My best friend and I were still strangers when we started working in the same hotel on the same day. He was a bellboy, I was a security guard.
He went on to a hotel management school and earned a management traineeship in Beijing, China. Several months after he’d arrived in Beijing, the hotel security manager came to Oslo on a week-long visit to shadow me and learn more about the corporate culture of the company.
He didn’t speak much English. An official interpreter from the Chinese Embassy accompanied him.
“He said you know someone at his hotel,” the interpreter said.
“Yes,” I replied. “My best friend, Bjørn, recently started as a management trainee there.”
The interpreter translated for the security manager, whose eyes immediately lit up, and he smiled from ear to ear.
“That wonderful man can become whatever he wants to become in China! He is the first white person your company has sent to Beijing who understands that the Chinese are people.”
Bjørn did go on to have an amazing career in a business completely unrelated to hotels. Doors were opened by his caring service and people-first mentality and he grasped the opportunities they provided.
When I travelled around the world during my corporate life, I tried to read local papers and use stories from them in workshops to make them as relevant as possible to the local audience.
If I couldn’t find a newspaper I could understand, I watched in-flight movies that were subtitled in English. On a trip to Shanghai, the Chinese movie I watched was about a girl who worked in an office. She was popular, in part because her boyfriend was a rock star. At the start of the movie, her boyfriend broke up with her because he had an audition on the Chinese version of Idol or X-Factor, and his agent thought he’d have a better chance of winning if he was single. Before the opening credits hit the screen I was already wondering what had become of the cultural differences everyone said were so hard to overcome.
Not everything translates directly or easily from culture to culture, but a surprising amount of what makes us human does, especially in the hospitality business.
We all have biases and I’ve cringed countless times when my own have revealed themselves to me. During my first visit to Kuwait in 1992 following the liberation of the country after the Iraqi invasion, our hotel security manager, a Kuwaiti national who doubled as HR manager, drove me from coffee shop to coffee shop so I could experience local service levels and customs. My Kuwaiti colleague wore a dishdasha and gutra while most women wore abayas and hijabs in the Islamic country. If it was prayer time, he ordered me an orange juice and politely excused himself. He had a family at home and as evening came around, he kept looking at his watch.
“You don’t need to spend your evening entertaining me”, I told him, “drop me at the hotel and go be with your family.”
“No, you’re my excuse!” he laughed, “If get home too early my wife will insist we go jogging, and I just want to put my feet up and watch TV!”
We were more alike than my bias had allowed me to think.
It might seem strange, but I often felt I had more in common with the security managers in our hotels around the world than with salespeople in the offices where I worked. Oops… maybe I’m just biased about salespeople.
If you took someone off the streets of Vancouver, Canada, and dropped them off on their own in the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, they would likely become very careful and hesitant in their behaviour. Everything would look and sound different. Cars would be coming from the opposite direction compared to what they were used to. They may have heard about high crime statistics or protests and poverty, and thus their behaviour would be quite protective in nature.
What we forget is that the opposite is also true. If a South African person was dropped off in the middle of Vancouver, everything would look and sound different to them. Cars would be driving on the “wrong” side of the street, and while shopping, they might suspect they were being cheated when sales tax was only added once they reached the cashier. Subliminal, bias-driven fear creates uncertainty and even suspicion.
Being aware of biases is a great first step towards overcoming or reducing the impact they have on us. It reminds us that stripping away the thin layers of language, religion, culture, and tradition reveals fundamental similarities between people. Most people are proud of who they are and where they’re from. When we travel, we carry that pride along, but we also have the baggage of uncertainty about the unknown culture we are visiting. This combination can mask itself in a quiet reserved way, but it can also be projected as arrogant-sounding demands that far exceed those we might normally make in the comfort of our own community.
As I mentioned in the last newsletter Parisian waiters aren’t as arrogant as some may think. In large part, that’s because we’re not as open-minded and worldly as we may like to think we are.
The motto of the Hard Rock Café is “Love All, Serve All.” It’s harder than it sounds, but by reminding yourself that people are people, you can help move beyond the uncertainty and fear that is often felt on both sides of the front desk when the first arrivals from a new country or new culture arrive.
Stay safe Always Care
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This week we’re looking at bias. Try to leave yours at home next time you’re travelling. Leave your expectations of having everything served up just like your used to at home too! Isn’t travel about getting away from it all? 😉
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