Cultural Differences: Why Awareness and Respect are Vital for the Project Success

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the cultural differences within a project environment. He gives valuable tips on how the project manager must address the differences within his team, the sponsors and the stakeholders and can thus create an effective communication process, based on respect and cultural integrity of all parties.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes. Be important. Yes. Today. I like to talk to you about Cultural Differences all the time. When we are starting a project, we are starting to understand who our, the main stakeholders, how I can build my team. In many times, we have our predefined it community cations process that we have in mind. And we want that everybody adapt to this style and that I want just to increase your awareness and prepare you.

Because right now, for example, I work in probably one of the most multicultural, the environment here in Denmark. And one day, one of the things that I learned that more is how important and impactful he is. The Awareness of the different cultures. And a quarter is when a, when I tell you Cultural aspect, of course, people start thinking about countries or a bad thing or religions about beliefs, okay, is a very, very important, but I'm talking much deeper.

It's not the only people from different countries. They come with different cultural backgrounds, but I'm talking about different, the core values in life. Not everybody is money driven, not everybody is time-driven. And we need to, you understand this because if we do not understand this, we can not communicate properly. And I want to give you two advices. My first advice is the Awareness. You need to know, you understand when you are handling in a global complex project, you need the one that they are drivers, what understand they are drivers.

You need to, stablish a great report system in one or two is a report. You need to understand who you are dealing with, but not who are in terms of post positions for a number, no, nothing like that, but which kind of driver, who are you talking to? Who are you writing to? You know, for some people it's yes. And know for all the people there is no, no, it's all that.

Yes. And maybe, and maybe his soft way of saying, know if we don't want stablish this, it, we'll not be easy for us to communicate. Of course, I'm in Brazil. And so when I'm communicating, I have one style. When you listen to this, Podcast, there is a very strong control behavior behind this. And I'm completely aware of that even in my lack of English. So it's very, very important that you would understand this cultural aspects. And the second is that when I talk that you need to understand, and not the case in that you need to cancel yourself to improve your communication.

No, no, you don't change yourself because the second advice is Respect Respect doesn't mean I will. I knew like that in my core beliefs two, have your beliefs. No. Is that okay? We think different, but we respect the shorter. We respect each other while we are doing this work and this Respect, it's not something that should be you build from one day to another. Sometimes it takes time. You need to understand that for some people you need to explain more because the way that they process the information is different for order people.

If you explain more for them it to be overwhelming because they want everything very fast. So you need to adapt your leadership and you need to adapt your communication to different poachers. It's very, very important. And what I want to prove to you is that this cultural aspects can be a, not a knowledge area. If you have a very complex multicultural project, because a lot of people think, okay, all we are late, but that concept of being late, it's not the same for everybody.

So you need to establish some kind of guidelines and standards and respect the difference. Because if you don't, Respect first, you destroy your communication. And second and most important, you demotivate people because when people feel respected on their cultural aspects, they work much more motivated. They are willing to commit much more with the project. So you need, you understand this. And then this is above and beyond scope management.

This is above and beyond Project board. Its a way of building Respect and trust among each quarter. And this is a key, Success the factor for your Project and I'm living this today. So if I can tell you that the respect for different cultures, so problems I'm telling you for my own personal experience, I hope you enjoy this podcast. See you next week and sorry for my poor English.

Bye bye.

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Cultural Differences: Why Awareness and Respect are Vital for the Project Success

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