Meeting Tim S.

Meeting Tim S.

Date of conversation: July 9 2011 

Location: San Francisco

Interviewee: Tim S., Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies
Typical Saturday morning: no typical Saturday morning really- it depended on Tim's age and activities at the time

I ‘meet’ Tim via Skype on a crisp Saturday morning: after three weeks of living in Northern California, I have come to the conclusion that the weather here would be complex to analyze. While sunny blue skies are to envy from rainy Berlin where Tim currently lives, the cold wind during perfectly sunny days makes me wish for the hot and humid summer feel of the East Coast that time of the year.

Tim picks up the phone sounding cheerful and relaxed: it is Saturday afternoon in Germany and he is at home with his family. I hear chatter at the background and start to wonder whether talking about culture is the top thing Tim wants to discuss right now. He assures me the time is good, and I launch into my first set of questions.

Family and Background
Tim grew up in the town of Bremen, a part of the Bremen- Oldenburg metropolitan area which has over two million residents and is located in Northern Germany. As he describes his hometown, Tim brings up Bremen-based beer bottle manufacturers to jolt my memory of his city name. But having grown up with the Brothers Grimm stories, a bedtime favorite my mother used to read me, he needs to say no more. The Bremen Town Musicians, Tim agrees, are just as worthy symbols of the city.

Tim comes from a traditional German family: his mother stayed at home to raise him, while his dad, a CEO at a German harbor company travelled extensively for work and was the main breadwinner. I ask who influenced him professionally the most, expecting maybe to hear that it was his dad who inspired him to be a leader in his field. Tim doesn’t pause to think twice and says, “It was both my parents, although I must confess that at an early age, I didn’t take much advice from either.” Before college, Tim considered journalism and political science as a potential career track, but a piece of advice from a current journalist kept him away from the former. Tim recollects him saying: “don’t learn journalism, learn something else and then talk or write about it.”

Career in the US
Tim joined a US research institution as a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. That is how I first met Tim in fact: he delivered a lecture at my graduate school at the onset of the financial crisis. The lecture was entirely in German, and as I listened to Tim explain why the German financial system stood a bit stronger than Wall Street, I recall the concepts and the language taking turns to confuse me. All in all, I was impressed by Tim’s professional, and yet very personable presentation on this grim matter, which prompted me to invite him to participate in my study. “It must be his cultural upbringing helping him address issues melding optimism and objectivity so well”, I thought.

I ask Tim my favorite question: how direct are you in your communications at work? Tim responds firmly, “As I get to know people, I become more direct. At the beginning of making an acquaintance, I measure my words twice”, he says. I think about that statement- we all beware what we say and when we say it upon meeting a new colleague or a friend. I wonder though how ‘thinking twice’ has become a part of some corporate cultures and workers who are perceived as more direct (even to colleagues they already know) risk making a name for themselves as non team players, outsiders. The meaning of ‘direct’ I won’t tackle in this research, and I leave it to the reader to interpret as it best fits their understanding of it. Direct, to me, means expressing a thought without explaining where the thought originated from and why.

I look at my watch- it is almost 30 minutes since we started speaking and Tim is as chatty as when we first started talking about culture. I want to ask him my ‘end of conversation’ questions so I bluntly say, “Why do Americans think things are always going to get better?” “Out of experience”, Tim answers quickly again, “The country has gotten created on the basis of that belief. In Germany people think things are going to always get worse. For example, when the economy is doing great, they say this must be the peak and it’s going to get worse from now on.”

Tim, however, doesn’t seem to relate to the half-empty outlook on life. He sounds cheerful, seems to harbor a strong love for Northern California and speaks fondly of the American way of life. Has his cultural upbringing in Germany not given him a proper lens of pessimism to bend through good-fortuned reality? I decide to ponder that question later, and conclude this interview. I thank Tim, and wish him a nice evening. He, smilingly I think, says ‘no problem’ and continues onto enjoying the rest of his weekend.

