0:12 good hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I am your host Kevin bemel and we are here every Tuesday at 11 A.M Pacific time 2 p.m eastern time with as I used to say an hour in for uh for mountain and central time and we talk about
0:48 military Doctrine military history great military leaders and how we can take those sources of information and use them to gain greater professional success whether it's in running our own business or working for a company or even an organization you know it doesn't have to be a for-profit business these days most non-profits are run on very business-like terms and and so um you know they benefit from the kind of lessons that we talk about each week
1:25 in terms of better meeting their missions and um I'm going to digress for just a moment since we're talking about meeting the mission of a non-profit and say um for for for-profit companies as well um the idea that they have a mission that they're looking to achieve really helps Focus the efforts and I would say the biggest lesson we can learn from the military that that would you know transfer to business is the idea that you know in the military when
2:01 especially in war fighting so we have a very specific Mission I mean in general it's to you know defeat the enemy but but generally speaking when you think about um you know World War II for example right it was to defeat the axis uh Germany Italy and Japan Nazi Germany uh Imperial Japan and and fascist Italy um and and the wars in which um America and for that matter other countries were successful generally had a very specific objective uh to me
2:38 whereas if if you look at the the Korean War right that ended in the Armistice with the with the partitioning of Korea the the objective there was not particularly clear um you know to push the the the you know the the Communist uh Koreans and Chinese you know out of as much as Korea as possible not nearly the kind of um of of um clear mission that that the Allies had in World War II which was unconditional surrender of the Axis
3:15 countries right and people have criticized the this idea of unconditional surrender but it did give a very clear objective for people to meet not just military people but civilians back here on the home front right when whether they're working in factories or Farms or whatever they were doing um buying war bonds and War stamps and such everybody knew what victory looked like it was unconditional surrender of the Axis countries right and so when we
3:50 have that kind of Clear Vision for our business for our non-profit if we're in Academia for our our school our College our University it makes our it really focuses our efforts in a way that makes it much more likely we will achieve what we're setting out to do so again just a little kind of digression um we're going to continue today with the discussion I started last week on uh Cultural Literacy and competency and you know against as I always joke since this
4:25 is a military-based show so we we have to have a PowerPoint they are absolutely required when you do military training um and so so here we go so here's our here's our uh um our our PowerPoint uh three pillars of attainment I talk about that quite often we're typically dealing here in the fine with the finances uh Realm of the three pillars of attainment okay and we started out talking about what cultural background was if if you um I'm just gonna go through this real
5:01 fast if you want to know more about this please go to our YouTube channel and you can see last week's uh episode of the show where I talk about these things in more depth so we talked about cultural background and um how one becomes uh culturally culturally literate well that's hard to say okay um and then um okay so I I believe we left off here with um becoming competent what does it mean then to be culturally competent okay so
5:39 we're oops I just bumped it here okay so right once we're literate we understand our own beliefs values behaviors and norms and we understand others beliefs values behaviors and norms and we come aware of potential clashes right so that now we're we're literate in the idea of how culture affects business okay so the next step then is to become competent and to be competent we need to be able to manage Cross or mixed cultural conflicts we need to be able to create a
6:14 common vision and we need to be able to build successful teams Okay so let's go through each one of these and talk about how this might look in in practice okay so um before I I talk about it from a business standpoint um let me uh talk about it uh from a military standpoint okay so when we talk about a a culturally competent military or military unit is is probably uh you know more uh more to the point right
6:51 we're talking about a military unit that can operate in an environment where the culture is different than that where of of which the military people um grew up in were immersed in and yet they're still able to navigate that in that in that um atmosphere successfully right so if you think about um the the recent um Gulf Wars whether it was the gulf wars in the early 90s or
7:26 the war on terrorism um you know going on already 10 years later uh or starting 10 years later um Americans were dealing in um Middle Eastern and South Asian culture and and these were not cultures that um we experience a lot here in the United States so while there's a a you know a large number of um Indians here I mean Asian Indians here as well as pakistanis and and and others and and also people from the
8:01 Middle East um people from from Israel Etc um these are not dominant forces in our culture and it's it's entirely possible to grow up in the United States and never experience any Middle Eastern or Southeastern uh South Asian culture right so um so then if you're um you know if if you're an American who has never experienced those and now you're in let's say the Army and you're sent over to you know Iraq the culture there is completely foreign
8:38 to you you have no experience with it so how are you going to navigate it well the first thing is is to become literate in in that culture okay and then it's 200 and then you know understand hey okay I know what my culture is I understand the culture here in Iraq okay now where are their flash points for conflict so for example the way women are treated in um a lot of Middle Eastern Middle Eastern and South Asian countries is is is is is very I shouldn't say women
