We just returned from Prague for a Spring Break Study abroad program focusing on successful international employees, teams, and leaders.\u00a0 I’m dividing this debriefing blog into two parts.<\/p>\n
Today, I’m talking about what we learned and did.\u00a0 Tomorrow, I’m talking about what it’s like to be a professor in close relationship with students for a week+ in another country.\u00a0 (Spoiler: it is good)<\/p>\n
So, the trip was to help students experientially understand what it is like to work abroad in multi-national organizations in multi-cultural teams.\u00a0 We can certainly read about such experiences in the classroom, but to take the students out of\u00a0 the US and plop them into a foreign country and talk with leaders of HR and of employees in these teams provides (I hope) a bit of the disorientation that comes with working overseas and lets our students hear from people who do this every day and do with successfully.<\/p>\n
I like it.\u00a0 I believe it challenges students’ previous notions about working abroad. It lets undergrads hear phenomenally insightful advice from leaders in the field. It comprehensively exposes them to cultures (including food, art, language, beliefs) that they cannot experience in a regular classroom.<\/p>\n
For our program, in the mornings, we met with exceptional organizations like Novartis<\/a>, The University of Economics, Prague<\/a>, and HSBC<\/a>. Before we left for the trip, my students picked out topics they wanted to write a literature review on.\u00a0 During the trip, they asked questions of the organizational leaders related to their topic. Better, though, is the knowledge we created as a class learning about and responding to the information the leaders share on their own and their answers to our questions.<\/p>\n One thing I find so interesting on these study abroad trips is how the multinational teams and their HR managers respond to the inherent diversity on their teams.\u00a0 Rare was the team composed only of Czech citizens. More common were the teams composed of Czech, German, Italian, French, American, and Indian–among other—countries.<\/p>\n I really appreciate the humor and the drama that comes from what these leaders shared with us.\u00a0 The humor: The Italian employee wondering why his German teammate was so rude and cold to him all the time, and the manager saying “He’s not rude and cold; he’s German!” And the German teammate responding afterwards by effusively greeting and kissing his Italian teammate every morning until the Italian yelled ENOUGH!\u00a0 The drama coming from a Polish and a Czech teammate (I believe?) having such a bad political fight that they wouldn’t speak to each other and their manager saying there is no place for that sort of behavior at work and they had to figure out how to work together or they are both fired.\u00a0 They joyfully figured it out.<\/p>\n What I like about this is that it’s assumed<\/strong> <\/em>that your teammates are going to be different than you. And it is ok to name a cultural explanation for the differences. The Italians are effusive.\u00a0 If you want people awake at an early morning presentation, have an Italian teammate do it. Conflict over culture qua<\/em> culture is not acceptable. You have to figure out how to get along with different people and do your work.\u00a0 Period.<\/p>\n Or as Shawn and Gus would say on Psych<\/em>, Suck it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n