What do you think are the most common culture challenges for Vietnamese and foreigners working together?

Phat, thanks for sharing your insights! I would love to hear your personal experiences if any, or of your friends who struggled to build a good professional relationship with a foreigner colleague or boss. I'm hoping to find real gaps between the Vietnam culture with other cultures (American, European, Australian and other Asian cultures).

Lam, that's a great point about also integrating people into the organizational culture and all organizations should do something to make that integration effective. There are so many rich differences in human psychology which can become a wonderful mix or a frustrating hell. In this case, I will be leaving the organizational culture to others and my main focus is on the geographical/ethnic cultural differences. Aside from language, I am hoping to discover the different views, habits, preferences and beliefs about business, professional relationships.

Example, there is a clear difference in preference when it comes to "personal boundaries". Vietnamese are mostly friendly by nature and sometimes ask very personal questions eg. Are you married? When are you getting married? When are you having your 1st baby? How much do you earn?...something I experienced in my first month at work (thankfully, I am quite comfortable with this :D). However, most of my foreigner friends are "shocked" by the questions their colleague asks them. Their Vietnamese have good intentions but did not realize they have over stepped a certain boundary. Similarly, the foreigners should had been better prepared and expect such questions and not react negatively or think badly of their colleagues.

What other examples can you think of?

Hi Paul, there few more cases that I also feel strange; One day my Vietnamese frend asked my Malaysian friend (who is Muslism) that why do you have to skip your meals and why dont you take any water? Can you take coffee i/o water during Ramadan time? And she even asked him How many wifes can you take by your law.... I could not stand any more :)

Hi Paul,

I think folloing website would be useful in this case. It helps to compare a home culture with a host culture with 5 Cultural Dimensions: PDI Power Distance Index, IDV Individualism, MAS Masculinity, UAI Uncertainty Avoidance Index, LTO Long-Term Orientation. It would be better to work to gether if people understand culture of their bosses or their staffs.

http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php?culture1=98&cultur...

Regards/ Tu Le

My opinion is the biggest challenge is to find matching relation to TIME! The notion of Time between a foreigner and a Vietnamese is so hugely different.
Language and susceptibility is everywhere, sometimes the mistakes can be deadly in muslim countries for instance. The number of foreigners working in arab countries shows that there is a match.
Here are a few situations where your time clock is not ticking the same thus making you nervous:
- meeting at 11am, business license in 10 days, deadline friday 4pm, MBA in 1 year, "I am a learning person" (I can learn sales in 4 years if that's Ok with you), sleeping/chatting/websurfing/out drinking cafe is part of the job for good atmosphere, your performance are yearly and you have a 3-year assignment to prove yourself Vs we have a lifetime in Vietnam, admitted to hospital emergency a 6am, see your 1st doctor at 10am etc...

The sense of urgency is for you only most of the time, and eventually to all your close colleagues when you push them.
NB. In effect, you went from 3000$/month to 9000$/month x3 income in 25 years career. They went from 200$ to 2000$ x10 in just 10 years, why should I be stressed?

Thanks for all your valuable insights Tu, Herbert & Pascal! This has become quite a rich discussion!

Herbert, I especially like what you said about the simplicity of mutual respect. No special strategy/tool is going to work without that foundation. The Golden Rule of business and life: treat others the way you want to be treated.