Join us! NEW Intercultural Coffee Meetings for BsAs expats (January 13th 2010)

Are you a NewComer in Buenos Aires? Would you like to understand the Argentinian way, from the perspective of an Argentinian Cultural Specialist, while meeting new people in a friendly environment?

Then join us in our Nomadas Globales - NEW Intercultural Coffee Meetings!
For expats, international students, travelers and all those interested in understanding Argentine locals idiosyncracy.

Agenda: "How to communicate effectively with Argentine locals?" (Jan 13th) Dissertation & Round Table of Natalia Sarro, Argentinian Psychologist and Intercultural Trainer. Followed by open discussion.
When? Every 2 weeks, starting January 13th 2010 - 5.00pm
Where? Gran Café Tortoni. Avenida de Mayo 825. Capital (BA)
How long? 90 minutes.
Cost: 20 Ar$

We organize one-on-one and small group coffee meetings on several intercultural related topics all over BA downtown.

Limited capacity for January 13th meeting. Pre-booking needed.

To book your place, contact us today on: natalia_sarro@yahoo.com.ar

Newcomer in Argentina... what could go wrong?

You just came out of Ezeiza airport.

Could it be any better? This is your new home!

The hot weather and the waves of Spanish speakers walking around you are postcards of a dream coming true.
You finally arrived to the beautiful Buenos Aires, promising land of tango, soccer and beef. You heard many wonderful stories from other expats about life in Buenos Aires. You know it is the European capital of Latin America. Great food. Cheap prices. Extroverted people. You heard Argentinians inherited an interesting European style from their Italian and Spanish ancestors.

What could possibly go wrong?

You came down to spend a nice season in an exotic culture: A Semester study abroad. An Expat assignment with your family. Maybe you met an attractive Argentino/a and you came down following an adventure. Or you are just making another stop in your trip around the world.
This is not your first living abroad experience.

However, things start to get difficult...

Let´s put it this way:
You meet some nice Argentinian locals and you are invited to a birthday party. You are so excited about it! You arrive at 10pm on the dot, as agreed. But surprisingly, you´re the first guest to arrive and the host is not even ready to receive you. What is wrong with Argentinians´ clocks?

A possible answer to this is… the concept of time. Argentina is a fluid time culture. Time is there to serve people´s needs, and not the other way around.
In social events in Argentina, such as parties or lunches with family or friends, start times are usually indicative, and arriving 30 to 40 minutes is frequent. Argentines are generally late, because they will not leave the previous meeting – obligation to the person you are with, outweighs inconveniencing everybody else. However, avoid generalizations.... Punctuality is more important in business meetings than in social events.



Our customized Intercultural Training Programs will help you understand the ins and outs of Argentinian culture and answer some of these questions:

1) What´s the Argentinos and Porteños (Buenos Aires citizens) mentality like?
2) What motivates Argentinians?
3) What are their values and how does this influence their behavior and communication style?
4) How can you relate effectively with Argentinian colleagues and managers at workplace?


We deliver affordable trainings to:

-expats and their families (children, trailing spouses)
-international students
-travelers
-occasional visitors

Where? We can visit you at your workplace or meet in one of the stlylish Coffee places of Buenos Aires downtown.

Contact us to work together on a customized intercultural training session to make the most out of your overseas experience in Argentina!


Email us: Natalia_sarro@yahoo.com.ar

My last Intercultural Training: Argentinean Students at Deutsche Schule Hurlingham (Buenos Aires)

Last November 24th, my colleague Gisella Lopez Becerra and I spent a great day at the classroom of Deutsche Schule Hurlingham (Bilingual School German – Spanish in Buenos Aires), training 30 Argentinean students in process of preparation for their Study Abroad Program in Germany.
Mission accomplished! Through games, role playing and lively discussion, we achieved our goal: generate tolerance and respect toward differences, improve students´ intercultural communication techniques and help them understand the importance of “putting oneself in people from other cultures´ shoes” before judging others.

Thanks everyone & have a great intercultural experience!
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El pasado 24 de Noviembre, junto a mi colega Gisella Lopez Becerra pasamos un día fantástico en las aulas del Deutsche Schule Hurlingham (escuela bilingüe español – alemán en Buenos Aires) capacitando a 30 estudiantes argentinos para su experiencia de Intercambio con Alemania.
Misión cumplida! A través de dinámicas lúdicas, role playing y vivo debate, alcanzamos nuestro objetivo: mejorar las técnicas de comunicación intercultural de los estudiantes, generar tolerancia y aceptación hacia las diferencias, y ayudarlos a comprender la importancia de ponerse en los zapatos del otro antes de emitir juicios de valor.

