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Home / Articles Posted by Pernille Rudlin ( - Page 57)

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About Pernille Rudlin

Pernille Rudlin was brought up partly in Japan and partly in the UK. She is fluent in Japanese, and lived in Japan for 9 years.

She spent nearly a decade at Mitsubishi Corporation working in their London operations and Tokyo headquarters in sales and marketing and corporate planning and also including a stint in their International Human Resource Development Office.

More recently she had a global senior role as Director of External Relations, International Business, at Fujitsu, the leading Japanese information and communication technology company and the biggest Japanese employer in the UK, focusing on ensuring the company’s corporate messages in Japan reach the world outside.

Pernille Rudlin holds a B.A. with honours from Oxford University in Modern History and Economics and an M.B.A. from INSEAD and she is the author of several books and articles on cross cultural communications and business.

Since starting Japan Intercultural Consulting’s operations in Europe in 2004, Pernille has conducted seminars for Japanese and European companies in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, UAE, the UK and the USA, on Japanese cultural topics, post merger integration and on working with different European cultures.

Pernille is a non-executive director of Japan House London, an Associate of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia and she is also a trustee of the Japan Society of the UK.

Find more about me on:

  • linkedin LinkedIn
  • youtube YouTube

Here are my most recent posts

Bowing, handshakes and greetings

The following dialogue between Tadaharu Iizuka, Managing Director of Centre People, a recruitment consultancy and Pernille Rudlin, European Representative of Japan Intercultural Consulting appeared in Journey (a weekly magazine for the Japanese community in the UK) on 1st September 2005.

Iizuka: A while ago there was a TV commercial for a British bank which I found very amusing. It showed a British businessman and a Japanese businessman meeting for the first time, and both sides were very nervous. The Japanese man extended his right hand to shake hands and at the same time the British man took a very deep bow. Then they reversed and did the opposite and again missed each other. You really felt that East and West will never meet.

Rudlin: Even though that was a TV ad, it is something that you can imagine happening for real. I have a similar story which I will tell in a moment, but it is certainly true that as an intercultural consultant I am almost always asked by people if they should bow when they meet Japanese people for the first time.

Iizuka: Is it a question concerning how they should bow?

Rudlin: Sometimes they ask that, but actually it is often about whether it is OK to shake hands or whether they should follow Japanese customs. They seem to be quite apprehensive about it. The commercial you mentioned may only be adding to the confusion. In reality, most Japanese business people know Western customs very well and practice them. Because of this, I usually advise that when you first meet someone, a handshake is OK.

Iizuka: When a Japanese business person visits the UK and meets British people for the first time, or the other way round, it is a case of “East meets West”, so you could imagine there would be a lot of tension. There is another point regarding handshakes which I would like to bring up. I visited a client with a British female colleague and there was confusion as to who should offer to shake hands first. My colleague was holding back and did not offer her hand. Then the Japanese manager we were visiting also hesitated, so we did not manage a proper exchange of greetings. Afterwards I said to her it might have been best if she had offered to shake hands first.

Rudlin: This kind of thing happens quite often. I expect in that situation you bowed in the Japanese style, so it was rather difficult for your colleague and the Japanese manager to switch to shaking hands immediately afterwards. I have also heard in connection with this that older Japanese people were taught that it is rude for a man to offer to shake a woman’s hand. This may have been true a long time ago but now men and women are meeting as equals, so it is best to be proactive in offering to shake hands when you meet.

Iizuka: You mentioned earlier an anecdote regarding a misunderstanding over a handshake – could you elaborate further?

Rudlin: This happened to an acquaintance of mine working at a Japanese company in the UK. A newly arrived manager from Japan was ‘doing the rounds’ to introduce himself to the staff and my acquaintance put out his hand in order to shake hands, at the same time the Japanese manager bowed. Unfortunately this resulted in him poking the Japanese manager in the eye. It was rather similar to the commercial we talked about earlier I suppose. Fortunately the Japanese manager decided to make a joke of it, and took to covering his eye in mock alarm every time they met in the corridor, much to the English person’s amusement. So there was a silver lining to that particular cloud.

