In any world where change is accelerating and the unexpected is the new normal, can we depend on two diverse constants: greater global/international contact and, therefore, increased intercultural disagreement / misunderstanding / conflict? Is professional or personal catastrophe avoidable? Or inevitable? IF that is the case, why face it alone. What are our options…
At a time in human evolution and history, where the majority of us are growing more impatient with the artificial impediments to solutions for our common serious issues and problems – impending environmental catastrophe, the deterioration of democracy, etc. – the processes that enable us to finally achieve difficult solutions for challenging problems has never been more relevant. The recent unexpected war has highlighted the importance of rules based negotiation and mediation as opposed to “no rules confrontational force”.
The million mintage rhetorical question is – how do we take inherently uncomfortable counterproductive forces and cultivate them into positive positions. How do we make the best of all the related cultural knowledge so that it creates the proverbial win-win(-win) competitive advantages for the most people / parties? In our global world, can we do this best virtually, face to face or in hybrid form?
What is the interdisciplinarity connection between conflict and interculture that an intercultural business mediator should be schooled?
In any global context, do all international activities lead down an intercultural road? Do all the roads in this constantly changing world lead to one aspect of culture or another? Is the key to intercultural understanding a greater appreciation of CoT? What is CoT – “the Culture of Things” (please see first post – Professor, Fig. 12). Why are we surrounded and in immersed in CoT and not necessarily aware of that?
Why care about culture and what does that have to do with mediation? A lot of questions with an elusive purpose. But let’s ponder and get to things you might want to hear and know about – that is, when we talk about Intercultural Business Mediation.
For those of you who need a mediation refresher – just what is it? Mediation is many things.
For those of you who need a mediation refresher – just what is it? Mediation is many things.
Mediation is a method or process for resolving conflict, crisis, misunderstanding, disagreement and attaining a mutually assured solution. The solution can be a deal that two parties can live with – or better yet – a path to the creation and acceptance of a new mutual positive status / dynamic within their relationship. There are most often obvious goals perceived by the mediation expert that can put the parties in a better position than before. The resolution can lead to enhancing or restoring valued relationships.
Either way, people become involved in mediation because it is the better and positive alternative to negative and costly results or situations. It is the more beneficial, positive, altruistic choice. This applies to private people in their everyday lives or quests. It applies to businesses who need to avoid the unnecessary costs of dysfunctional interactions and decisions. It involves businesses bypassing negative stances that cause uncalculated costs. It is an explanation for why win-lose decisions lead to long term losses.
Mediation is allowing the mediator to facilitate the transparency necessary to understand the deepest level necessary for the conflicting parties to begin to find results and resolutions that can trigger something new in an important relationship. In a capitalist slash socially evolving society, mediation means the civilized and law-based way of putting oneself in a better position. It is a better way to interact with people whose culture can trigger our reactions in ways we do not want.
In a legal world where laws matter and people generally respect them as a common thread to mutual societal respect, an integrative mediator can guide the disagreeing parties towards a recognition of the importance of settling things with each other in an advantageous altruistic manner. Is there a better option?
In a lawless, disrespectful society, where relationships – whether professional or private – are less important priorities – results are most often win-lose, short-sighted, greedy and selfish as the End Game. Short term, opportunistic positive results for one party is often less positive than a mutual agreement that lasts and benefits all concerned. If a competent, talented mediator is permitted to intervene, and facilitates parties towards a successful conclusion, then they have the opportunity to take that settlement to their attorneys to embody their special agreement in contractual law. Attorneys handle the legal aspects of a conflict, mediators handle the people – relationships aspect of a conflict.
International….Intercultural. It is revealing that those in our society who have elevated themselves in their social and financial world and put themselves in an elevated position in comparison to the lesser leveraged in their local environment – may come into more contact with people from outside their own culture. People with the mobility to explore welcomed interaction with the “Others” and may who may run into crisis or conflict, should consider the interculturally competent mediator as a catalyst for the solutions they need.
Not only is seeing and contacting a cultural world beyond our own an interesting proposition, a relevant law of globalization is that people from beyond our own modern tribe, can offer us economic advantages. For the most part, from these foreigners we can buy satisfactory quality and/or usable cheap goods, services, and products for a fraction of the price that we could from producers in our own financial tribe. We can create relationships with these foreigners that contain positive aspects going beyond our expectations at home. We can also expect eventual misunderstandings. The world is a big place, populated with people we had not imagined at a personal level. We sit around our own little globalized cultural campfire wondering what “these different people” who analyze in other languages are really thinking.
Humans are curious and our demographic history – venturing out of Africa over the last hundred thousand years or so – means it is in our genes to contact the outside world and interact with cultural aliens. That outside world includes people who are significantly different than us. This difference can lead to and elicit new knowledge. Or it can, under incompetent CoT circumstances, be misinterpreted leading towards suspicion, mutually destructive decisions, and negative consequences. It can literally cost us money.
That is where the intercultural mediator (aka IM) comes in. This person should NOT and cannot be an expert in every culture. This person’s expertise the ability to be intellectually adaptable in creating an open transparent communication environment where intercultural knowledge is injected into communicative relationships. The IM persuades all parties to transition into a positive intercultural state. The interculturally competent mediator brings the parties towards finding their own solutions together – thereby creating good feelings and awareness of the Other’s perspective. The mediator’s goal is not that the parties must agree or adopt the Other’s culturally influenced perspectives and priorities. The goal is that each party expands their relationship with the newly elicited cultural knowledge. This common knowledge of each other’s ways has am important overlap. This new knowledge is the fuel that can power a new resolution in the area of overlap.
Should the parties, despite the new intercultural knowledge, not have the wherewithal to get to where they need to be in the conflict / crisis management process, the mediator could decide to elevate the process by implementing a method called evaluative mediation. In a Culture of Things (aka CoT) context, this means that intercultural mediators use their expert knowledge to proactively guide the parties experiencing an interculturally influenced problem / issue towards a positive point that the expert perceives as highly relevant. This is done in an impartial, neutral, multi-partial manner. All parties should feel and recognize that they are being treated fairly, with equal respect, and intelligently. In a sense, the IM accompanies the intercultural mediatees on a resolution journey.
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So this is our first fast pass over of the topic of Intercultural Business Mediation. As with any cerebral topic, it has many layers. The first layer of this topic is simply that intercultural business mediation is a method to positively resolve a problem experienced by two or more people with different cultural perspectives and identities. Euphemistically, we can call “the Problem” the Intercultural Issue.
The expert knowledge of the mediator intervenor, who has the skills to initiate, coordinate, and trigger resolutions, is the factor that can bring the parties out and up to a more profound resolution based upon deeper knowledge. It can also be triggered new elicited intercultural knowledge to be shared.
Back to our initial questions and post propositions. If we are in business beyond our borders, and we run head on into a cultural wall, why wait to chase and stumble towards and around elusive solutions. Sometimes it just takes an expert – in this case an IM.