An interesting lack of language skills

Travelling in South America, my way below average Spanish is an interesting source of experience. Usually I am an extravert, liking to rely on conversation and personal contact to gather information or to create. These are important qualities to me, not in the least at work. Now, completely lacking sufficient language skills, I experience how this actually narrows the opportunity to be me. I get hesitative in making first contact and become much more introvert. Plus, I have to rely on others to get things done, without almost no control on my behalf whatsoever. Which, for some people, actually feels less comfortable at times (haha) … Just a few small examples on what lack of language skills can do.

What a valuable experience, as it helps me to feel what cultural or lingual differences can do to someone’s ability to be who he or she is. And again a lesson in the added value of experience, compared to of course already knowing all this in general. The wider the lingual of cultural gap, the bigger the impact on ones behaviour, thoughts and feelings. This is something to really take into account if someone is just working at the firm, or is new to a culture. The same goes for coaching in these processes. If a small lingual problem transforms me from comfortably extravert to almost hesitatively introvert, the impact of other sorts of changes are easily understood.

Golden handcuffs? Not in Argentina...

In Buenos Aires we met Taylor, a young African American who successfully works as a legal expert at a big law-firm in New York. He was on a well-spent three week holiday, something not many Americans get to do. As we explained to Taylor we are in our first weeks of a year of travelling, our conversation suddenly took an interesting turn. That’s when Taylor mentioned the golden handcuffs: living the fast and luxurious life in which everything seems possible, at first... Very attractive. And how easy it is to get used to having the money, and ofcourse the prestige that comes with the job. Until you realize how those golden handcuffs lock you to the rat race for many more years to come. Traditional retirement plans, restricted stock options, savings plans, health insurance and many other benefits (provided to you by the company) lock the cuffs even tighter. And, as they say, people often rather stick to the devil they know, than risk the devil they don’t know.

In that perspective Taylor was something different for sure, being very open to new ideas. An important asset, as it helps you to realize there’s no one but yourself holding the keys to the cuffs. Now this is something you don’t have to explain to the Argentines! Talking to Hans en Alina from Belgium and Argentina, who run a Posada in Mendoza district, it becomes clear to me how the Argentines keep the cuffs away. They have experienced a big crisis in the early 2000’s, which threw a lot of middle class people back to lower class. Only the few in power profited. Happily for the Argentines they have good public schools. This is how the children of people struck by crisis work themselves back up to middle class. But crisis has made the Argentines flexible, so Alina explained. This is where their thinking is almost opposite to that of an average successful American or Northern European business partner: never expect too much of the future and make sure you don’t depend heavily on the things you have today… Thanks to little future orientation and a vast quantity of time.

Personally I’d like to see quite a bit of this thinking in Europe, especially where it concerns our current economic crisis. Stop living in the future and thinking of more growth, and start making it work today! (or mañana…)

And how about coaching? Well, from here out is seems pretty obvious how it can be more difficult to coach your average successful European on how to enjoy a day’s life, in comparison to your average Argentine. And if it comes to dealing with pressure and responsibility, I would for sure take cultural differences into account. But, on the handcuffs, let me be careful not to judge before I’m sure I haven’t cuffed myself to having a year off…