Students need ‘cultural IQ,' experts say

Today's business world is an ethnic melting pot so be set to jump in the mix

Three months studying in Paris connected Lavinia Lee with a global network of contacts.

By: Matt Kwong Special to the Star, Published on Thu Sep 05 2013

When Nike debuted its tribal tattoo-themed tights this summer, New Zealand consumers were aghast.

Within a month, Nike pulled the women's line. It's understandable why.

The Pro Tattoo Tech collection was designed as a modern take on Samoan and New Zealand indigenous markings. The problem?

The traditional Pe'a tattoos that inspired the print are only inked on men.

Their depiction on women's stretch pants, bras and bodysuits offended the Pacific community.

It was a cultural blunder that demonstrates the business challenges of today's globalized economy.

“We're not a localized business world anymore,” says Gayle Cotton, a cultural science keynote speaker and the author of Say Anything to Anyone, Anywhere.

“Now we're selling to everywhere,” she says. “Cultural IQ goes right along with that. If you don't have cultural awareness, you're going to be at a severe disadvantage.”

Business schools and MBA programs in a multicultural Canada are adapting, too.

A mastery of technical, analytical and theoretical concepts can get you only so far in a multinational context, explains Shai Dubey, director of the Queen's School of Business full-time MBA program.

Check out Statistics Canada's projections of immigrant populations in the next 20 years and you can see why.

In 2006, visible minorities accounted for about 43 per cent of Toronto's population; by 2031 that figure will rise to 63 per cent, notes Dubey.

As for what that means for business in Canada, Dubey says it's all about taking on a global perspective. Navigating international business means understanding subtleties such as eye contact, respectful handling of business cards, handshakes versus bows, even the appropriateness of back-patting.

“We're hoping to see a student become a leader of tomorrow who can adapt to any environment, lead people of any culture,” Dubey says.

“Effective leaders,” he says, “who can manage people and bring on people regardless of where they're from, and negotiate and make deals regardless of where they come from.”

Mandeep Malik, director of the exchange program at McMaster University's DeGroote School of Business, calls these future leaders “globe-intelligent” managers.

“This new-age student demands an understanding of international business practices, and is willing — if not keen — to invest time, effort and money to do so,” Malik says, adding it's not uncommon to walk into a boardroom in Canada and see four or five different cultures represented at the table.

The full-time MBA program at Queen's is a global classroom, with nearly half of the students coming from foreign countries to study here. Even among the domestic students, many are visible minorities or second-generation Canadians.

Like McMaster's DeGroote program, Queen's also offers international exchanges to a list of about 25 countries, with partnerships in Spain, Singapore, China, Finland, Germany and Africa.

Lavinia Lee, 30, spent three months in Paris before completing the Queen's MBA program last May. At ESSEC Business School in Paris, her instructors in luxury brand management had previously worked for such names as Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton.

“I met students in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and now I have a network that expands far beyond just Canadian cities,” says Lee, who is job-hunting at the moment.

At Queen's Kingston, Ont., campus, the demographics in the MBA program provide ample opportunities for learning about soft skills and body language, says Tamas Toth, a 29-year-old student who was born in Hungary.

“There's a team-based environment the school is focused on, so you're basically together in a group of six of seven people,” he says. Toth met peers with Greek, Indian, Lebanese backgrounds.

“You get perspectives of as broad of a base of cultural and professional experiences as possible, but also you get exposed to all the various cultural aspects of people that are in the program,” he says.

Indian and Chinese cultures may have more of a “collectivist or hierarchical” business mentality, for example. The decision-making happens at the top and lower-ranked employees don't question superiors.

Dubey teaches effective ways to communicate across cultures and also holds negotiation exercises to analyze how cross-cultural clashes could be barriers or even doom a lucrative deal.

If you think that sounds like an unlikely real-world scenario, think again.

An American client of Cotton's approached her for cultural consulting three years ago after it lost out on a major deal with a South Korean tech giant.

She learned that the Korean team arrived bearing gifts, their American hosts never reciprocated.

The oversight could have been perceived as disrespectful.

An extreme example, maybe, but a good case of how doing a little homework on protocol could have kept a deal afloat. The bottom line, Cotton says, is the global business economy is here to stay.

“There's a reason people who were educated and finished their degrees 10 years ago are now having our companies go in to train them,” she said.

“If you're going after an MBA, you're not messing around with where you want your business career to go. You should have the communication skills of today's world.”