Business Adventure in Kazakhstan
Sixteen of us sat at a long rectangular table filled with plates of pastries, cakes and
chocolates. A tiny woman dressed in a blue uniform and a lacy cap darted around the
table filling and refilling our soup tureens of milky tea. The shrieks of children running and
playing outside were the only clue that we were in a public school. "This is the most
formal coffee break I've ever experienced!" I said to Aliyah, my 26-year-old interpreter.
I am in the town of Taldykorgan, in southern Kazakhstan, giving a seminar on conflict
resolution. Kazhakstan is on the southeastern edge of what used to be the USSR,
bordering China. It is a huge country four times the size of Texas, made up primarily of
Russians, who are white and Orthodox Christian, and Kazaks, who are Asian and more
likely to be Muslim. Because of the Soviet repression of religion, neither faith is very
pronounced, though interest is growing.
I'm sponsored by a non-profit organization, ACDI/VOCA, that contracts with consultants to
work on short-term projects in the developing world. Most of the projects are agricultural
in nature, but occasionally consultants who teach the "soft skills" are needed. By the time
I leave in three weeks, I will have led four two-day seminars on conflict resolution in
different parts of the country.
Before I left home, while preparing for the training, I was somewhat intimidated as I
grappled with how vastly different giving a seminar on conflict resolution in the USA is
than in a country like Kazakhstan, which has had less than 15 years of nationhood to
create the institutions that make up a "civil society." Imagine, in the USA, if there were
barely any City Council hearings, letters to the editor, media access, volunteerism,
libraries, low-cost adult education, or employment centers. Such is the context in which I
would be teaching conflict resolution.
In my training, the participants included school principals, accountants, directors of public
housing projects, City Council members, health care workers, and municipal employees.
Although it was not designated for women only, all but one of the participants was
female. They were in their 40s and 50s, many looking older, out of shape and somewhat
haggard. Over our sugar-laden coffee break, they asked me the secret to weight loss.
"The more problems I have, the bigger I get," said one director of a housing project. Her
problems indeed seemed huge. Unemployed residents who couldn't pay their rent, and
infrastructure and maintenance problems caused by government subsidies that never
arrived.
There were several challenges I faced, the most obvious being language. I am fortunate
to have two interpreters. Aliyah and Laura are energetic, delightful young women in their
mid-20s who can translate into Russian or, if necessary, Kazak. The structure is that I
speak no more than two sentences at a time, which are then translated. The process is
more fluid than it sounds. I was struck by how many English words had a Russian
cognate. "Conflicto" and "confrontski," for example. My interpreters not only translated,
but were invaluable allies in communicating the concepts and leading exercises.
A more subtle challenge is to show respect for the culture and not to impose a U.S.-centric
point of view. I was sent background information on Kazakhstan, but lacked detailed
information on cultural sensitivities. Kazakhstan is not a highly visited country like, say,
Japan, where you can buy book after book on business etiquette and cultural norms. In
fact, its isolation is one of its defining features.
In the past I have found it is very easy to impose my point of view despite the best of
intentions. In 1996, I facilitated a cross-cultural conference for an international software
division of Hewlett-Packard in India. During one exercise, participants were asked to
soften statements that most people in the USA would consider overly harsh, like, "Don't
be stupid," or "You're wrong." The Indian engineers were exasperated by the time and
effort required to be tactful, and they found their American colleagues over-sensitive. They
wanted to just get the message out and move on. Life in India, even for the educated
elite, is grueling compared to that in the USA, and most Indians develop a tough skin. In
retrospect, I believe I was overly insistent that my approach was the "right" way.
In my training here, I fell in love with many of the participants. They were all ears, asking
questions and eagerly jumping into activities. Nonetheless, missteps occurred. For
instance, I was trying to come up with relevant examples of passive-aggressive behavior.
Already I had heard repeated complaints about the burden of household chores that
women shoulder in a male-entrenched society. "Did you ever cook something for your
husband, and then, because you were tired or resentful, you "accidentally" burnt the food
to show your anger?" I asked.
Tatiana, a school principal, said, "In a poor country like ours where food is expensive, I
would not want to waste the money."
Oops! Later, someone complained about having to iron her husband's shirts. "If my
husband wanted his shirts ironed, I would tell him he could do it himself," I said. "But if
our husbands go out in public wearing a wrinkled shirt, everyone will think he has a bad
wife," came the reply. I wondered if I had blundered there, too, but my interpreters
thought it was good for the participants to hear an alternative viewpoint.
One moment made me chuckle. In a section on listening skills, I said that a common
problem is that our minds drift when we are listening. "Right now, let's find out what we
each have been thinking while I was talking," I said. There answers were no different
than at home. "Home." "I am hungry! Lunch." "My children." "My job." "I called my office
and no one answered and this worries me." "I am analyzing all my past conflicts!" One
woman--the only person in the room--said, "I am interested in what you are saying, and I
am listening to you." (She was my favorite, of course).
Fortunately for the woman who was hungry, it was lunchtime. We left our classroom with
its rose-red Turkish-style woven rug, and trooped over to our private room for a meal of
potatoes, horsemeat, and cabbage, served by the diminutive woman in blue, with her lacy
white cap.