|
|
|
Back to the Basics: How to Successfully Start an Online Business
As someone who has been running a full-time Internet business for years, I often have to remind myself that there are thousands of business "newbies" who are just starting out. As I get farther and farther into the realm of online business, I...
Colorblind People, can they really read your web site?
I once created a notepad-like editor. It is possible with this editor to write Russian text on a western Windows without using a Cyrillic keyboard in front of your computer.
This software is equipped with an on screen Russian keyboard which...
Cyber Crooks Go "Phishing"
"Phishing," the latest craze among online evil-doers, has nothing to do with sitting at the end of a dock on a sunny afternoon dangling a worm to entice hungry catfish. But, if you take their bait, this new breed of online con artist will hook...
The Top Three Problems IT Managers Face and How to Overcome Them
Todays business environment has changed drastically from just a few years back. Rather than working exclusively with equipment, data, and systems, todays IT managers face issues such as cross training, personnel management, interdepartmental...
Top 3 Myths of Leadership Debunked
What happens people define “leadership” as something attached to a title, or a salary, or a corner office? Both managers and employees suffer the consequences! Explore what happens when leaders and staff buy in to the top 3 limiting “myths of...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is "Confianza" and Why is it Important?
What is Confinanza and Why is it Important?
Tried-and-true training methods can fail in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual environment, and can leave an unprepared trainer wondering what to do. In this article I share what I learned while leading a 24-hour team-building intervention, in Spanish, with a group of 20 managers, supervisors, and journeyman production employees of the largest truck body manufacturing company in the western United States.
The client needed help coping with a rapid growth, customer demand for better quality, and employee resistance to changes necessary to meet customer needs.
From the start many of hourly workers expressed reluctance to “intrude” on the decision-making responsibilities of their bosses a common feature of work relationships in Latin American cultures. Decision-making and problem solving are perceived as management roles, and sharing power and authority was commonly seen by most participants as a sign of weakness, and therefore undesirable.
There were differences in cultural values and assumptions relating to such issues as: how time at work should be used, how power and authority should be exercised, how day-to-day relationships between peers should be carried out, the appropriate exercise of discipline, perceptions about the formal and informal reward systems, how much participation in decision-making and problem-solving is appropriate and desirable for hourly employees, etc.
Only four of the participants spoke English as their first language. The rest were native Spanish-speakers of Mexican ancestry. About 20 percent of them experienced difficulty in reading and writing Spanish.
This team was charged with learning new skills to apply and also to teach to these new skills to other employees.
Confianza and Other Lessons Learned
I had to adjust to the language requirements and the difference in culture in order to make the training effective. These adjustments can be grouped under the following headings:
Build Trust
The Spanish word “confianza” can be loosely translated as “trust.” Velasquez New Revised Spanish-English Dictionary (1974) also translates this word as “honest boldness, assurance, firmness of opinion,” as well as describing a relationship that permits a certain secretiveness and privacy. Confianza shapes working and organizational relationships, and extends to the training arena: if confianza is not felt mutually between trainees and instructor, the trainees will “shut down,” and learning will dramatically suffer.
The usual repertoire of training tools to elicit participation and involvement will likely fail when confianza is not present. This is particularly relevant for interpersonal communications skills training where such concepts and skills as providing relevant feedback, active listening, and self-disclosure are not only highly valued as elements of training design and delivery, but indeed are deemed by most training practitioners as fundamental to this type of training.
The instructor should avoid behaviors that participants may interpret as confrontational. Many Hispanics see confrontation as negative and potentially destructive it is likely to be viewed as a personal challenge and an exercise of power and dominance. It does not have an “up” side.
Avoiding the appearance of confrontation requires the trainer to adopt a slower pace. It has been my experience that a typical “soft” skills training program is about 20 percent longer because of the need to build trust gradually and to avoid any appearance of forcing people to participate.
Stress Basic Skills
The training introduced skills such as active listening, conflict-resolution, and problem solving in teams. Instead of two or three practice sessions, I used as
many as seven because of the language barrier and the need to illustrate how cultural values affect the application of the principles being taught.
Minimize Reading and Writing
Most participants struggled to understand the workbook that I provided. Written materials proved useful only as reinforcements, and not as introductions to concepts or exercises.
Formalize Discussion
Hispanics generally expect more formality in interpersonal relations compared to North Americans. Training presentations and other interventions must accommodate these differences in cultural views. This is best accomplished by: (1) orally acknowledging these differences (2) clarifying course objectives, and acknowledging the challenges that accompany the training.
Aim for Clarity
Give clear directions and confirm that they are understood. Avoid ambiguity when setting up classroom practice exercises, asking for participation in exercises, etc. This audience required that the objectives and methods for each exercise, each small group discussion, each training intervention, be discussed beforehand, and in more depth than would be required with a group of monolingual English-speaking participants.
Teach a Common “Vocabulary”
Participants had no shared sets of effective interpersonal skills that they could apply to working together. Cultural and language differences exacerbated this situation. Orders, requests, memoranda, and indeed virtually all other communications from management first had to be interpreted from English to Spanish and “filtered” down to the non-English-speaking employees on the shop floor, through bilingual supervisors and lad personnel. Inevitably, communication effectiveness suffered.