Iizuka: When we talk about greetings, for Japanese people in Europe it’s not just a worry about shaking hands but also about embraces and the brushing of cheeks. In our hearts maybe we think it is a good way of showing feelings of friendship. But as Japanese we do feel some resistance, and it is difficult for us to do these things naturally.

Rudlin: I think the British and the Japanese have similar interpersonal space needs. The British also like to keep a bit of distance when they are meeting someone. Sometimes you can see at parties where there are two people talking to each other and one has a smaller need for interpersonal space, that they end up moving across the room, because one is moving closer to the other, and the other keeps moving back in order to keep a distance that is comfortable to them. No doubt both Japanese and British children stay physically close to their family and familiar people, but it does seem that as they reach adulthood, expected behaviours change. For the British, it is OK to continue to show physical affection to people you are close to, but Japanese adults keep a distance even with their own families.

Iizuka: It is true that Japanese children are if anything physically closer to their families than the British. Even now there are some families where the parents and children all sleep together in a row of futons on the floor. Whereas in the UK children are usually put in a separate room from quite early on, and brought up to be independent. It seems that the way one physically interacts with others changes quite radically at some point in one’s upbringing.

Rudlin: I expect that younger Japanese people will begin to show their feelings more openly. Not because they are becoming more ‘Western’ but as a natural consequence of wanting to show their feelings directly, they will move from a handshake to an embrace, particularly amongst family.

 

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

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Japanese use of ‘telepathy’ to communicate

Pernille Rudlin was interviewed by Tadaharu Iizuka, Managing Director of Centre People, regarding the Japanese use of ‘ishindenshin’ or telepathy in order to communicate. It appeared in the Japanese language weekly Journey magazine, May 5th 2005.

Iizuka: Although Japanese attitudes towards communication and Japanese culture itself are changing, we still have a long history of unconsciously using ‘ishin denshin’ (telepathy or tacit understanding). We think that the other person has already understood what we are trying to say, so we don’t say much, but in the UK if we expect this to work…

Rudlin: …it can lead to misunderstandings or British people saying to themselves “you can never tell what Japanese people are thinking”. Research has shown that the degree of directness of expression varies between cultures. Americans are very forthright, the French quite forthright, the British in the middle somewhere, South East Asians are rather more indirect and the Japanese are very indirect. With Americans, what they say is all that they want to say, nothing more, nothing less. Which is why they find it hard to understand what Japanese people are trying to say.

Iizuka: The British are in the middle, as you say, and having talked to British people who have experience of living in Japan and they did indeed say that in this respect British are more like the Japanese than they are like Americans. Certainly compared to Americans British don’t say things as directly sometimes but compared to the Japanese, British people seem to make a distinction between when to be direct and when to hold back?

Rudlin: Yes. We definitely like to hint at things without having to say them explicitly. So I don’t think ‘ishin denshin’ is peculiar to the Japanese. I will give an example of something that happened when I was working in Japanese company. A Japanese colleague asked me to help him with a letter from a British company. He couldn’t understand the meaning of it, even though he was from a top university and spoke good English. I understood the meaning of the letter the moment I read it. The letter writer was forcefully expressing his dissatisfaction with services received, whilst keeping his anger reined in. The kind of expressions he used were “merely” and “if you would be so kind as to…” and “with all due respect”. It was very clearly as would say in Japanese ‘ingin burei’ or ‘hypocritical courtesy’, but at the same time you could not take offence at the expressions used. It was necessary to ‘read between the lines’.

Iizuka: As it happens the other day I received an e-mail in Japanese that said ‘I would like you to read between the lines to understand what I am trying to say…” so it does seem from what you say that there areas in which Japanese and British communication styles are similar. However I have heard that this expression in Japanese ‘read between the lines’ was actually originally borrowed from the West. Perhaps because in the past ‘reading between the lines’ was such a matter of course in Japan that it was not necessary to give it a label.

