Cross cultural communication | Pellegrino Riccardi | TEDxBergen

Translator: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Denise RQ

It's really great to be in Bergen, this is the second time this week.

I live in Oslo, I guess I'm living in the wrong place.

(Laughter)

As you quite rightly say, my name Pellegrino, which is my first name,

means 'pilgrim'.

It was given to me by my Italian parents.

It is as if they knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

"Let's give him the name 'pilgrim', then he'll travel the world."

That's basically what I did. This is my workplace.

I do a lot of travelling.

I can give you a fancy title of what I do,

but what I really do is I try to help people communicate better,

especially in the global business world.

So I try to help people communicate better with other nationalities.

You know, the first thing you think of when you work

with other nationalities and cross-cultural communication,

is "Let's look at the other cultures."

I take a slightly different approach,

I say to people, "Take a look at yourself."

I am going to talk a lot about perception

because it's all about perception and understanding what people see.

As you see, I have Italian in me, I have a lot of British in me.

Some people are often surprised by my English accent,

it's quite nice, isn't it?

Because you weren't expecting this,

you are expecting me to speak with an Italian accent.

I don't speak like that. (Laughter)

And I've been in Norway for over a third of my life actually,

so I've got a lot of Norwegian in me as well.

What I like doing to people

is I have these little social experiments to test their perception of me.

As I said, I travel a lot, so I like playing with the airlines.

I like going up to the airlines and talk in English,

or sometimes with an Italian accent,

to see what kind of reactions I get, and English is the best one.

If you want a good service, you speak English like I do.

It's fantastic. People take you seriously. Well, they do, you know.

I mean, yesterday, the plane to Bergen was late.

If I go up and say, "Excuse me, it's 30 minutes late,

I'm a punctual person, I don't like being late,"

they just take you seriously.

But yesterday I thought I'd try in an Italian accent. (Laughter)

So I went up, and I actually said,

"Excuse me, but the plane is 30 minutes late,

I'm a punctual person, you know." (Laughter)

Exactly! I got the same reaction as you did there.

(Laughter)

This is one of the problems when working with other nationalities:

people see what they want to see, they don't always see what you see.

And this is one of the challenges.

Just before we get into it, culture, let's look at culture.

My definition of culture

- I know this doesn't cover everything, but let's keep it simple,

I usually do two day workshops on this, I've got 18 minutes -

"a system of behaviour that helps us act in an accepted or familiar way".

Key word there: accepted or familiar.

We're basically doing things

which are accepted in our social group and which are familiar.

So a lot of my work is actually explaining Norwegian behaviour

to other nationalities.

I'm constantly looking for this sort of,

"Can we describe a Norwegian in a nutshell?"

I think I found it - I found this fantastic text on the Internet,

I want you to read it, it's really worth reading.

"If you were to use a colour to describe this person, he'd have to be green.

He lives in isolation in his home, a place he best describes as 'his' and 'cosy'.

However, he is not the most receptive of people when it comes to visitors."

The typical Norwegian.

"He is somewhat primitive, but he is honest, straightforward,

all he really wants in life are the simple little pleasures like peace and quiet."

Do you recognize any of this?

There are some key words - can you see that?

They jump out at you.

And OK, it's a stereotype, but a lot of this is a bit true.

I show this to Norwegians, and they kind of nod,

"Yeah, OK. I'll give you that one."

Then I surprise them:

this is a description not of a Norwegian, but of a Hollywood film star.

Yeah! Would you like to know who it is?

There it is. Is that person there. (Laughter)

The point about this is you often believe what people tell you as well.

I could sit there and tell you this is a Norwegian, and you believe it.

It's not a Norwegian at all;

although maybe this could be a Norwegian that is going off to this house,

but there are many words in there which are accepted and familiar.

Another accepted and familiar thing about Norwegian life

is the Norwegian forest; I live in the Oslo area, it's all forest.

Working across borders is basically not accepting completely

that your assumptions are the assumptions of others.

I mean that's logic; you know, common sense.

The Norwegian forest is a good thing, isn't it, Norwegians in the room?

It's all good, it's fresh air, nature, elks, skiing, it's fantastic.

That's what my wife thought the first time my father visited us in Norway

because she thought we would do something nice.

So my wife asked my Italian father,

"Would you like to go for a walk in the forest?"

And my father looked at her and said, "Why?"

