LEXINGTON, KY - Latin culture generally does not discourage standing close while talking. In Chile, you do not serve wine with the left hand. When sitting cross legged while in the company of Pacific Islanders, one should avoid pointing his or her feet toward the center of the room. Asians are not "touchy" people - they generally do not make casual body contact. Arab male society is "touchy" - but Arab wives do not shake hands.
Confused yet?
These are some examples of the culture shock headed Lexington's way with the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in September.
Business owners, volunteers and others who expect to come in contact with the worldly throng can learn more about international protocol by attending one in a series of March seminars by international public relations and political consultant Harvey Thomas, press and communications chief for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Thomas will lead a seminar on international cultural preferences and sensitivities at Midway College on March 5 from 10am until 3pm. And he is scheduled to make a presentation before the Lexington Rotary Club on March 11.
To get a sense of the advice he will dispense, I interviewed Mr. Thomas about his forthcoming seminars. You can our Q&A below, or click on the podcast icon to listen to the conversation.
T. M.: Why is it important for a business person here in Lexington to research and then to understand cultural preferences and sensitivities in advance of an event like the World Equestrian Games?
H. T.: Because there are going to be people from at least 60 if not many more countries descending on Lexington on mass. About 20 percent of the tickets being sold for the games right now are to people outside of North America. Now that's going to be 60 or so different countries, many of them with totally different cultures. Many of them poor countries Pakistan, Indonesia, some of the Latin America countries, many of them with completely different cultures, sometimes Islamic cultures. So they are going to come into a place that they've not been to before in many cases and who are they going to meet? They are going to meet the people of Lexington. Business people of Lexington, other people of Lexington and this is the opportunity as I see it for Kentucky, Lexington and the people here to demonstrate to the world exactly what real America is, what real Americans are because there is much misconception about that around the world right now.
T. M.: You've been in Lexington a bit, you've been around and I'm sure you've dined or been in retail establishments. What are your observations? If you don't mind, please be candid with us here, we can take it, we need it.
H. T.: Well apart from the need to speak proper English which is always a challenge from those of us who come from England to the United States I think there is a very warm welcome almost everywhere. There is also a very worrying ignorance about the rest of the world and I find that people are not aware of general world trends that affect the United States very much indeed. People are aware of "the war on terror" or whatever it wants to be called, they are not aware on the whole of how the rest of the world sees that or whether different cultures see that in different ways. The simply don't know because America is such a wealthy country that it doesn't need in its own mind to depend upon the rest of the world, that is changing. America and all the rest of the western countries are becoming more and more dependent upon other parts of the world. Central Asian Oil, Middle Eastern Oil, Venezuelan Oil just as one example. People grumble about high oil prices but they don't understand why the prices are high. They don't understand other cultures and the reason for that is the media in the United States is nearly all localized. The web is helping that get more national and international but by and large when I listen news on radio and television, anywhere, here in Lexington, yes, but other places too. I hear more about Mrs. Jones' cat or the bread pudding than I do about the fact that's there's been a, Haiti is very close by of course, there's been a tragedy there. But by and large if a earthquake happens in China or Japan that may destroy, let's suppose a huge car factory, and therefore upsets the prices of cars 6 months later, nobody has any idea about any of these things. And I think that's rather worrying because without understanding other cultures in today's mass migration world then you cannot develop good relationships and what the world needs and what America needs most of all is good relationships with other parts of the world and people and cultures and religions in other parts of the world.
T. M.: What we have seen happen in this country in the past decade I would say with our media is the closure of foreign bureaus on a mass scale, almost all of our major media - print and electronic - have closed their European, Asian, and Middle Eastern bureaus. That can only have an impact on the quality and the depth of information that we are consuming in this country. Is it the same in Europe?
