During my stay in Sri Lanka I was mindfully observing the way people are working together in this country. I recognised some remarkable differences to the European culture which I would like to point out in the following.
As a project manager who manages international Telco/IT projects I already was able to gather some experience in in a multi cultural working environment. I worked a few years closely together with a supplier company from Israel and also with other companies from China, Korea, Spain, etc. Also Vodafone internally the communication is already very international as it is a multi national company operating in over 20 countries all over the world.
One very funny behavioural pattern of the people is when they shake their heads. I guess many tourists experience this behaviour as quite awkward. During conversation people often shake their heads when listening to someone. The movement of the head resembles the way of shaking your head when you are denying something. But the meaning is far away from that! It means neither 'no' nor 'yes'. Thats the funny thing with it, it just means 'I listen to you'. As I'm half Sri Lankan and I lived 5 years during my childhood in Kandy I'm of course familiar with this characteristic. But it's maybe the most astonishing behaviour a foreigner can experience here (and as well in India) therefore I want to mention it in this context.
But there were also some new things and challenges for me during the past 2 months. One is that people switch their attention very quickly to different subjects. I had several times a discussion with somebody and in the middle of the conversation somebody came around to ask something and immediately my conversation partner switched to another discussion no matter how unimportant it was. Also people do not even ask whether they may interrupt your discussion. They just do. I find it therefore very difficult to focus on a topic during a discussion when you are interrupted all the time and your conversation partner(s) are distracted so often. But for the people its normal. The same with phone calls. If the hand phone is ringing the call is always answered no matter who the caller is. Any discussion, no matter how important, is second priority when you get a call. This happens also on events where somebody is having a speech to an audience. This would be unthinkable in the 'western' culture! Also during my courses people often get calls and they even stay in the room and have their phone conversations in parallel to the lesson. Quite challenging to stay cool when this happens.... For a person who is used to structured and focused conversations or discussions this is a real challenge. I had an interesting conversation with a German friend about this topic. He prepared a master thesis about the cultural challenges in working environments where people from Germany and India are working together. The above described behaviour was also a topic in his work. He told me that the people always want to get the best out of all. This can also mean that 5 things at one time are being done. Unfortunately most people think have the ability of multi-tasking but they are not realy capable of doing this.... But to some extent it is also just a different approach which is very unfamiliar to people living in a western culture. Especially for the Germans who are known to be very structured etc. this is a huge challenge :-).
Another behaviour characteristic is that the people are very helpful. I watched them often helping each other at work. They are always very supportive willing to solve the problems of others. I was very impressed by the following event: Recently the FOG founder's mother passed away. All employees of FOG came to the funeral in Colombo, most of them travelling 3 hours in a bus to reach the location!
Also the people are very hospitable. I was invited to the homes of people uncountable times. Even strangers invited me to visit their homes when I had chats with them during my numerous bus travels between Colombo and the Southern Province.
So, there are also many more charercteristics and habits of the people here (listening to radio and TV in highest volume, drinking incredebly sweet juices, tea and other drinks, hot food -> the hotter the better, etc.) but this would fill a book....
Somebody said 1 gram of practice is worth more than tons of theory. So come and find out yourself :-)
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