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aware of their behaviour. And just as

doctors say “I’m a general practition-

er” or “I’m a specialist”, there’s a

need for trainers to say “I’m a lan-

guage specialist” or “I’m a cultural

specialist” or “I’m a management

specialist”. But this doesn’t mean

there aren’t interfaces between these

areas.

Whose responsibility is it to adapt

when business partners from diffe-

rent cultures or countries meet? The

host’s? Or the guest’s?

This is the billion-dollar question that

people often ask me. And sometimes

when we do training, people get a bit

frustrated: “Oh, why do wealways

have to adapt?” My message is not

that you always have to adapt, but

that you first of all have to be aware

that there may be some cultural

things happening. Then you can

choose to adapt, or choose not to

adapt, or you find a third way. Often,

it’s the third way that works. An ex-

ample for me, as a trainer, is the ques-

billion [(bIljEn] Milliarde(n)

general practitioner Allgemeinarzt/

[)dZen&rEl prÄk(tIS&nE] -ärztin

guidebook [(gaIdbUk] Reiseführer

host [hEUst] Gastgeber(in)

humidity [hju(mIdEti] Luftfeuchtigkeit

pavement Gehsteig

[(peIvmEnt] UK

cover the place myself and read about

it afterwards. That sometimes frus-

trates friends I travel with who like to

read a guidebookand follow a plan.

This can go wrong, of course. When

I went to Dubai, I was staying in a ho-

tel in the Media City. I was going to

a meeting and didn’t require a lot of

local knowledge but I was curious, so

I went there a bit early. I thought I

would walk out of the hotel and I

would see the Burj Al Arab, this ho-

tel shaped like a sailing boat, and then

I would walk along the beach. That

was my vision. Unfortunately, I forgot

two factors. One was the weather,

which was about 40 degrees and 80

per cent humidity. So as soon as I

walked out the door, I realized why

people said I should take a taxi, not

walk around too much. The fact that

there weren’t any pavementsdidn’t

help. And the second point was that

the distance was much greater than I

had thought: it would have taken one

and a half hours to walk to the Burj

Al Arab at that time.

tion of people using mobile phones or

smartphones in a training course. You

could say, “Oh, it’s my culture to be

polychronic and do several things at

the same time. So everybody has to fit

in with this.” Or I could say as a

trainer that I expect people to adapt

to my style, which is more mono-

chronic, to do one thing at a time.

So I could say, “Switch off your

phones.” A third way would be to

say, “OK, we’ll take a longer break,

and you do your phoning then.”

What would you do yourself to get to

know a new place, whether you’re

there for work or just for fun?

I try not to read anything at all about

the place, especially when I’m going

there for a short time. I like to dis-

Gert Krautbauer

Discover first, read later? This can go wrong!

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