When In The Arab World - An Insider's Guide To Living And Working With The Arab Culture | Eye-Opening Blog-Interview With The Author Rana Nejem

Rana started out her career as a broadcast journalist with Jordan Television. After working with CNN during the First Gulf War, she moved to the Royal Hashemite Court where she was responsible for His Majesty the late King Hussein’s International Media Department for 2 years. Rana then moved into the field of communications and public relations leading the public diplomacy and communications work of the British Embassy in Amman for 18 years.

Throughout her 25-year career - whether it was conducting interviews with Heads of State, making arrangements for Royal visits and VIP events, formulating communications strategies or attending diplomatic corps' receptions and formal dinners - business etiquette, protocol and cross-cultural communications were always an essential part of her work. Rana learned first-hand from top professionals in the field and put it all into practice throughout her career.

As Communications and Public Diplomacy manager, Rana provided Cross-cultural communications advice to British Ambassadors and diplomats as well as Western consultants working in the Middle East region.

Rana has a Master's degree in International Communications and Negotiations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and is certified as an International Etiquette consultant by the International Etiquette and Protocol Academy in London. Rana was also trained by The Protocol School of Washington in International Protocol Management, and is a trained coach in Intercultural Intelligence.

Rana founded her company in 2013 - Yarnu - an Arabic word meaning to look towards, to aspire to with calm and serenity. Yarnu helps people to distinguish themselves by raising their social and cultural intelligence, enabling them to float with ease and confidence from one situation to the other. Yarnu is the first to specialise in cross-cultural communications and business protocol in the Middle East region. Yarnu is the exclusive partner-agency of the World Communication Forum in Jordan.

I had the pleasure to meet Rana in person in 2015, in the stunning city of Davos in the Swiss Alps. We met during the annual World Communication Forum - #WCFDavos, when I moderated Rana and Dr. Volker Stoltz in the Debate: Cross-cultural VS Global - which shall be the communication of the future?

Directly from Jordan, we had the pleasure to hear from Rana about her new book which has great insights on how to better understand the Arab culture, communication styles and way of doing business from an insider the culture perspective. A true guide for foreigners intending to live or work with Arab cultures.

1)   You have recently written a book entitled 'When in the Arab World - an insider's guide to living and working with Arab Culture'. What is the purpose of your book? What does it talk about? Who should read it?

When in the Arab World is a practical map that will help non-Arabs understand the eople and demystify the culture of the Arab world – the beliefs, values and social structures that determine the way business is conducted and how things are done. The book is ideal for business people, diplomats and just about anyone who travels to the region for work. 

My intention is to help people avoid the pitfalls and all the stress and frustration that come with working with a different culture. Writing this book hasn't been easy – finding the balance between the "general" and the "specific", while not falling into the trap of oversimplifying matters, was a challenge.  

And of course, as an Arab myself, I had to make sure that I did not end up romanticising my own culture. So throughout writing this book I strived to be honest and authentic and to ensure that it remains a useful practical guide, I have included many interviews with business people, diplomats and expats from all over the world speaking about their own experiences of working with Arab culture.

2)   What are some of the most important cultural differences between Arab Culture and European cultures? Let's take for reference as comparison in this interview, the British Culture.

The main difference – which, if properly understood will explain a lot of things – is the main motivator of behaviour in each culture. In Europe and North America the main motivator of behaviour is about being right and avoiding being wrong. While the main motivator for behaviour in Arab culture is to safeguard honour and avoid shame. While the legal system determines whether I am right or wrong – innocent or guilty, it is my community and the people around me who determine whether I have acted in an honourable way or not. 

Understanding this basic concept will help you understand everything else such as styles of communication and the importance of the community versus the individual.

3)   How important is family to business affairs within the Arab Culture? Does it differ much from the British culture in that respect?

I cannot overestimate the importance of family in Arab culture. And by family here I mean the extended family of uncles, cousins, second cousins, the wider clan and the tribe. 

The family here is both a social and political force. It is a strong support system that stands by its members in both good times and bad, but also holds them accountable for their actions that may bring shame to the entire family. Loyalty to the family comes above everything even business. 

