Preface

Introduction
• The Manager Is the Company
• Using This Book
• Getting It . . . and Profiting

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Part One: Faces of Cultural Cluelessness

How Multicultural Customers See You
• Brave New Managers
• Clueless to Profit and Productivity
• A Bank for White People
• The Growth Story
• “That’s My Village!”
• Gaining 1,000 Customers
• Don’t Talk to Security Guards
• The Danger of Head Nodding
• “Nice Doesn’t Cut It” (Employee Cluelessness)
• We Want to Help You! (Organizational Cluelessness)
• Do You Know Me? I’m Your Multicultural Customer
• Iowa and the Cultural Unknown

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Part Two: Clues for Cracking the Cultural Code

Clue 1:   Look to Your Organization’s Cultural Guidelines
• A Cultural Lighthouse
• Why You Need the Platinum Rule
• Shed a Little Light

Clue 2:  Turn to the Law
• Get the Spirit

Clue 3:  Clarify Your Cultural Lens
• Cultural Projectiles and You
• Cultural Self-Honesty

Clue 4:  Apply Cross-Cultural Patterns
• Five Patterns: Crack the Cultural Code
– Clueless Majorities
– Insiders and Outsiders
– Accumulated Impact
– Intent versus Outcome
– Denial

Clue 5:  Use Group-Level Radar
• Sometimes You’re a Group
• Clarify Your Group Identities
• A Third Way: Acknowledge Cultural Claims
• Getting Framed

Clue 6:  Coach Performance Cross-Culturally
• Coaches with Culture
• Before You Start
• Clarify Your Diversity Commitment
• Build Cultural Credibility
• “Oh, my God, you’re a completely different person!”
• Jumping In
• Cultivate Careers and Lives
• Develop Larger Goals
• Identify Improvement Gaps
• A Restaurant for Men?
• Six Ways to Overcome Performance Blocks
• Be a Developer
• Discovery: They Change, You Change

Clue 7:  Build a Cross-Cultural Environment
• Environments for Diverse Employees
• You Wouldn’t Understand
• Looking Up Gets Me Down
• Playing Favorites
• “Getting It”
• Mortar Between the Bricks
• Permeate, Don’t Legislate
• Reward Cultural Competence
• Discourage . . . Carefully
• “Skill Up”
• Do You Know Me? I’m Your Multicultural Employee
• Structure: Who’s Where?
• Expect Cultural Affinity
• Keep Them Coming Back
• Polish Your Points of Contact
• Tip Sheet: Cross-Cultural Environment Building

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Part Three: Opportunities to Turn Clueless to Competent

Before You Start Multiply Your Options

Check Your “Be” Before You Do

Ten Familiar Scenarios

Scenario 1:Customer-Employee Relations
• Discriminating Against the Customer
• The Customer Is Not Always Right
• Subtle Situations            
• The Clueless Factor: Attracting New Customers
• The Clueless Factor: Preventing Bad News

Scenario 2:Cultural Cliques
• People Like Me: Positive Attraction
• Feeling Left Out?

Scenario 3:Employee-Employee Relationships
• Can We Talk?
• Put Cultural Issues on the Table
• Attitudes and Skills for Grownups
• Problem Prevention: Outsider Progress
• Problem Prevention: “Fight!”
• Problem Prevention: “You Treat Us Differently.”
• Coaching Cultural R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Scenario 4:Favoritism and Glass Ceilings
• Remember Softball
• Apply Windex
• Do Salad Makers Have Potential?
• Use Your Influence . . . and Your Influencers

Scenario 5:“You’re in America. Speak English.”
• Don’t Return Gifts
• Be Lawful
• Why Limit Growth?
• Coaching in Tongues
• Leading People Who Speak Another Language
• The Value of Small Talk
• The Opportunity Language
• “I Don’t Have an Accent. You Do.”
• Whose Problem Is It Anyway?
• “What She Means to Say Is . . .”

Scenario 6:Political Correctness
• Crawling up the Courthouse Steps
• Behaviors, Not Beliefs
• Timing the Business Case

Scenario 7:Reluctance of “Minority” Groups to Be Open
• The Business Costs of Silence
• Reticence Busters
• How Murals Demotivate

Scenario 8:Joking
• Jokes and the Lost Customer
• Environmental Impact Statements
• Joke Backup

Scenario 9:“I’m Not Prejudiced. My Parents
• My Parents Raised Me to Be Colorblind.”
• The Best Diversity Measure
• Beyond Parents
• The Backfire of Zero Tolerance
• “I’m Not Prejudiced” Meets the Customer

Scenario 10:Cultural Conflicts about Conflict
• Not My Style
• Digging In
• Your Nobel Peace Prize

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Part Four: Summing It All Up

The Outsider Gap

Tuning In the World ... and You

• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• The Author
• About TFA, Inc.
• Your Clueless Stories