Meeting Sampriti Ganguli

Date: June 18th 2011

Location: Washington, DC

Interviewee: Sampriti Ganguli, Managing Director at the Corporate Executive Board

Typical Saturday morning in home country: getting together with other Indian families to go to brunch or to make a trip

It is 10:02am on a Saturday morning and Dupont Circle is bustling with activities- a large tourist group from Louisiana emerges from the Metro to block the escalators and excitedly shoot photos of each other while riding up. I wait my turn to go up to the street level, anxiously watching the clock ticking away. Eleven years on the East Coast have made me all those things ‘East Coasters’ are purported to be-restless, impatient and edgy.

I am five minutes late, so I hurry up to the Le Pain Quotidien, an earthy organic Belgian café where our meeting will take place. I see Sampriti chatting with a friend from graduate school and she greets me warmly. In a few minutes we are situated on a table- waiters scurry around us and the air is filled with pace. We receive menus and seconds later, our waiter announces he is "ready whenever you are".  As a frequent guest at this café, I quickly glance at the menu and decide on the fresh fruit cup and the watermelon cooler. Le Pain Quotidien does not feature a long list of menu options, but offers traditional breakfast foods such as French croissants, yoghurt with berries, and eggs.

 

Sampriti studies the menu more closely- it is her first time here- and she chooses a scone with a pot of coffee. Now, we are ready to delve into talking about culture, the business world and I am sure a few other topics that will naturally sprout from the conversation. Culture is a broad and knotted concept.

Childhood and Teenage Years

Sampriti was born in the US but after the age of six, her father, an executive at the Asian Development Bank, was moved to Manila, Philippines for work. She first attended a local Philippino school, but when she was 12, her parents enrolled in an international educational institution where she studied until 18. As she describes that experience, Sampriti explains that having that international component was a major factor that prompted her to study at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) later in life. I start to think that having exposure to foreign cultures early on creates a desire for exploration of other cultures that persists for life, but I quickly kill that thought as I have a number of friends with traditional upbringings where exposure to other cultures happened through TV shows and movies, and who later went on to travel, learn and build careers abroad.

Being born in a traditional Indian family, Sampriti was raised by a stay-at-home mom and a dad who worked to provide for the family. When Sampriti was a little girl, she recalls her dad urging her to either be a business manager or a diplomat, and to pursue a career, break away from the social norms for women to stay at home.

Our food arrives and the waiter shuffles around some glasses of water to make room for new plates and coffee cups. For a moment, there is silence between us. It does not feel strange or uncomfortable and no one bothers to comment on the humid weather or the line of people waiting to be seated.  I go onto the next question. It’s a lot of fun talking about these things, reflecting back Sampriti says.

We chat about Sampriti’s mom for a bit. I ask whether she played a strong role in her upbringing. "Yes, definitely, but she followed the social norm to stay at home, and I think in doing so she lost some of her identity", she adds. "I emulated my dad", she concludes.

Professional Career

Sampriti entered her current organization with an impressive educational background: a dual graduate degree in business and international relations from two leading universities and experience in top financial firm. Her first position was a mid-level managerial role and she ascended the ladder speedily to her current senior executive role.

I ask about her style of communication, as a big part of this research would focus on the concept of ‘directness’. Some cultures have pronouncedly different communication methods: confronting colleagues and asserting your opinion is perceived as confidence and strength of thought in some countries, whereas in many organizations in the US it is to be avoided. "Well, now I am pretty direct", she begins, "but when I first started, I did a lot of observing of how other people were communicating and acting." While a lot has been said about company cultures and how the right fit is something you feel and not define, I agree that when joining a new organization, young professionals, particularly those with a different cultural upbringing, need to pay close attention to how their colleagues ask questions, define their answers and interact in the office.

