Post #19: Work Culture

I attended a seminar at work today on cross-cultural leadership that has left me pondering a thing or two. One of the items we considered and discussed was a blog post on Seven Ways Brazilians Work Differently than Americans. The generalizations posited by the author generated a lot of comments from the two cultures attending the seminar about observations of culture and places where they have felt tensions because of different priorities or values. 

I sat as a silent attendee on the periphery. As a newcomer to Brazil, I do not feel like I have a voice yet on such topics. However, I listened and absorbed and thought. One of my thoughts so far about landing in Brazil is that this is too easy. The differences do not appear as blatantly to me and they do not feel as great as they have in other workplace cultures. I feel less cultural distance here, and I am wary that it will be those sneaky differences that jump out of nowhere once I am safely in my comfort zone. I also have the idle thought about cross-cultural competence and global mindsets that maybe the world becomes more of a soup as you aggregate experiences. Not that differences do not exist or that they are less important, but that my awareness and acceptance of them is greater. I also start to feel less connected to my home culture in some of these values the more I work in international settings, so the distinctions become less tangible between us and them. I do not know if this is good, bad, or just naive, but I guess that time will tell as we sink into our life more deeply here in Brazil.