Author Archives: nadegechameleon
Stereotypes
When we do business in the global world we tend to go to the country we have our customers in with an idea of how the people will be. We could call this “stereotype”. This means that through the stories we have heard about that country and its people, through reading books and watching movies, [...]
Case Study: doing business as a woman in the Middle East
Whilst I was working in Germany, I was sent on an important project to Yemen. It was my first time on business in the Middle East and my task was to represent the Structured Finance division at our client´s office. My sales team was composed of Lebanese men and the banks we were working with [...]
A Greek easter celebration
Easter for the Greeks is more important than Christmas for the rest fo us ! This year the Greek Orthodox Easter will be celebrated from 13th April until 15th April. The reason why Easter is not celebrated at the same time as the Christian Easter is because the Greek Orthodox follow the Julian calendar. Greek [...]
Communication breakdown
Because English is spoken across the world, we often forget that natives from other cultures might not necessarily understand what we say. Why is that? Well English is spoken across the world, however idioms, jargon and slang are not or rarely taught there! So when we come to do business let´s say in Asia or [...]
Seeing the world through different lenses
When I speak about culture, I like to talk about seeing the world through different lenses. Indeed how we see the world is shaped by our environment, may it be our family, our education, our work place, our friends ! But it is also shaped by our family and education. I think that a good [...]
Integration into a new culture and coming back home
Whilst in Paris for a few days I was invited by a very good friend of mine to go to one of her friends birthday party in the 18eme arrondissement of Paris! When we arrived we gave “la bise” to all the people already there (they were approximately twelve! ) which took us a little [...]
Perception of beauty – continuing “we are the same and yet we are different”
As mentioned in the previous article, we have our own perceptions of what is beauty and what it means and looks like to be successful in our own culture. We are brought up with some values and ideas of what represents beauty for us ! In the western world for example it could be a [...]
We look the same and yet we are different !
We are all unique in the way we think, we see, we feel, we look like and we perceive. We cannot generalize that because someone is darker colored that this person is African. This person might be actually German or French or Swiss ! We have the tendency as humans to categorize people either through [...]
nadegechameleon