9:13 interactions between men and women very different than they are here in the United States we have very open and you know casual interaction um between men and women um but in many Middle Eastern certainly not all Israel has much more it the interaction between men and women in Israel is much more similar to the interaction you know here in the United States but in in other countries Saudi Arabia Bahrain um even you know Afghanistan uh um uh
9:48 Pakistan um these countries are much more culturally conservative and so for you know a man to walk up on the street to a woman he doesn't know and starts speaking to her it you know it's not considered appropriate okay now by the way there was a time in the United States that that was not considered appropriate um but that time is probably you know 150 or 200 years ago when America was a much more uh culturally uh conservative country okay so it's not as if these things never exist in the United States
10:23 it's just they don't now and so you know if we grow up in a particular kind of cultural context and then go into a different one right away there is an opportunity for conflict so then um if we're there if like if I'm I'm a let's say I'm a you know company Commander right and one of the things I I need to do is to manage Cross or mixed cultural conflicts and so I'm going to talk to my soldiers and say okay Frank don't be attempting to pick up you know women on the streets the way you you
10:59 know you know or in a restaurant or something that is not the way things here are done um you know men will take umbrage over you assuming that kind of familiarity with women and especially if if the man is related to the woman he might take a big offense at that okay that's just not how it's done so we need to be aware of that and avoid those kind of conflicts okay so how does how does this then transfer to the workplace well so you know you
11:36 could potentially have the same kind of conflict here in a workplace in America especially if it's someone um who's who's reasonably new to the country um and so is still enmeshed in his or her cultural norms from another country now they're here they're in the workplace um and they may not be um at all used to or comfortable with the kind of casual mixing of men and women that we have here in the United States so you could have a young man for example who has not
12:12 um you know casually mixed with with women you know in in or out of the workplace and now here he is working in a company in the United States and the expectation that he's going to be able to you know easily make the transition to how things work in the workplace here is is probably about assumption okay so understanding the culture um that that young man um grew up in and understanding where there are potentials for conflict and then I think you know being sensitive to
12:50 um the assumptions that people make and helping them see that those assumptions are are not necessarily correct okay and and and that um so for example if he were to refuse to shake hands with a woman at a meeting so uh you know reasonably so the woman might assume oh well you know that that's an insult right it's not meant as an insult um it's just a cultural difference where he doesn't he doesn't get that familiar with women um from his perspective it's meant as a sign of respect okay from the
13:26 woman's perspective it seems like it's an insult right so how are you going to manage that kind of conflict and that's just that's just a real simple basic one right well one way is is to help people understand that these kinds of cultural conflicts or these kind of cultural differences exist and help them understand where is the other person really coming from or at least help them to be open to understanding that the way they're interpreting something may not be the way that it's meant
14:01 okay and and that can go a long way toward managing Cross or mixed cultural conflicts in in the workplace Okay so again the idea is to take the literacy and now put it into action so that's that's a small example okay create a common Vision now you know again cultural differences can you know be can make it hard for people to get on a you know a path where everybody's working with the same kind
14:36 of focus so let me give you you know um let me give you I'm going to go straight to a business example so um I have a friend who has a company and he describes his company as being a faith-based uh organization and its mission is to bring about God's kingdom um here on Earth that's not a direct quote but it's close enough right so it's a very um god-centered business and he's he's a a a practicing Christian and so um I
15:11 think his his slogan is even you know through through um Christ okay so um that's kind of his personal view of it right so how to see and many of the discussions we've had are how does he make take that vision and create a common Vision even for people who are are not um devout Christians or even for people who are not religious at all right so for someone like me for example
15:46 I mean I I don't mean to be rude or anything but but but Jesus has no impact in terms of how I view my religiosity and morality okay because as a Jew um I don't look at Jesus as being the Messiah okay [Music] um smart guy had a lot of wise things to say you know that that kind of thing um but I don't acknowledge Him as the Son of God or as my personal savior right and so the idea of
16:21 um pursuing a business Vision that um uh you know it is facilitated through belief in Jesus as the Messiah it doesn't have any meaning for me in like you know kind of in my I'm just gonna Yiddish word kishkas kind of in my heart it doesn't have any meaning for me okay so um we've had discussions you know how do I in essence um you know how would I translate that into you know how I would look at it and I just I just sort of substitute out the
16:57 word you know Jesus for God so um that's part of creating a a common Vision okay now by the way for some companies the idea of having such an overtly religious vision is just not going to work they're not going to be able to create a common Vision when there's such a religious Focus okay so you know when you think about um what is it Hobby Lobby um and Chick-fil-A these are companies with a they have a very religious Focus okay but but they're able to
17:35 still create a common vision for their employees but they're really the exceptions okay most companies are not going to do that so then how are they going how does a company create a common Vision that will um broach you know the the cultural differences of all the people that are working there okay because we want people on board we want people to buy into our vision buy into our mission so how do we do that well again we need to know where are where is what our goal is or our mission
