Let’s Face It, It’s A Different World

In the today’s globalized world, ease of movement has never been greater, and it is sometimes difficult for persons of different origins to communicate effectively. America has always had a multicultural social fabric, with the historic swelling ranks of immigrants growing our population since the very founding of the 13 colonies.  

Today our cultural mix continues to be a blur of a faces with many different features. Distinguishing Burmese from Vietnamese, Austrian from German, or Nigerian from Ghanaian can be challenging for the average American without practiced interaction.

But in business we share the common goal to succeed with a profit.

Our economy is open for business across all ethnicities, cultural, and religious, if not be common sense than by law. From remote, rural hamlets to high-density urban cities, these cross-culture experiences are becoming business as usual.

Still, sometimes doing business with persons from other cultures can result in misinterpretations of words and actions, making it hard for one ethnic group to become comfortable doing business with another. These differences certainly permeate the lending environment. Both borrower and lender must be sensitive to such differences; they must invest extra time developing a business relationship to establish confidence in each other.

Overcoming the barriers of doing business with someone of a different background is a two-way street. Sometimes each side will have to talk out questions and guard against quick judgments based on native assumptions.

Certain social or ethnic differences may result in a miscommunication of intentions or response. Careful, deliberate and frank conversations can sometimes be very useful to avoid our tendency to presume a natural sense of protocol, which may be absent from the social practices of other cultures.