I venture asking whether a young professional coming from a ‘direct’ culture should be ‘direct’ at work (‘direct’ here has the connotation of not being overtly effusive when answering a question, or, using less qualifiers when saying yes or no.)  "Directness is a luxury style of communication and a right that has to be earned." I speculate whether Sampriti would have given me the same answer had she chosen to enter diplomacy. In business, directness is earned whereas in diplomacy, directness gives way to effusiveness of expression and delicacy. But in business, time is money in diplomacy, time is another long afternoon of negotiations.

We talk about the use of punctuations in written communication. Having worked in a number of US corporations, I’ve seen it all- exclamation marks, exclamation marks followed by question marks, followed by more exclamation marks. Sampriti firmly says that expressive punctuation doesn’t have a role in business communication. "Not from colleagues on my level, not from those reporting to me."  I agree- I am a punctuation lite communicator in the office- and can’t help but recollect a conversation I had with a former manager, in which I was urged to show more enthusiasm in my written communication when assigned a task. A simple ‘yes’ no longer cuts it in some places and a "yes!!!" is a much better way to show your boss some first class firm citizenship.

The waiter hovers around us eyeing our half eaten dishes. We decide we won’t order anything else, and I inquire whether Sampriti has a hard stop at 11am. "No... My kids and husband are doing their sports things this weekend- we can chat!"

I ask whether Sampriti has ever thought that because of her cultural upbringing her career potential was limited. "Never. I actually felt the opposite: in business school I had more exposure and more opportunities than my peers." Sampriti pauses, thinking. In a professional services context, culture matters. When working for the Sales Executive Council, Sampriti confesses to reading the entire sports page of the local newspaper before holding a client meeting. "I absolutely did it, and it made a huge difference going into the Board room and saying, "God, I am sorry the Rangers lost yesterday!"

Business school comes up again as Sampriti remembers how foreign students were offered classes on golf and cigar appreciation. "You know, I was absolutely against that! What kind of signals are we sending- we bring in international students, and yet we try to teach them how to be more American."

I see the time- it is 11:10 and I need to leave soon. The past hour has been incredibly interesting and I hurry to ask a few more questions before I go. I ask Sampriti to put her American hat on, and ask why Americans are always in such a hurry to get things done. She laughs and pauses to reflect. "You know, when I was in Australia recently, I got a cup of coffee at a local shop. The barista watched me for a mew minutes and come up to me to say, "I know you are an American. I put so much effort and love to make that cup of coffee for you, and you just drank it quickly."We as a society don’t value being in the moment, but value what we are going to do next."

I quickly shoot my second question: "why do Americans always have to say what they are thinking?" "Society doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting and most people want to keep conversation going. Deep down, we are afraid of being alone- aloneness is considered the worst form of being in the US."

Before I depart, I have to ask this one last question, "Why do Americans always think things are going to get better?" I can tell from Sampriti’s eyes that this is her favorite question. She smiles as she answers: "You know, this is an eternally optimistic society which believes that tomorrow will be a better day. History might have influenced that-the ability to spring back from hard times. I love that about being in the US."

I thank Sampriti for her time as I gather my laptop and notebook. It has been a wonderful conversation. I wish I could give Sampriti a hug, but we shake hands: it is business leadership I am researching after all. Culture is just one aspect.

Project "Cross Cultural Conversations"

The role of culture in the business world has always interested me as I have sought to understand how one's cultural upbringing influences his or her leadership development. Project "Cross Cultural Conversations" aims to contrast and compare cultural traits of prominent business leaders who were born and raised outside of the U.S, and to uncover how they have adapted to varying organizational environments. This study's objectives are to evaluate how communication, presentation and interpersonal skills, among other factors, have impacted leaders' development in their organizations.

Across the next nine to twelve months, I hope to meet with 50 to 60 foreign leaders at U.S. enterprises and have conversational interviews over coffee. While each interview will capture the individual experiences of each leader, it will be conducted using a predetermined set of questions, which will allow for the comparison of the results after the completion of the study.

After each meeting, I will share my insights with the interviewee and with my readers and seek feedback and further thoughts. My goal is that "Cross Cultural Conversations" will culminate in a documentary film following the life and leadership development of an inspiring foreign born leader.