18:12 is where does that possibly come into conflict with um you know the cultural norms and cultural behaviors of the people who who work there right so to use a maybe an off color example let's say there's a company that um you know produces pornography okay probably you know I mean are you going to be able to create a common Vision with with people who are you know genuinely religious I don't see how you can okay so you know and and and maybe
18:47 they don't maybe you wouldn't want to okay but but understand then that that's a limitation you're putting on your business in the same way that a business with an overtly religious vision is probably putting a limit on who is going to be attracted to working there as well people who are you know manifestly anti-religious right they're not going to be comfortable working there okay and to have them there it could would cause a lot of conflict right so these are the kind of things we need to be
19:23 um sensitive to as we create a common Vision or we create a vision for our our business or a non-profit um you know that that we're going to ask our people to pursue and buy into okay all right um next build successful teams so building successful teams goes beyond just managing conflicts to creating the kind of environment where people from different cultural backgrounds can Thrive okay now the military does this
20:01 very well um and I I would argue it's one of the things they do the best and and the way they do it basically is when you come into the military it's not that you give up your um cultural behaviors your cultural norms but what you what you're essentially required to do is to understand them through the the vision of the military so the Navy the Marine Corps whatever right they they each each branch of the service and in fact each part of each
20:38 branch so I'll take the Navy which is what I know best so in the Navy the Navy itself has a culture okay and then within the Navy you have different communities Aviation construction Battalion surface Warfare um submarines okay other things each of those has kind of a subculture within the Navy Special Operations right and and and that that culture becomes the um atmosphere around which the team is built now it does in some cases require
21:15 some compromise on the part of the cultural behaviors cultural norms of sailors or of of military people if we take it again back broadly to the military as a whole right and um but the the idea of building the coherence the cohesiveness of of the military team because that is such a strong part of the military ethos so people who join the military generally speaking are willing to um to a certain extent conform
21:52 to the military uh culture okay now I would say by the way that that's less so today than it used to be so it's much more common today for example to see like there are certain certain uh men who you know they do not shave their facial hair so it used to be uh like when I joined the Navy um you didn't have a beard period and you weren't going to get special um uh approval to be able to have a beard now maybe to not shave for a few days um you would get what's called a no shaved okay but she couldn't have a
22:29 beard period as contrasted with the the uh Royal Navy in Great Britain where you can have a beard right now over the last I don't know I want to say maybe five ten years that's been relaxed somewhat um and so you will see people in the military now who have full beards right I I believe it is still a special process to be able to do that it's not it's not like anyone can do it but you can accomplish that whereas like I said when I joined the military um almost 20 years ago it was it was not an auction period end of story so
23:07 building successful teams it make it may come down to building a culture um like a a culture for your organization that then people from different cultures buy into that that strikes a balance between maintaining the organization's culture while still respecting the individual cultural behaviors and Norms of the people who are part of the organization and I think that's what most companies look to do these days is to strike that balance in
23:42 some way and some some are um more flexible than others okay and again like talking about um you know the the pornography business versus the the faith-based company right they they you know have greater or lesser constraints um but in any event building successful teams at at its most basic level is going to require require us to figure out how do we meld these different cultures um somewhat into a Melting Pot but also
24:17 into an organization that is tolerant uh enough of differences that people can all get along and work together well okay so that's uh becoming competent okay do we have to okay let's go through this real quickly so um how do we know then that we've been successful in becoming culturally literate and competent so success comes from first of all appreciating and accepting differences right um if we cannot accept differences we're
24:54 not going to be culturally competent we may be literate in the sense that we we recognize the differences but if we can't accept them we're not going to become competent okay next know the history of mainstream and non-mainstream groups now I'm not talking about the the the um details of that history but understanding um how how each you know group sort of what what what were the major aspects of their of their experience um maybe their experience coming to this
25:29 country okay the experience that that blacks have in the United States is very different than the experience that whites have that Asians have that Hispanics have okay they're they're they're all different and and even to um say that all of these groups are homogeneous is not true either so Japanese had a different experience than chai Chinese than Koreans than Vietnamese um blacks who came to the United States toward his founding most likely as slaves have a very different culture a very different history than
26:06 blacks who came to this country you know in in in the second half or the or the fourth quarter of of the 20th century who might have come here from from Africa or come from the Caribbean um and and you know neither they nor their ancestors were were slaves here in the United States they may have been somewhere else or they may never have been um if if they came for example from Africa and so their histories are different in recognizing those differences and not you know lumping people into these big groups um that that are that are you know just
