Learning to
collaborate creatively with people from other cultures is a vital skill in
today's business environment, says professor Roy Y.J. Chua, whose research
focuses on a key measure psychologists have dubbed "cultural metacognition."
by Michael
Blanding
Working on
a $30 million historical epic about the Tang Dynasty to be set in China,
Hollywood screenwriter David Franzoni struggled to make the story appeal to
Western audiences. Then Franzoni hit upon an idea: tell the tale through the
eyes of a foreign-born general who served as the right-hand man to emperor
Xuanzong and his consort.
“TO THE
EXTENT THAT CREATIVITY IS ABOUT THE RECOMBINATION OF EXISTING IDEAS, THEN
COMBINING IDEAS THAT HAVEN'T BEEN CONNECTED BEFORE CREATES THE POTENTIAL TO
PRODUCE SOMETHING NEW AND USEFUL”
The plan
didn't make it past Chinese government censors. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the idea
was nixed on grounds that the treatment was too sympathetic toward the general,
An Lushan, portrayed in Chinese history as a villain who ultimately betrayed
the emperor. The script was accepted after Franzoni rewrote it to portray the
general as a "snake."
The story
illustrates a common challenge to Hollywood filmmakers as they attempt to break
into China's more than $2 billion-a-year film market—and to businesspeople in
all industries as foreign markets become increasingly important to their
business strategies. Cultural misunderstandings and different ways of operating
(government control over filmmaking, for instance) can lead to unforeseen
setbacks and delays, threatening the success of creative business ventures.
VITAL SKILL:
Learning to
work with people from other cultures in order to collaborate creatively is a
vital skill in today's business environment, says Roy Y.J. Chua, an assistant
professor in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School who
has focused his research on exploring how such collaboration can effectively
take place. A graduate of Columbia Business School, where he studied social
psychology along with management, Chua was born and raised in Singapore, itself
a multicultural society.
"I've
always been fascinated by how culture changes the way people interact and
innovate, and how collaboration is affected by intercultural relationships and
intercultural trust," he says.
There's no
doubt that the confluence of diverse cultures can create opportunities for innovation—think
of the Crusades and the Renaissance, or of Japan revolutionizing the auto
industry. "To the extent that creativity is about the recombination of
existing ideas," Chua says, "then combining ideas that haven't been
connected before creates the potential to produce something new and
useful."
The
question is how to reap the benefits of that while minimizing the inevitable
misunderstandings.
"Trying
to make a movie about the Tang Dynasty for a Western audience is a very
refreshing proposal, but at the same time, many of the ideas from Chinese
culture might not translate easily into a Western context," he says.
"You have to find a way to generate a common platform to appeal to both
sides."
In a
forthcoming article in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human
Decision Processes,
Chua uses a combination of survey and experimental research to focus on a key
measure psychologists have dubbed "cultural metacognition." The term
refers to a person's reflective thinking about his or her cultural assumptions.
It seems to have a strong effect on how effectively people collaborate across
cultures, Chua says.
"I
often compare it to the heightened awareness you have when driving in a foreign
city, where you will pay more attention to the road signs and traffic signs.
It's this kind of heightened awareness and reflection about what I think about
other cultures and how other cultures think about me that helps cross-cultural
creative collaboration."
TESTING
CULTURAL METACOGNITION:
In the
first of three studies, the researchers asked 43 middle-level managers enrolled
in an executive MBA course to complete a questionnaire to rate their own degree
of cultural metacognition. Statements to rate included "I am aware of how
to use my cultural knowledge when interacting with people from other
cultures," and "I adjust my cultural knowledge while interacting with
people from a new or an unfamiliar culture."
The team
then surveyed up to 10 former coworkers of each manager, whose cultural
background was different from the manager's, asking how they rated the
manager's effectiveness in creative collaborations. Managers with higher
cultural metacognition scores on the questionnaires garnered higher ratings
from their colleagues as well.
While such
a result may seem expected, the bigger question is, how does cultural awareness
lead to more effective innovation? Based on previous studies, the researchers
focused on the role of trust in that equation, distinguishing between two
kinds: "cognitive trust," an intellectual appreciation of another
person's skills, abilities, and reliability; and "affective trust,"
an emotional belief that another person has one's best interests at heart.
