THAI MEETING

I went to my first completely and properly Thai meeting today. It was between two government departments, with the department heads leading (what circles I move in these days!), discussing disaster stuff.

It was brilliant to see an ‘Asian meeting’ in effect. My management textbooks (blurgh) had been telling me for years that ‘Asian meetings’ will talk around the topic, be very positive about everything, and try to reach consensus. And, dang it, they’re right. There was a four point agenda, and everyone, and I mean all 25 attendees said something about them, and said nice things about the other people’s statements. There wasn’t any ‘discussion’ in the western way, debate and critiquing of each others’ point of view. Instead, if they held a different point of view second speaker would just state their opinion without denigrating the others. Consensus arose by adding all those points together. After the meeting closed, as everyone was leading the leaders vocalised that consensus, and a decision was made.

Very different to a ‘Western meeting’ in which each agenda item and idea would be discussed and debated in order, decisions made along the way and then action points assigned.

Encouragingly I was able to follow bits and pieces - or more accurately, I picked up words I knew as we went along that allowed me to get the gist

I’ve also noticed that since I’ve been here I’m talking in stereotypes a lot more. Most of our discussions focus on national, regional and international topics and the only way to be able to do that is to use a generalisation ‘Asians think like this…’ ‘Indians see it that way…’, otherwise you get bogged down in caveats and can’t talk about issues. I think that’s OK, as long as you remember that they’re only rules of thumb, need to be constantly re-evaluated and updated, and that you don’t apply them to an individual. There’s a big difference between saying ‘Thai’s like to have fun at work and talk to their friends rather than concentrating on work’ and ‘Thai’s like to talk to their friends at work, therefore as you’re Thai you are lazy’.