The vast majority of businesses in the Arab world are family-wned which makes their management and business style different from businesses elsewhere in the world. Senior managers working for such business who are not family members will find it somewhat difficult to be brought into the inner circle of decision-making.

4)   In terms of values, beliefs and viewpoints, which are described in details in your book, which would be your advice to global executives to get prepared to deal with Arab culture?

Before travelling to a new culture – especially for work – one must take the time to research and learn about the people and what is most important to them. 

For the Arab world, you must not forget that it is a vast and very varied region that is made up of 22 independent countries, each with its unique culture and local traditions that can also differ from one region to the other within the same country. 

My aim in the book is to give the reader a better understanding of the reasons behind why things are the way they are and how it works; then the reader is able to intelligently assess each situation and decide the best course of action that will help avoid conflict, stress and misunderstandings.

But if I had to single out one or two main values or beliefs I would say to understand the centrality of honour, pride and dignity in the Arab psyche. Also to understand how religion here is a way of life that affects almost everything that we do in this part of the world, including business. 

5)   In what regards communication styles, which is your main advice for global executives when dealing with the Arab world?

If you understand that the main motivator of behaviour is to safeguard one’s honour and to avoid shame, then it is no surprise that we prefer the indirect style of communicating. While in most other western cultures the aim is to say what I mean and mean what I say; in the Arab world, it is more about trying to get the message across while maintaining harmony, saving face and avoiding the risk of upsetting the relationship. Therefore third parties are often used, or stories that are meant to get the message across. But do not forget that we deal with people and not cultures, and each person should be treated and respected as an individual.

6)   What is your advice on how to have business etiquette in global business relations when the culture of one's counter-part is still unknown? What would you advise in three steps?

My best advice would be to approach each situation with a sense of curiosity. It is very easy to judge and think in terms of common stereotypes and to compartmentalise people into boxes. Yet, it is much harder to be a cultural learner with an open mind. It is a conscious decision that one needs to take every day. Being curious and trying to find the points of commonality with your own culture instead of how it is different will help bridge the gap. 

It is important to know that it is neither wrong nor right, and no culture is better or worse than the other; we are simply different. 

And it does not mean that you have to agree with the values and beliefs of the new culture, it just means that you understand and respect it while being true to your own. So, it is like the chameleon – you adjust the externals while your DNA remains the same.

For more information about Rana's book, please visit her company's website - Yarnu http://www.yarnu.com/publications.

Click here to get your copy of the book at Amazon website.

Thank you very much Rana for your cooperation with this interview and most importantly for sharing your knowledge about the Arab culture, communication styles and way of doing business with the rest of the world. Thanks for enriching our knowledge on such a part of the world which literature is not yet vastly available for Westerns.

Obrigado! Dankje! Thank you! Follow me on Twitter @FlaviOliveiraBR

Interview with Kara Alaimo about her new book "Pitch, Tweet, or Engage On The Street - How To Practice Public Relations And Strategic Communication"

I am happy to be back with another interview from the series – Global PR professionals. This time, I had the joy & honour to interview Kara Alaimo.

Kara Alaimo, Ph.D. is a global public relations consultant, trainer, and professor. A former communicator in the Obama administration and the United Nations, she now consults on global communication campaigns, designs customized employee training programs for companies on how to adapt messages and strategies for different global markets, and teaches public relations at Hofstra University. She is author of Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street: How to Practice Global Public Relations and Strategic Communication and a member of the board of the World Communication Forum in Davos. For more information, visit www.karaalaimo.com and follow her on Twitter @karaalaimo.

I first met Kara in the Swiss Alps, during the World Communication Forum, a couple of years ago, when she first mentioned about the book she was writing. I was immediately very interested about it. International communication and global PR are two topics of major interest for myself so her book would be a great addition to the still incipient literature in the field.

Last year, during the World Communication Forum in Davos, I was flattered to conceive an interview with some appreciation about how PR is practiced in Brazil (my home-country) and, afterwards, to know that I would be quoted in her book. I am now overjoyed to be able to share with you, Kara’s interview, which is full of valuable insights on global & international PR, culture and a lot in-between.

