I'm giving a talk on onboarding in Lima, Peru this morning. I've decided to turn it into a conversation instead of a talk because I'm not sure which of my assumptions are valid in this culture. Having been single-mindedly focused on onboarding since 2003, I'm normally reasonably assertive about my point of view because I'm pretty sure my perspective is normally right. (Self confidence was never one of my problems.)
But what's right for them?
However, here, in this foreign culture, I'm less confident. So I'm going to position my thoughts more as discussion starters based on what seems to work in the USA and ask the audience to work through:
- Which of my ideas would work in their culture,
- Which of my ideas would work less well in their culture, and
- What other ideas would work for them.
Should spark some interesting conversations.
Other "foreign" cultures
Most of you have already figured out that onboarding into almost any new organization is onboarding into a "foreign" culture. You may not think they're speaking a different language, but their words have a different context than you are used to. You may think you know what they are doing and why, but you don't.
So what? Now what?
So, engage in conversations, not talks. No one is going to fault you for testing assumptions. It's when you assume you're right that you're most likely to get into trouble.
