Managing Cultural Mistakes with Personal Leadership
Something happened to Melissa recently when she was in Tokyo: She made a mistake. In this piece, she explains what happened and the lessons you can apply to your own culture crossing as well.
I was trying to use my fledgling Japanese vocabulary to tell the hotel clerk that I understood him after he gave us directions to a nearby site, but instead of saying the word wakarimashta, what came out of my mouth was some jumble of sounds that were in all likelihood not a word at all. I wasn’t sure what had happened, because I had been assiduously practicing and using the few words I knew at every appropriate opportunity. And I wasn’t feeling particularly nervous in this encounter, since speaking to a helpful clerk who knew some English was the most low-stress, safest environment I could ask for. In keeping with Japanese culture, the clerk smiled as if I had not made a mistake at all, bowed, and sent us on our way.
My traveling partner looked at me quizzically and said, “What did you say?” I felt a small flush of embarrassment, even though I hadn’t really done anything wrong. What I had experienced was a temporary short-circuit in the connection between my mind and my mouth. A combination of jet lag and the intensity of exploring a new city for the past several days, tasting many new flavor varieties like tonkatsu on naan at Mos Burger and roasted rice crackers at Senso-ji, engaging in a much more strenuous marathon of walking than a normal day in our suburban life back in the U.S. allowed, and feeling a kind of sustained exhilaration from seeing so many remarkable places had all apparently boiled over into a splatter of exhaustion. Although I did not feel that I was experiencing culture shock in a conscious way – quite the contrary, I was very much having the time of my life – my system had nonetheless been overloaded, and my mouth, unable to receive or translate the right signal from my brain, just spouted out a mishmash of Japanese-ish sounds, using the new muscle combinations I’d been developing since I’d landed at Narita.
Having had the fortune of visiting several countries, I was accustomed to the reality that mistakes were inevitable, and other than being an awkward moment, no real harm was done. But the moment rankled me a little more than I would have liked. It gave me a brief twinge that maybe it had not been worth trying; a thought which I quickly rejected and then resented having, but which I also knew was the viewpoint generally held by my traveling partner, who preferred saving face silently over engaging haphazardly.
But beyond this, it also drove home the fact that making mistakes can be not only a learning moment, but an opportunity to check in on how we are coping with cultural adjustment in real-time.
Personal Leadership
One of my go-to intercultural resources is the Personal Leadership methodology by Barbara F. Schaetti, Sheila J. Ramsey, and Gordon C. Watanabe. The authors invite participants to use moments where it seems like “something’s up” to engage in what they call a “Critical Moment Dialogue,” which is a kind of guided exploration of one’s mind, heart, and body. While this may sound fluffy, it is actually a very useful, portable tool for making deciding how to respond in a cross-cultural situation.
In my case, I was able to do it as I walked down Shinjuku dori, because I had previously studied the practice through the Intercultural Communication Institute. I mentally skimmed the categories like Attending to Emotion, Attending to Physical Sensation, and Attending to Judgment to get a better reading on what was behind my mistake in Japanese and my response to it. In doing so, I realized that I was not only feeling sheepish about my mistake, but was also physically more fatigued than I had realized. Going deeper, I saw that I was also being a bit judgmental toward myself for not remembering the right word. How had my brain failed me?! And, a bit unwillingly, I also recognized that I was feeling judgmental toward my travelling partner for having put me in the position of communicating with the clerk in the first place. Ouch.
Progressing to Engaging Ambiguity, I stepped outside of myself to ask what else I did not know or had overlooked. Had my partner really made me talk to the clerk, or had I volunteered? Did it really matter to the clerk that someone who was obviously a foreigner had made a mistake? And why was it bothering me when I knew it wasn’t a big deal? After permitting these questions to surface, I allowed myself to be comfortable with the messiness of trying to communicate in a language totally unknown to me, and felt more gentle toward the complications of travelling across cultures with a partner who also comes from a different cultural background from my own.
Next, I was ready to Cultivate Stillness. I took a deep breath and give myself the space to simply let the mistake, my response, and my need to analyze it, wash out of me. My adrenaline began to dissipate, my shoulders relaxed, and I felt a renewed clarity. Now, after only a few minutes, I was ready to Discern Right Action, which for me, at that time and place, was clearly to take a break. When I expressed this realization to my partner, he was relieved, as he was also feeling a bit sapped. We spent some time in a coffee shop with commuters and retirees, and watched a Chiyoda morning unfold while we sipped our green tea lattes.
Over the next twenty minutes, my mind geared down and my body caught up. I experienced something marvelous: By ceasing the attempt to force my participation through linguistic perfection, I rediscovered the freedom to simply be myself, a woman from Phoenix in Tokyo, as is. I became more present in the moment, more enlivened, and more flexible as the day passed. And, with greater mindfulness, I was able to articulate actual words for the rest of the day. I even learned a few new ones, and formed new sentences and questions. Small details, but ones that gave me a feeling of accomplishment and participation in my cultural surroundings.
Just as important, I accepted that if I wanted to continue to take risks in communicating in other languages – especially ones that I had never studied – then I had to be patient with myself (and my partner) during the times it didn’t pan out. Once I relinquished any residual frustration, my blunder with the Japanese language became less of a small bruise and more of an inside joke, and we were able to use it to transform what could have otherwise been a day of low energy into a day of connection and humor.
Even better, this moment, which was so trivial that it could have been totally overlooked, informed the remainder of our trip. By asking myself, “what’s up?” when I first encountered cultural fatigue and by choosing an appropriate response, I laid the groundwork for managing my energy and engagement in the days ahead. With a more attuned radar, I could foresee the warning signs the next time, before a jumble of sounds had to inform me that I was wearing thin, so I could stop and rest before it was necessary. Moreover, it gave me the chance to recommit to the kind of time I wanted to co-create with my travelling partner, who was every bit as jet-lagged and culture-awed as me.
Preparing for Mindfulness in Advance
Certainly, there are better and worse times to make mistakes. In my case, the potential consequences of misspeaking were small. However, this actually made it the perfect time to implement the kind of guided response offered by Personal Leadership.
Whatever approach you favor, the time to start practicing is now. The more you cross cultures, in whatever context, the more likely it is that you will eventually make a mistake. And if you make forays into new cultures with companions or coworkers by your side, at some point you will rub each other the wrong way, no matter how much you try to cut each other some slack. Once you’re in that place, your success – and the health of the relationships and success of your objectives – will be determined by how you choose to handle it and learn from it. The more established your template for doing so, the more nuanced and flexible your choices will be. So carpe diem! But be sure to pack your mindfulness and empathy, too.
Photo Note: Asakusa, the district in Tokyo famous for the Sensō-ji Buddhist temple. Photo and text copyright 2014, Melissa Hahn. May not be reused without permission. Disclaimer: This post is for general information purposes only. You should not rely on it as a basis for making business, legal or other decisions. Melissa Hahn and Hahn Cultural Consulting are not responsible or liable for any loss or damage that arises from your use of this content.