"Affective
trust is especially critical in creative collaboration because unlike
collaboration that merely involves the sharing of labor, creative collaboration
requires sharing of new ideas," Chua says.
"Given
that new ideas are often undeveloped, they are risky to share," he
continues. "Sharing a bad idea might cause one to be ridiculed.
Conversely, a good idea might be stolen. Only when there is high affective
trust would two partners be willing to freely exchange new ideas."
In their
second study, the researchers found that affective trust was much more likely
to stem from having high cultural metacognition than cognitive trust.
This time,
60 managers attending another executive MBA course were asked to complete a
network survey listing up to 24 of their primary professional contacts and
asked the extent to which they were able to rely on them professionally
(cognitive trust) and the extent to which they were able to share their
personal hopes, dreams, and difficulties (affective trust). Next, they were
asked to rate how willing they were to share new ideas with each person. When
dealing with someone from their own culture, the managers' cultural
metacognition had no effect on either types of trust. For contacts from another
culture, however, those with higher cultural metacognition developed higher
affective trust in their partners and were more willing to share new ideas with
them; cognitive trust, meanwhile, had no correlation with cultural
metacognition.
In order to
put these findings to a further test, the team designed a third, more hands-on
experiment involving 236 undergraduates. First, each participant was asked to
come up with a new chicken recipe from a list of ingredients from different
cultures. Each person was then paired with someone from another cultural
background and asked to collaborate to produce a recipe different than those
either had created individually. These recipes were then rated on creativity by
two independent chefs.
Here's the
catch: Half of the teams were allowed 10 minutes to talk and get to know one
another before they were presented with the task—a simple way to develop
affective trust—while the other half weren't. Once again, the researchers found
links between cultural metacognition and creativity.
"When
working with a stranger from a different culture on a task that rewards
creative collaboration, high cultural metacognition in one of the two
individuals gives the pair the potential for affective trust and
creativity," Chua says. "This potential, however, is only realized if
the partners have a personal conversation to build affective trust. Pairs that
didn't have the chance to build trust did not become more creative as a result
of their cultural metacognition."
Interestingly,
in each of the pairs that had a personal conversation, it was the higher of the
two cultural metacognition scores that seemed to drive the creativity effect.
"As
long as one person is able to connect and adjust to the other party, then that
is sufficient for them to collaborate," Chua says. In other words, if one
person is able to grapple with his or her cultural assumptions, then that
person can spur a fruitful collaboration without the other person necessarily
even realizing it.
A LEARNABLE
HABIT:
The good
news is that cultural metacognition is not fixed, but rather it is a mental
habit that can be learned over time and through different circumstances.
"People who have a culturally diverse social network tend to have higher
cultural metacognition," Chua says. "The fact they have to deal with
people from different cultures more causes them to question their own
assumptions more."
For those
who don't have a culturally diverse network already, he recommends consciously
seeking out new cultural experiences. However, such activities need to be
genuine to work.
“YOU WANT
TO DEEPLY INVOLVE YOURSELF IN CROSS-CULTURAL INTERACTIONS”
"It's
not just going to a foreign movie or eating culturally different food," he
says. "You want to deeply involve yourself in cross-cultural
interactions."
Chua
stresses that it is important to always engage in active inquiry and
observations, and be mindful that your assumptions or interpretation of a given
culture might not be accurate or applicable in a given context.
One way to
do this is by keeping a journal and writing down thoughts after each
interaction with someone from another culture. This can help people see
patterns in their interactions with culturally dissimilar colleagues,
eventually leading to more mindful interactions. That, in turn, can lead to enhanced
affective trust that makes cross-cultural creative collaboration more
effective, whether the goal is to sell a product overseas or launch the next
Chinese-American blockbuster.
Readers:
What are your experiences when it comes to doing creative work with someone
from another culture? What are the key challenges? Please share your thoughts
in the comments section below.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR:
Boston-based
writer Michael Blanding is a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for
Ethics at Harvard University and author of The Coke Machine: The Dirty
Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink.
