Indians and their cultural barriers in Germany

Image: employeemobility

Caution! may be the following analysis is overly simplified to draw some conclusion, it would be different on individual basis. Thanks for the author for his comments,  a P.hd. doctor and senior manager in a MNC, who requested his anonymity. 

I think, the biggest problem is not the lack of German speaking skills, at least not in high tech MNC’s, because here English can be the language of communication. May be it's more due to the different worldviews or different mentalities.

Recently I read an interesting article about intercultural teamwork. It examined various topics, for example: decisiveness. The result was, that the Germans' decisiveness is higher than the Indians'. The reason might be, that in lot of Indian families the father is the head, he takes the decisions for the family, making them completely dependent on him. In some cases even the children educational decisions are influenced by the parents. So, they go to the university, where they have to complete the course without really trying to get to the bottom of the issues. But in Germany it is very common that students change their courses in the midway if they find its not of their interest anymore, but this situation is very rare in India. This example is mentioned here to show case the difference between decisiveness of Indian and German students. Some may argue that Indian students are more clear and capable of deciding their interests, but if it is so there would have not been so many student suicides in the recent past. No offense, I am trying to put forth the actual scenario. 

India and Germany are two completely different societies, it’s not a question of good or bad, but all about understanding the differences and coping up with them.  Also the societal influence can be clearly seen on Indians, where contradicting or questioning are treated as arrogance or disobedience. This making the young people incapable of understanding an information completely and hindering their decision making capabilities. On the contrary own decisions and personal opinions are required in German companies.

Another topic was the obedience to authority. In the article I read an anecdote: In a company the project manager and some employees - one Indian among them - had a tough discussion. The Indian thought that it was not necessary to take the colleague’s name, who contradicted the boss heavily, several times. He was sure, the colleague would be fired in the next days. But to his surprise, exactly this colleague was highly esteemed and became the team leader.

The next point was the inclination to say uncritically 'yes' - sometimes because of the obedience to authority, as someone doesn't want to admit that he didn't understand. So when he was asked, if he understood (no matter, whether language or a technical problem), he answered 'yes' and made mistakes as a result of this. 

Many of the German multinational companies is working closely with Indian service sector firms, whether it may be IT, electronics or engineering sectors. So it’s a growing trend that such Indian companies are sending their employees to customer location for training or deputation purposes. Now there are two problems. First: the Indians don't really belong to the German company. Second: the German employees are afraid that their jobs would be outsourced, that these guys are here to learn and will then go back to India and take the jobs with them. These are two points, which make a good teamwork and an integration harder. It is completely different, when there are individual Indian colleagues.

So my conclusion is that it's necessary not only to learn the language but also the culture. Intercultural competence on both sides is an urgent need!