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Talent, Communication, and the BP Oil Spill

Guest post by: Ben Nash

Article Overview: Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, has had a pretty rough couple of weeks. His response to the grilling by congress and his handling of communications surrounding the Gulf of Mexico oil situation was tone deaf to say the least – at least to US ears. And yet Tony is obviously a very talented guy. After all you don’t get to be CEO of BP by being a slouch. So what went went wrong? One of the hypotheses that have been circulating in the media is that there is a culture difference between the UK and USA on the use of language. As remarked by the playwright George Bernard Shaw, “England and America are two countries separated by the same language”.

Talent, Communication, and the BP Oil Spill

Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, has had a pretty rough couple of weeks. His response to the grilling by congress and his handling of communications surrounding the Gulf of Mexico oil situation was tone deaf to say the least – at least to US ears. And yet Tony is obviously a very talented guy. After all you don’t get to be CEO of BP by being a slouch. So what went went wrong? One of the hypotheses that have been circulating in the media is that there is a culture difference between the UK and USA on the use of language. As remarked by the playwright George Bernard Shaw, “England and America are two countries separated by the same language”.

One of the key issues for organizations doing business internationally is to remember that a main reason for US nationals failing on overseas assignments is their inability to communicate effectively in non-US cultures. Some of the more obvious differences in communication styles between US and non-US cultures are:

• Getting down to business immediately versus conducting small talk first – many non-US cultures require that you have a number of social meetings prior to getting down to business
• Formal versus informal communication – many non-US cultures are much more formal in the use of titles and showing signs of respect than in the US
• Straight talking versus understanding the context – unlike in the US, in many cultures it is not polite to address difficult issues directly; instead people use euphemisms and indirect references to convey displeasure, resistance, or disagreement.

Just for fun, let’s look at the vocabulary differences between the UK and the USA – these could could be handy for those crisis handling trips to the mother country.

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Article Tags: bp, bp oil spill, communication skills, culture difference, george bernard shaw, gulf of mexico oil, human resources management, talent management



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