26:42 just not um not correct okay understanding similarities and differences right um avoiding stereotyping um ethnocentricism at ethnocentrisms and biases right that was I was just talking about that a minute um by being bi or multilingual or working toward it you know one of the things I've noticed in in traveling to other countries is if I can at least speak a few words of their language and show a willingness to enter into their culture
27:17 they are much warmer to me than if I do kind of the standard American thing right if I talk English loud enough and slow enough you'll understand it's like that's like the you know the typical sort of ugly American thing right it doesn't it doesn't fly today it does not now the reality is English is is spoken in virtually every country but that doesn't necessarily mean that the people in any individual in a particular country speaks English number one and number two that doesn't necessarily excuse or that doesn't excuse us from respecting the culture of the country so
27:54 if I'm in France or Germany or Japan or you know we're at Mexico the culture of the country their language is part of that okay and so I think it behooves us to consider learning at least a few terms in the language please thank you hello goodbye you know these kind of things um so at least we can show that we're respectful toward the culture obviously going beyond that becoming um multilingual or bilingual multilingual is is is a wonderful thing okay stay abreast of cultural changes this can be difficult right
28:30 um in in this country we we have differing waves of immigration people come in right we've we've just had I believe I think I was reading this morning 84 000 afghanis come to the United States in the last couple of years right now you could say in a country of what 350 million people that's not very many um but still it's a significant immigrant group coming in and and you know how does Afghani culture differ from American culture and so how do we relate to these these folks um who are who for the most part were
29:06 coming out of very difficult situation in Afghanistan and now they're here maybe feeling disoriented um maybe they speak some English maybe maybe only part of their family does other members of the family don't speak in English how are we going to deal with those kind of cultural changes okay and then last and in some ways maybe the most important thing is to be secure in one's own identity right so if I'm if I'm secure in my own identity I don't have to feel threatened by another culture so if you know if if if if
29:41 um if someone you know I don't know doesn't want to shake my hand um okay you know whatever it's fine it's not if you know I mean maybe they do mean it as an insult but you know but but it's it's it's within my control whether to be insulted okay and if I choose not to be insulted I'm retaining control of myself of my life of my responses and I can live a much better life okay um and and I look I I can understand I
30:18 I've been called a dirty Jew I've been called worse things than that it's it's very egregious um it it it can be very unpleasant um but I think that to develop you know somewhat of a thick skin can help in achieving Cultural Literacy and competency because when something happens obviously not not being called you know a bad name but but when something happens that seems to be an insult um to me if I can take a step back and say wait is this person really intending to insult me or am is this just something different about how life works
30:54 for them and engage them on that basis um and then we both have an opportunity to learn and become we both can become more culturally literate and competent so if we can strive for that in our in our workplaces and our businesses non-profits Academia Etc I think will be a lot better off okay and I think that's it yep that that is it so just a few minutes over time um but I wanted to finish this segment up if you have any questions um any comments criticisms want to get help with anything
31:29 um please do uh feel free to contact me here's some ways to do that this will be in the show notes reach out um I I do have um one person joining me Chad uh you know before I I sign off um do you have any uh questions or comments um thank you for for joining me I appreciate that um but uh you know give you an opportunity uh to chime in if you'd like to oh oh okay so oh um oh so he says he says thank you
32:06 um okay great well well thank you for that for that you know very nice comment I appreciate that and thank you for joining me so um tomorrow um so that that's the show for today tomorrow um my show um uh people making money we're gonna be talking about how to select a financial advisor now I'm not going to be talking about this from the standpoint of you know you've got 10 million dollars and you know you need to have some big wealth manager for most of us that's not where we live for most of us you know we
32:42 have maybe a retirement account or a couple we have some insurance needs maybe we have some other um Financial issues so how do we find someone that that can competently help us deal with the financial issues we have where we're at so you know I'm I'm a more mature is that a nice way to say it I'm an older guy right I'm in a different stage in life but when I was first starting out coming out of college my financial needs were much different than they are now um and so you know what kind of
33:17 financial advisor would I have needed then versus what do I need now so same for all of you right depending on what stage you are in your life it may require a different kind of financial expertise so that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow at 12 30 p.m uh Pacific Time on people making money and then next week we will start again on Monday with trusts and Estates weekly at 10 A.M uh on Monday Pacific time and then uh seven days from today at 11 A.M Pacific time we'll be back for the next um episode of business lessons from the
33:54 military we are going to be continuing with this topic of of uh of of how culture impacts businesses so I hope you will join me tomorrow and uh join me again next week so thanks again very much for tuning in for joining me live Chad and just signing off um we'll oh before I sign off one last thing um I I mentioned my uh YouTube channel the beginning of the show um please do consider subscribing that way you'll always get notified um when uh when a new show is on um and and you can join me
34:29 um you can also by the way go to Eventbrite um and then you'll always be notified um when uh you know new shows are are available so you can um you can join us live if you'd like to and and if you want to ask questions welcome that so that's it thanks very much wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off Marie darling you are my bell all the best folks