Gracias por participar y que tengan una excelente experiencia intercultural!

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Algunos comentarios de los estudiantes que participaron de nuestro Taller:

"Aprendí que no somos todos iguales. Ni mejores ni peores que otros"

" El Taller me sirvió para aprender a estar más abierta culturalmente y que debo disfrutar de esta experiencia de intercambio"

"Me gustó mucho el espacio, fue sorpresivo y concreto. Al ser más bien práctico, y no tan teórico, me llegó a nivel personal y me tranquilizó con respecto a mis miedos y dudas. Me entusiasmó mucho!"

"Me siento más emocionada por aplicar todo lo que llevamos a cabo. Me llevo las experiencias que nos contaron y estrategias para enfrentarlas."

"Gracias por esta gran exposición!"

Relationship matters: Business Entertainment in the land of Tango

Bonding plays a significant role in Argentina´ s relationship oriented culture; and business culture reflects the importance of the socializing in corporate settings.

In comparison to European countries and English-speaking North America, workdays are longer (office hours are usually Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 7.00pm/ 8.00pm), while workplace productivity is lower. One of the main reasons for this is the amount of time devoted to establishing and nurturing relationships. In large cities such as Buenos Aires, executives tend to spend considerable time and energy at extending their social networks by attending long work lunches or dinners, business meetings or the so called “after office” events, which take place after work hours in trendy bars. This is a very adaptive behavior in a society where a personal circle of powerful contacts, usually helps speed up bureaucratic transactions and facilitates access to certain benefits leading to business success.

Establishing relationships is also related to the need to get to know the people involved in a project and gaining trust before getting down to business. Newcomers arriving in Argentina should be prepared to allow time to build relationships with prospective partners and colleagues, rather than sticking to tight schedules and strict rules.

Typical social events to attend with business colleagues are business meals (eg. teams designate one day/ week to go out for lunch with colleagues), joint sport activities (usually soccer, but also golf in upper management level), birthdays, farewell parties, end of the year celebrations and achievements of common goals.

Since it is customary to work long hours, business dinners in restaurants can take place at as late as 9.00pm or 10.00pm.
On average, Argentines eat 68 kg of meat every year. Since vegetarianism is not commonplace, it is worthwhile mentioning meals preferences to the counterpart before making restaurant reservations.
When receiving international visitors, Argentine business people are usually very welcoming and hospitable. It is common to take newcomers to a tango show or to trendy restaurants. In upper management level, it is also usual to take foreign visitors to spend the day on the countryside in an “estancia” (cattle ranch).

Picture source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/levt/2119219568

Working With Argentines – How to communicate?

Written with support of Labs Relocation Services

(Thanks Lorraine and Susan!)

Means of Communication

Argentina ´s general style of communication is indirect: there's often more information in the body language than in the verbal content of the message. People are not as direct as North Americans, but at the same time not as indirect as some Asian cultures.

On first encounters, it is always safer to be formal. Nevertheless, the Argentine partner will most likely ask his foreign counterpart to move to a more relaxed and informal style. Argentine business people dealing with international partners pay more attention to the formality of the communications (especially in first-time meetings), while they tend to be more informal when dealing with local customers or vendors. The informal communication style can be identified by the use of "Tú" or "Vos" (2nd person singular) in verbal messages, while "Usted" (Spanish expression for "you") is the safest option to establish a higher level of deference and distance. Usted is usually used to address an individual one meets for the first time or that deserves a formal treatment, due to age or higher rank..

Preferred means of communication are face-to-face meetings and telephone calls, over email exchange. The phone is better than an email when a confirmation and some sort of commitment is required. Emails are mostly used for sharing information that needs to be persistent in time (i.e. for contractual purposes, key decisions, planning issues, etc.). Also, for informal communication among colleagues within the same organization, email is widely used, as well as internal messengers (which has been increasingly adopted by many companies to speed up the internal communication processes).

Emails

When it comes to email exchange, Argentine business partners prefer to be formal when establishing first contact. The frequency of email response varies upon the type of company and level of familiarity of their employees with latest technologies.