1)     What has inspired you to write your new book?

Kara Alaimo:When I first started working at the United Nations, I would often ask my colleagues around the world whether they could meet my proposed deadlines for particular deliverables, and they would invariably say yes. Then, when the deadlines came and I did not receive what I had understood they agreed to send, I would be genuinely confused and upset. Finally, my boss had to explain that my colleagues in some of our national offices would consider it to be inappropriate to say no to me, and therefore they would always say yes to anything I asked, regardless of whether they had any intention of ever fulfilling my requests. If I wanted to actually obtain what I needed, I would need to find a different way of communicating with my team.

This is just one example of the many cultural differences we need to account for when working and communicating internationally. However, as a global public relations practitioner at the United Nations and in U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, I found that there wasn’t a resource that explained how to adapt public relations messages, strategies, and tactics for different countries and cultures. So I conducted interviews with senior practitioners from 31 countries to ask them about best communication practices in their markets.

My new book, “Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street: How to Practice Global Public Relations and Strategic Communication,” is currently the #1 bestseller on Amazon’s list of hot new releases in international business. If any of your readers would like to buy the book, they are welcome to use the promo code FLR40, which gets 20% off and free shipping at https://www.routledge.com/Pitch-Tweet-or-Engage-on-the-Street-How-to-Practice-Global-Public-Relations/Alaimo/p/book/9781138916050.

2)     To which audience is this book more suitable or directed to?

Kara Alaimo:This book is a resource for communication professionals who work in different countries and cultures as well as for students studying international communication and reputation management.

3)     Could you please tell us, in short words, what is the objective of your new book "Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street - How to practice Public Relations and Strategic Communication"? I understand the title and sub-title tell quite a lot, but could you please explain us what is the book about?

Kara Alaimo:The book is designed to teach communication professionals about the cultural differences they need to account for when implementing campaigns in different countries and cultures. The book breaks the world into 10 different cultural groups, as identified in the GLOBE study – a ten-year study of more than 17,000 managers in 62 societies conducted by 170 researchers – and explains the communication strategies, tactics, and messages that work best in each of them.

4)     After travelling the world and conducting face-to-face interviews and focus group with a numerous PR professionals from a variety of cultural backgrounds, would you say that there are specific types or ways of practicing PR that differ from region to region? Could it be divided in segments or dimensions?

Kara Alaimo:The 10 cultural clusters I write about in the book are Confucian Asia, South Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, the Anglo Culture, Latin Europe, Germanic Europe, Nordic Europe, and Eastern Europe.

Communication and public relations practice differs dramatically between many of these cultural clusters. For example, in the United States, spokespeople are expected to remain calm and cool during media interviews. By contrast, in the Arab world, when talking about emotional subjects, spokespeople are expected to visibly display emotion – otherwise, they will not be trusted.

Also, unpaid and under-paid reporters expect to receive “brown envelopes” containing cash in exchange for media coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world. One way that practitioners get around paying journalists in places where reporters are truly not compensated by news organizations for their stories is by offering meals at events and press briefings.

5)     What has most surprised you during the course of your research and subsequent process of writing your book? I mean, which of your findings were most impressive to you?

Kara Alaimo:It surprised me greatly that the practitioners who I interviewed consistently told me that they regularly see major organizations try to implement communication campaigns without adapting to local cultures – such as by executing a campaign developed for the United States in Canada or thinking that they can develop a strategy in London that will work for all of Europe.

So I think this is still a mentality we need to change. The good news is that my book gives practitioners the knowledge to adapt their campaigns appropriately and effectively for different countries and cultures.

6)     Is there a global PR? Are there main variables that we can observe PR in an international context?

Kara Alaimo:In the book, I use the term global PR to refer to campaigns that are implemented in the same manner around the world without accounting for cultural differences. The cultural researchers Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov have noted that part of human nature – which we all inherit in our genes – is “the human ability to feel fear, anger, love, joy, sadness, and shame; the need to associate with others and to play and exercise oneself; and the facility to observe the environment and to talk about it with other humans.” Therefore, global messages can appeal to these common experiences. However, I think that most campaigns should include cultural adaptations.

