“Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” - Jawaharlal Nehru

I am currently dealing with a situation at work that I thought was a normal problem. Then I realized today that it isn’t just any regular problem. It is a culture clash. I don’t love the term “culture clash” because it automatically pins the cultures against each other and seems somewhat helpless. I prefer something like “culture issue”, but considering this problem hasn’t been resolved and now it’s bigger than I wanted it to be, I guess it’s a clash.

And I’m not sure what the right answer is. To me, of course my solution is right. But I have been conditioned to think a certain way my entire life, so it’s obvious for me. And when I look back to my experience and what I would normally do at home, I am reminded that there wouldn’t even be a problem in the first place in the US. The other person would have thought the same thing, since they too have been conditioned to act the same way, and we would have all been on the same page from the beginning.

I think culture is more engrained in us than I may have thought. It seems to be something that comes up in strange places, where you might not normally expect. Shoe styles, religion, and diet are easy culture targets. But problem solving, work expectations, and fairness are not. And they are very different.

Personality traits that I would not necessarily use to describe me in the US since they are so common are things that differentiate me here. Good or bad. And not necessarily positive and negative in the same way that they are viewed at home. That makes it confusing.

This time the solution will be what the other culture decides, and I will have to go along with it. I know I am growing and learning, etc, but I have to admit that sometimes it’s easier to work with people who think like you, at least as a starting point.

Update: We are going with the Swiss way of doing things. So I’m going to suck it up like an American and just do what needs to get done.