For example, if the company is Argentine-owned and it is managed by older people, it may take 3-4 business days to get an email response. Nevertheless, most companies have full access to Internet and utilize email as a primary communication tool. In some industries, especially when working with foreign clients, the responses happen within the course of the day or even within the next 2-3 hours.

Work from home

Work from home is not a general rule in local organizations and Smartphones (eg Blackberry or Palm) and work laptops are not as widely spread among employees as in other more developed countries. Therefore, foreign visitors can't always expect a business partner to reply to a work-related email after normal business hours or during weekends. However, most medium-sized or large organizations provide their upper/ mid-level level Managers with work cell phones and expect them to be reachable at all times. Text messaging is very common among young workforce, but it is still considered an informal style. When communicating something urgent or important, a phone call is by far the most recommendable mean of communication – over email and text message.

If a foreign visitor intends to initiate contact with a local organization or individual, the most advisable option is through a referral/ recommendation eg. being introduced by a current employee of the organization or a close contact person. If the visitor doesn't know anybody within the organization, a safe choice is sending an email and following up with a phone call.

Initial approach should be done with care and politeness, looking at building relationships gradually, paying attention to the other person or organization´s timing. Pushy or invasive approaches are not effective or welcome. While exaggerating the formality is not the best option, it is recommendable to be slightly more formal, than to force a too casual approach.

When organizing a meeting, it is recommendable to arrange it on the phone and confirm it by email afterwards.

Where is home to an expatriate? What are you doing to build your home these days?

Where is home to an expatriate? What are you doing to build your home these days?

By Natalia Sarro – Sept 2009

In modern travel, we are sold exotic touristic destinations, which we visit hoping that they are going to be “the place of our dreams”. However, we often don´t realize that, rather than traveling to experience a genuine immersion and close encounter with a new culture, it is just an ephemeral incursion to “wherever”, another place in the tourism industry´s list of exotic places.

In his book “The Naked Tourist”, Lawrence Osborne criticizes modern travel and introduces the concept of “whereverness” as a way to define the current tendency of seeing a plurality of places merged into one single, uniform place. According to Osborne, travelers are like perpetual strangers “wandering through an imitation of an imitation of a place they wanted to go to”.

In addition to this, I was reading a book by a French Writer and Anthropologist Mark Auge, who created the concept of “non-place” to refer to locations that lack the characteristics needed for the definition of a place. Examples of non-places are international airports, shopping malls or hotel rooms, typically populated with anonymous individuals, always in transit from one location to the other. These non-places lack identity, relationships or history and the footprints of their residents can´t be tracked.

Osborne and Auge´s writing inspired me to think about expatriates and their sense of identity and attachment when transitioning from one place to the other, far away from what they would call “home”.

So, where is home for an expatriate? We are facing an era of uncertainty, anonymity and loss of identity. How can expatriates introduce a difference and leave marks in a world of pure transition?

Since Sigmund Freud´s contributions to Psychoanalytical literature in 1930, we know that living as part of a culture is always the source of both joy and suffering. As the little human being grows up, he/she is educated within the common rules of their culture. This involves declining one´s instinctual tendency of unlimited satisfaction, in aid of gaining a place in the society and benefiting from establishing and nurturing social relationships with others. Ambiguous as it sounds, these relationships give us a much needed attachment to ourselves and to our roots, facilitating our growth. In other words, social interactions with significant others are the source of personal transformation and development of a person´s uniqueness.

Due to permanent change of locations, communities, jobs and friends, expatriates are even more exposed to the risk of limited personal growth and disruption of their sense of identity throughout the time.

In our days, the concepts of space and time – traditionally considered as fixed, closed structures- are clearly in transition, leading us to think of them as unpredictable and unstructured settings. We no longer can call home our country of origin. Home is not even the house we built or the place where we were born. Rather than a physical place, home is what we do with others. Home is an action, rather than a noun. The sense of belonging, traditionally attached to a physical place, is now evolving in a new conception of belonging based on actions that relate one person to others. Basically, the sense of identity and of being at “home” is constructed by people when doing a common task with others. So, where is home for an expatriate?

What are you doing to build your home these days?

Natalia Sarro
Intercultural Specialist, Psychologist
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Natalia_sarro@yahoo.com.ar
Blog: http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enomadasglobales%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F&urlhash=U568&_t=disc_detail_link (Spanish/ English)
Linkedin Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Elinkedin%2Ecom%2Fin%2Fnataliasarro&urlhash=xmSO&_t=disc_detail_link