MIM Fellow Anita Meyer
March 2017
We are delighted to welcome Anita Meyer, EuRA President and partner in Map and am&pm to the ranks of our illustrious “MIM Fellows”. Anita has completed all her MIM and MIM+ training and has successfully submitted her Case Study for grading, gaining her designation of MIM Fellow. You can read her full Case Study, which focuses on how we use time in different cultures and how this impacts on the delivery of relocation services, on the link below.
If you are interested in achieving your MIM Fellowship, we now have a formal mentoring programme in place, full details are on the website, click here. We have one further candidate waiting for his Case Study submissions to be graded, one EuRA CEO, Tad Zurlinden.
Full details of the MIM programme and your routes to professional certification are on the website and we will be running a session on how to start your journey in Warsaw. Congratulations to Anita on her success.
Anita Meyer - am&pm
Every day we are faced with confrontations between people, groups, and nations who think, feel and act differently. At the same time, these people, groups and nations are exposed to common problems that require cooperation for finding a common solution. One of the reasons why so many solutions do not work or cannot be implemented is because differences in thinking among the partners have been ignored.
During my post graduate course Intercultural Communication and Management of Diversity at the Center for Intercultural Management and International Communication (CIMIC) in Mechelen, Belgium, I was confronted with a vast variety of interpretations of the concept of time. Never before had it occurred to me that apart from traditions, food, religion, education, the political and geographical climate, also the experience of time, would have a significant impact on the way we live, work, and plan for the future.
Throughout the one year CIMIC course, cultural trainers made us aware with exercises on problem solving, on time management, that “one might say that there are as many different kinds of time as human beings on this earth”. Asking around in the CIMIC classroom - only Belgian students, same culture - what the expression “on time” stands for, a dozen different answers were given for a dozen students present that day.
In Western European languages, we treat time as a continuum, divided into past, present and future, which makes it possible for us to feel that we can manage time, spend it, save it, or waste it. And yet, some cultures don’t have the word in their vocabulary, such as the Hopi native Americans. This case study will look at the most important interpretations of time and how this aspect of culture affects the success of a relocation mission.
Purpose
In my field of activity - relocation - we help families coming from all over the world to find a suitable home, to register their children in the right school, to integrate into their new community. Being aware of their interpretation of time, which in some cases is almost the opposite of our view on time, will facilitate the empathy of our relocation consultants. Empathy leads to listening for the right indicators to understand these family’s real needs, as demonstrated in the following example.
During conversations with a French Executive Director, one might become gradually aware of his achievements in the past, his excellent marks in a highly respected Parisian university; to him, where you come from will have an impact on where you are going from here. This person will be inclined to choose a traditional school for his children, a discrete but classy house for his family.
The Russian Sales Manager however, is more present and future oriented. His choices are based on getting the most out of today, which explains why a very ostentatiously luxurious house, bargained down to his budget, will make him very happy. If the relocation consultant manages to obtain that, the expat’s settling in process will start off with a positive attitude to the new life environment.
One family thrives on the past; the other only has eyes for achievements in the present and future. The goal of this study is to expose some of the main lines of thinking on this subject, by referring to the perception of specialists in the field, namely Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars and Edward T. Hall.
The purpose is to improve the quality of relocation services, by adding this paper to the training material of the relocation consultants, and by encouraging them to adapt certain nuances in those elements of the settling in process that are influenced by cultural perceptions of time.