irina Yashkova, Mona Lou Cherkaoui, Christine Mullaney, Bill Tipton and Frank Larkey and several other prestigious specialists and have come up with the concept of Cross Culture Ambassadors whose website we are inaugurating today in Beta Mode to explore the opportunities.
We look forward to hearing from all who are interested in contributing to the website and perhaps participating in the CROSS CULTURE AMBASSADORS SUMMIT we are planning for 2025/2026 and/or providing your own specialized services through us in Chile and Latin America.
Serendipity and Synchronicity in action again!!!
Let’s create the Synergy to push this forward to put the 3 “S”s in SuCCeSS with the focus on Cross Culture.
Philip Ray
March 2025