Rudlin: That’s a very interesting point. Highly educated British people in particular like to use euphemisms, for example if you see the classic British TV comedy series ‘Yes Minister’, you will see this. They like using a great variety of words to create subtle expressions.

However if as a Japanese person living in Europe you believe, having heard British use euphemisms, that you can use Japanese style ‘ishin denshin’ as the lynchpin of your communication with British people, you will find that things do not work out as well as you hoped.

Iizuka: Having worked in the UK for a long time I can think of many slip-ups caused by my relying on ‘ishin denshin’. I can see that it is born from my attitude that ‘we are all the same human beings’ so we can understand each other, I do not have to say anything as it is very obvious and you will surely understand it by yourself.

Rudlin: A big difference between Japanese and British communication style is that Japanese often do not use clear expressions when it is in fact necessary to do so. This can cause things to go awry, or misunderstandings or even mistrust. So it is vital sometimes to be very explicit. It is possible, given the amount of influence the USA has had on British society and culture, that the British are beginning to expect a more direct way of expression.

Iizuka: We are taught at school in Japan to express ourselves clearly but at the same time ‘ishin denshin’ culture is programmed into our way of thinking in other parts of our lives. So when we live in Europe we consciously have to adopt a different approach.

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

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Japanese and British use of eye contact

Pernille Rudlin was interviewed by Tadaharu Iizuka, Managing Director of Centre People, regarding differences in Japanese and British use of eye contact for the Japanese language weekly Journey magazine, April 7th 2005.

Iizuka: What kind of experiences did you have when you went to junior school in Japan for six years? I hear that at that age one tends to pick things up very quickly, soaking everything up like a sponge?

Rudlin: The first six months were very tough. Of course I couldn’t understand anything and during the break times pupils from the entire school, right up to senior high school, would crowd round to look at my face or touch my hair. But children at that age are very adaptable and after about six months I was able to speak everyday Japanese and the other pupils had become used to me. I was still rather bad at the weekly kanji (ideographs) test but once I even managed to get top marks for a composition. Even now theme tunes from TV programmes, nursery rhymes and songs come back to me from time to time.
Iizuka: I suppose it was a natural progression for you after your experience of living in Japan to join a Japanese company and work for them for nine years. No doubt the experience helps you in your current work (training aimed at minimising communication issues in workplaces where there are different cultures)?

Rudlin: Intercultural communication obstacles do not only come between the Japanese and the British but also between the British and the French and other nationalities. Even if the nature of the obstacle varies, differences occur. In Japan one also says ‘the eyes are the windows of the soul’ or ‘eyes say more than lips’ but it does seem that the Japanese use eye contact a lot less when communicating amongst themselves. In the UK we have the same sort of expressions and believe that eye contact is an important communication tool. We believe eye contact during a conversation is very important and it comes naturally to us.

Iizuka: I totally agree with you. For example, it is still fresh in my memory that when I first joined a medical supplies company in Japan, the induction training specified that we should not look the client in the eye, and instead aim our eyes at the level of their necktie knot.

Rudlin: Certainly this is one aspect of Japanese culture and I am not saying which is right or which is wrong, just that if you are going to live in the UK and work here, if you do not pay attention to this cultural difference, it will cause friction and may lead to more serious situations.

I heard a of a case a while ago where a British woman complained about sexual harassment in her workplace to her Japanese boss and while she was explaining about it, asking him to do something about it, he spent the whole meeting listening to her with his eyes closed. I have seen this kind of behaviour many times in Japan and understand it, but to this woman, no eye contact meant he was ignoring her, and it simply made her more furious. She even took her case to court and claimed that she thought her boss had been sleeping in the meeting!

Iizuka: So despite the fact that he might have been closing his eyes in order to concentrate better on what she was saying, this was misunderstood to the point where the situation got unbelievably worse. You could also say that staring too hard at someone might be a problem too.

Rudlin: As I said at the beginning, the eyes are the windows to the soul, so it is important when talking to someone to exchange eye contact, to show that you are speaking from the heart. This way doing business and living in the UK will be that little bit more enjoyable.

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

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