Practice-Practice-Practice
Use many real-life examples to make a point and teach a skill. In these circumstances, it was advisable to develop and use from manufacturing and production.
Reward Performance Immediately
Immediately reward participants who make honest efforts to learn. Because most participants were unsure of this training material, any trainee performance that approximated or that accurately reproduced the desired behavior was promptly rewarded by verbal prompts and specific expressions of approval. For example, when John, a Foreman, accurately demonstrated active listening with others in the group, I said to the group, “John, you really summarized Joes point very well. Thats a great example of using active listening.”
Mix It Up
Depending on audience readiness, mod, level of interest, and desires, I used both Spanish and English interchangeably during training sessions. For example, I wrote key points on the flipchart in English, and summarized them in Spanish. I conducted some role-play exercises in English, and others in Spanish.
Training Results
The training was prompted by a need to implement a lean manufacturing program. The effectiveness of the training is best measured after the lean program has been initiated. The important measure of the training is the success of the lean program.
Why only indirectly evaluate the training? Because, to draw causal relationships between this training and improved workplace behaviors, the effects and influence of the subsequent events would have to be eliminated, or considered. Given the present state of evaluation technology this does not seem possible now.
Written evaluations showed that about 80 percent of trainees acquired the targeted skills and knowledge in that training session. The client considered the training successful.
About the Author
Anthony Griffin is owner of Teamworks, a bilingual/bicultural performance improvement and human resource development practice reaching out to Hispanic workers. http://www.teamworks1.com
|
|
|
|
|
| Language Tools |
| Translation of text and web pages between English and several European languages. |
| www.google.com |
|
| Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Gestures are a part of human language too. Some invented human languages have ... In human languages, the symbols are sometimes known as lexemes and the ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| English language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Estimates about second language speakers of English vary greatly between 150 million ... Distribution of first-language native English speakers by country ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Free Translation and Professional Translation Services from SDL ... |
| SDL International is the world's number 1 provider of free and professional language translation services for websites and documents. |
| www.freetranslation.com |
|
| AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation |
| Select from and to languages, Chinese-simp to English, Chinese-trad to English, English to Chinese-simp, English to Chinese-trad, English to Dutch ... |
| babelfish.altavista.com |
|
| yourDictionary.com • Comprehensive and Authoritative Language Portal |
| Comprehensive index of on-line dictionaries in more than 200 different languages. Includes an index of on-line grammars, word of the day by email, ... |
| www.yourdictionary.com |
|
| iLoveLanguages - Your Guide to Languages on the Web |
| The Human-Languages Page is a comprehensive catalog of language-related Internet resources. The over 1900 links in the HLP database have been hand-reviewed ... |
| www.ilovelanguages.com |
|
| AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation |
| AltaVista Babel Fish provides the online text and web page language translation! ... Select from and to languages, Chinese-simp to English, Chinese-trad to ... |
| world.altavista.com |
|
| BBC - Languages - Homepage |
| Learn French, Spanish, German, Italian and other languages with the BBC. Start up with our courses or brush up with our audio magazines. |
| www.bbc.co.uk |
|
| Online Dictionaries and Translators |
| online dictionaries that assist in the conversion from one language to ... If the dictionary only translates from one language to another you will see this ... |
| www.word2word.com |
|
| The Klingon Language Institute |
| Nonprofit organization offers language tutorials, related merchandise, mailing list and membership information. |
| www.kli.org |
|
| MARC Code List for Languages |
| MARC Code List for Languages prepared by the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office. |
| www.loc.gov |
|
| Python Programming Language -- Official Website |
| Home page for Python, an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, extensible programming language. It provides an extraordinary combination of clarity and ... |
| www.python.org |
|
| SYSTRAN Language Translation Technology |
| Machine translation products. Free online translation available (the engine used by Altavista's Web translator) - English to French, German, Italian, ... |
| www.systransoft.com |
|
| Project MUSE - Language |
| Language, the official journal for the Linguistic Society of America, ... Edited by Brian Joseph , Language serves a readership of over 7000 and has been ... |
| muse.jhu.edu |
|
| Learn a Language :: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French ... |
| English language courses online: e-learning, learn English online, ... English language learning events,news, conferences, workshops and seminars ... |
| www.edufind.com |
|
| Parlo - Welcome to Parlo - learn to speak a new language. |
| Parlo helps you learn English, French, Spanish and other languages with free online courses, music, a magazine, flash cards, chat rooms, message boards and ... |
| www.parlo.com |
|
| PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor |
| PHP is a server-side HTML embedded scripting language. It provides web developers with a full suite of tools for building dynamic websites: native APIs to ... |
| www.php.net |
|
| Ethnologue, Languages of the World |
| Home page of ethnologue.com, a searchable database of language resources. |
| www.ethnologue.com |
|
| Language Log |
| Weblog run by University of Pennsylvania phonetician Mark Liberman, with multiple guest linguists. |
| itre.cis.upenn.edu |
|
|