(Laughter)

I had to explain to my wife that if you say to another Italian,

"Hey, you and me, we go for a walk in the forest,"

that means something else, you don't do that. (Laughter)

But how can you know that? How could you know that?

Accepted and familiar.

At the time, we went for a drive, we went for a drive with my father,

and we are all looking at the same thing.

A beautiful Norwegian landscape.

And my father is taking photographs that he wants to show his friends.

The road is kind of bumpy, so he says to my wife,

"Could you slow the car down? Stop it, I want to take a proper photograph."

My wife says, "But Mr. Riccardi, there is nothing here."

He looks at her and says to her, "I know. I've never seen nothing before."

(Laughter)

What was amazing with this is we're looking at the same pictures

and using completely different words to describe it;

this is the challenge of working across borders.

We've got different ideas of accepted and familiar.

Here is what is accepted and familiar to me when I queue.

I was raised in the UK,

we're the world champions of queueing, waiting in line.

And you know? We're fantastic.

If you're waiting in line in a supermarket in the UK

- let's say there are 10 people waiting in line,

we all are getting a bit impatient because we're all waiting in line -

and then they open a new cash register, do you know what will happen in the UK?

The first four people won't move, they'll stay in the queue.

The next six people will move to the next cash register

in more or less the same order, and they kind of check with each other.

If they open another cash register, the same will happen.

It's like a formation dance, it's fantastic.

Would the same happen in Norway?

No. What would happen if they shout in Norwegian "Ledig kasse",

which is "Available cash register"?

What happens? Everybody goes for it.

It's first come, first served, isn't it? Isn't that what is accepted and familiar?

The first time that happened to me,

I was shocked, and I said some not very nice things about Norwegians.

(Laughter)

But, you know, you got to dig a bit deeper to find out why Norwegians do that.

Why are they running for that cash register?

Why is it a free for all and first come, first served?

I think it has got to do with this. "What?" they say.

This is the King of Norway on a train in 1973,

that guy in a cap on the right.

This is equality,

and I think the queueing system in Norway is all about equality.

First come, first served is about equality,

and it's the ability to dig under the surface

and find out what the underlying values are.

That's how you know how to communicate with people,

this equality is really important in Norway.

It's the reason we're so laid back with each other,

we don't bother with titles, we dress casually,

it makes a fantastic business environment actually, doesn't it?

But sometimes, it can take you a bit by surprise,

and in those situations where you feel uncomfortable or irritated,

we have a tendency to jump to the negative conclusions

rather than the positive conclusions.

I travel all over the world

- and this is not an advertisement for the airlines -

but it is Scandinavian Airlines, and Lufthansa, and Singapore Airlines,

and everybody knows Singapore Airlines has the best service - why?

Because they have a whole lot more hierarchy in their societies.

Therefore, when they serve you, they serve you,

and the Singapore Airlines staff - if you ever been on their flight -

but from the moment they welcome you, they look like they're going to serve you.

I mean, it's just the body language, it's like, "Anything for you, sir."

Now, if a Scandinavian Airlines person did this when you came on,

yeah, exactly, you would get suspicious, wouldn't you?

What is going on? (Laughter)

Because it is not accepted or familiar, that's it, you know.

This is what it's all about.

So this is how we do it. And look at the space.

Space is important, nobody is touching.

If you go to somewhere like Finland, that space becomes even more, can you see?

(Laughter)

It's fantastic. (Laughter)

Look at the way they queue in France.

It's nothing like the way I'm used to queueing,

and it's different every day, it's never the same.

And in some cultures, you need a bit more motivation to stand in line.

This is my favourite one, this is fantastic, look at this.

(Laughter)

Isn't that great?

They're all different.

We are all doing the same thing in slightly different ways.

Now, how do you get across borders? How do you navigate through this?

Because you can't learn all the codes, it's impossible.

Here is a tip. This is what I'm really passionate about - curiosity.

I am, have been, always will be a curious person.

Curiosity gets you through a lot of things.

I believe you can ask any question to anybody just about anything,

provided you do it with curiosity.

That's it. Curiosity is a great thing.

Now, I've got three kids.

Kids are the most curious creatures on the planet.

A recent survey - I can't believe this, but I have to quote it -

apparently, 4-year-olds will ask up to 390 questions per day.

82% of those questions will be to mothers rather than fathers.

You know why?