H. T.: No it isn't and the impact that you are talking about might not be a negative impact because the report that you will get from, for example, if you do get any stories coming into the American media the report that you will get from let's say Agence France Presse, from writers, from the BBC, from Skye News, from Starr News, from around the world will be far more accurate, far more in detail and far more objective than any of the American reporters would normally send in those countries. So in one sense the reports that are coming in will be better, but on the other hand they won't necessarily be used. But as far as Europe is concerned, no. And certainly Asia and the Arab world and I'm just thinking of places I have worked in personally, Africa, everybody knows what goes on in America. If there is a major activity in America everybody knows about it. We use the term America loosely and I mean in this instance the United States to clarify. But the world knows what happens. If I'm in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia for example I read Arab news in English and I'll be able to know exactly what the key things going on in the United States are. I may even read about the Lexington "state of the merger" speech for example by the mayor quite recently. And that could be read about in the Arab news but what does America read about what's happening in Saudi Arabia except the face that it's a terrorist nation and that's very dangerous.
T. M.: As a community trying to prepare ourselves better for the experience that we are going to have in September and October would it be wise for Lexingtonians to make themselves aware of the availability of such channels as the BBC?
H. T.: It would be very wise because you will get, probably the BBC is the best. I don't say that because I'm British cause it's got a very, very broad coverage globally supported by other media such as Skye News which is another Murdock Channel for example as is Fox News, but Skye News is more objective perhaps than Fox New is. It would be very wise and you could do it not only by cable but simply by googling BBC News and it all comes up, it's all live on the web. So in a country like this that lives quite extensively on the internet it's very easy to find. And you can get everything. If I wanted to find America football results in the UK it would take me 10 seconds. If I wanted to find British soccer results which is a far greater sport globally than you know, every Saturday 400 million people watch the British football teams playing all over the globe. It's a massive sport but I can't kind a thing about it in the United States. So it would be very wise to learn what's going on because suddenly the people of Lexington especially, Lexington, Georgetown, Paris and Versailles right around this immediate area are going to find themselves face to face with people they don't know, who don't speak their language very well, who have a fixed and probably wrong opinion of the people here in the United States and here's the chance to tell the world with all these television channels coming in from Pakistan and all over the place, here's a chance to be a wonderful testimony as to what America really is.
T. M.: How do we strike a balance between recognizing the peculiarities of these many different cultures, while at the same time being ourselves?
H. T.: The foreigners will flock to see everything western. They'll flock to hear country music because it's American. Yes they want to know about it, but at the same time they've got these prejudices. And so it's this balance. The secret actually is very straight forward and speaking as a Christian I would say it's a biblical principle. The Bible says respect all people and it uses the word respect not tolerate. I always said tolerance is bad because it means you're stupid, I'm smart, but I'm so nice I put up with you. Words to that effect. Respect means I can learn from you and you can learn from me and it's an entirely different relationship and that is what is missing in global person to person relationships especially from the West to the rest of the world, from the developed west. We British look down on the French terribly as a nation. "Oh, it's French". We kind of wish the Channel Tunnel had never been built. But really we need to respect people. And if there is that respect there then culture and protocol mistakes can easily be recovered from because it's the lack of respect that is the problem not the mechanics of protocol.
T. M.: To date, most of the purchases of tickets to the games so far have been made in Canada, Australia, Mexico, Britain, South Africa and the Netherlands. Are there any particular cultural behaviors or habits in those countries that might present protocol issues to Lexington locals?
H. T.: There are ones which are strictly surface habits. The sort of what I would call gushiness of Americans, "Have a nice day", when everybody knows you don't mean it you're just saying it. If you can just say it because that became such a clichÈ "have a good one". And I've seen that on one of these reality pictures you know, a policeman stops a car and gives him a huge ticket, the guy is furious at him and the policeman says, "Thank you sir and have a nice day". This kind of shallowness is something that is accepted in this cultural pleasantly but is misunderstood in other cultures because these cultures on the whole are not so friendly in the first instance but the friendships that grow become very deep ones.
So this initial know everybody and be terribly friendly and out front is a little dangerous but it's only on the surface, if that respect is there, if the courtesies are there then it won't matter.