7)     Is there a difference between International PR and Global PR?

Kara Alaimo:I refer to international PR to describe strategies that are developed at the local level in each individual market based upon knowledge of what works best in a particular culture. Proponents of this approach argue that different countries and cultures are so diverse that they require strategies that are specifically designed to respond to local opportunities and challenges. The benefit of adopting a strictly local approach is that you are completely unencumbered by concepts that do not make sense for your target audience. Because you focus single-mindedly on the country or culture at hand, you are more likely to arrive at an approach that will be effective in its target market.

However, the cost of starting from scratch in every new environment will often prove to be prohibitive for many organizations. Additionally, a major disadvantage to such an approach is that your client will lack a coherent global identity. Another significant downside to a strictly local approach is that an organization does not benefit from the range of creative ideas it can generate when its entire global public relations team comes together to brainstorm on a unified strategy.    

The opposite of a local, or international, approach to public relations is adopting a single global strategy. Practitioners who apply this approach believe that there are certain best practices and messages that are generally successful across countries and cultures.

8)     In your book, you have a chapter fully dedicated to culture, entitled ‘Culture is Key’. Could you please tell us why culture is key to Global Public Relations?

Kara Alaimo:Understanding the cultures in which you work is essential to the practice for two reasons. First, you need to understand the audiences you seek to reach and adapt your strategies, messages, and tactics accordingly. Second, you need to understand the expectations of the colleagues and partners with whom you work. David Livermore argues that your level of cultural intelligence – which he defines as your “capacity to function effectively across a variety of cultural contexts” – is more important in our modern globalized world than even your intellect and professional experience.

9)     I have written a blog-post on globalpublicrelations.blogspot.com a couple of years ago about a concept I have been reflecting upon for the current practice and teaching of PR, which is ‘Intercultural Public Relations’. I defend in my article that Intercultural PR should be considered as an important module in PR and Communications’ undergraduate and graduate degrees around the world. I also defend that International Communication cannot be executed with excellence without considering the weighty variable of culture. Have you heard about the term ‘Intercultural PR’ before? What are your thoughts about it?

Kara Alaimo:I think that all PR practitioners need to account for the culture in which they operate in order to be effective. One big cultural difference, for example, is between high and low context cultures.

In a low context culture – such as the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom – people say what they mean directly. By contrast, in a high context culture, messages are conveyed less directly and more subtly, and it is critical to pick up on cues which can include the circumstances of the situation, the relationship between the communicators, and the history of the subject being discussed.

This cultural difference can be the source of significant cross-cultural misunderstandings. For example, Beatriz Alegría Carrasco, a corporate communications consultant from Madrid, Spain, who I interviewed for my book, says that “in Spain, some people mistakenly think Americans are simple-minded because you need to explain everything to them. For example, Americans write that coffee may be hot on their coffee cups. For Spanish people, this is common sense, and [they] wonder, who doesn’t know that? Of course, in America, companies write these messages to avoid being sued. But in Spain, you would never sue a company for not telling you that coffee is hot, because everyone knows that.”

So people from high context societies are often confused or taken aback when low context communicators are so blunt. One of my former students, who is originally from Mexico but now works in the U.S., told me that she genuinely thought that her manager in the U.S. must consider her to be very dumb since her boss constantly explained things which were so obvious to her, until she learned about this cultural dimension in my class!

10) To conclude, could you please share a personal message, quote or belief you have about global PR?

Kara Alaimo:Patricia Curtin and T. Kenn Gaither wrote that “cultural constructs don’t affect public relations practice; they are the essence of public relations practice.”

Correctly understanding culture and adapting your messages and strategies accordingly isthe key to practicing international public relations successfully.

PR and Culture are indeed parts of the same coin. We, as PR practitioners and scholars, we have an urge to better understand the influence of cultural differences on the practice of PR. "Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street" will surely be a helping hand to this task. Thank you very much indeed for this eye-opening interview, dear Kara!

Keep an eye here for more interview with PR bright starts from around the world.

Follow me on Twitter @FlaviOliveiraBR

Originally published on my Linkedin Pulse - https://goo.gl/jQI2n0