T. M.: Some cultures don't like close physical contact. Others don't like body contact, others do. Some abhor the showing of the bottom of the foot. There are so many different cultural do's and don'ts out there, I can see how a Lexingtonian who is trying to manage all of this could become pretty bewildered.
H. T.: There are these many things that you refer to. For example in Islamic country you would never show the bottom of the foot to people, that's rude. You would never hold out your hand to shake hands with a Muslim woman for example as a courtesy. If she holds out her hand to you, you can accept it. In China you would always give everything to everybody. For example if you are exchanging business cards you would always hold it in two hands, both hands and hold it out to the person opposite you to show the respect you have from them. But none of these things really matter if the deeper respect is there and secondly if individuals can learn to see themselves as other people see them. And this is a great problem for all of us in countries where we have been as it where the "masters of the world', the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the American Empire. We have this attitude of looking down subconsciously on other cultures and we cannot see how they see us and this is a problem. Now I am 6' 3Ω", I weigh close to 300 pounds, I have gray hair and I have certainly passed 60. But when I'm teaching for example in seminars about how to see yourself I will say I have learned to see myself as other people see me, dark hair, 35 years old, slim and fit and athletic and then they laugh. But it makes the point. We see ourselves in a fixed way and we actually need to be prepared to see ourselves as other people see us whether or not that is right. People see the British as being pompous, they see the Americans as being arrogant and rich. Now that is not true but we need to accept the fact that that's the way other people are seeing us and take that into account in our relationship with them. And this is quite important, this is a principle.
T. M.: And what can we do with that? If we do accept that perception and we say "okay that is how we're being seen," what then?
H. T.: Well once you know how you are seen I could give you a load of specific examples but again let me take one from the Islamic world because I have worked quite extensively in Saudi Arabia producing the Jeddah Economic Forum there, which is 6,000 delegates, a big economic forum and other parts of the Middle East. America as a whole used to be seen as a capitalist country. Now it is seen corporately as a Christian country. So in the Islamic world it is not corporate capitalism being seen or even imperialism as being seen as the forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places where the British and Americans and others are involved militarily, it is Christianity. Because the image of America changed during those last 8 or 9 years. And people will say it's the Christians' fault. Now that is totally wrong as many other things are wrong, but it is the perception that people have. If you know that, you can then take steps, behave in a way that shows respect and courtesy and takes away that wrong image. The "rich" image for example is another one. America has a lifestyle that is unbelievably easy in every way. For those of us who come from Europe, we can find a parking place here in America, we can eat any hour that we want to eat rather than lunch will be served between 12:00 and 2:00 and you aren't allowed to eat lunch after 2:00 or whatever the hours are. There is a huge freedom but there are many other restrictions. Some Sudanese recently arrived in the United States, young men, they were filmed by National Geographic and they said "we were asked isn't it nice to be in a free country after the Sudan and we said 'What do you mean'", these are young black African people, "we can't go and knock on peoples doors and come in and have tea with them. And if we go up to them in the streets they are frightened of us, we can't congregate and have a little time together singing in the streets, we can do all of these things in Sudan" and nobody bothers us." It's a different perspective on life and the more we can understand those different perspectives the more we can do to counteract them and show the true picture, because this is a marvelous country with wonderful people.
T. M.: You will soon be conducting a series of seminars about international protocol here in the Lexington area?
H. T.: Those are coming up from about the 4th of March onwards for about 10 days. We'll be in a number of places: Midway College, Georgetown College, The Rotary Club in Lexington, other places where we'll be looking at how the people of Lexington can make visitors feel welcome. For me, as an Englishmen, I feel wonderfully welcome when somebody welcomes me and gives me wonderful food and all the rest of it, but that may not be the same for everybody. So it's good to learn about some of these things and we'll be having those seminars about protocol, which comes down to seeing yourself as other people see you and not worrying too much about it.
T. M.: I appreciate it very much Mr. Thomas, thank you.
T. H.: Thank you very much.