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Home › LANGUAGE & SKILLS › Videos ›

Culture and small talk

25.03.2009
Tags
  • Bob Dignen
  • culture
  • social skills
  • Socializing
  • video
  • 3/2009
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Are you a coconut or a peach? No, we’re not talking about your colour or your size — we’re talking about your culture. Bob Dignen, regular author of our Business Skills section in Business Spotlight magazine and director of York Associates, explains why it’s important to know the difference, in particular when you want to improve your small-talk skills.

Watch the first Business with Bob video on the topic of socializing.

© karriere.de & Business Spotlight

Transcript

Hi, I’m Bob Dignen and a very warm welcome to our new business communication video series.

Today, I’d like to look at small talk and begin by asking you a question: What exactly is small talk? Because I think it means different things to different people.

Susanne Zaninelli, an interculturalist, has made a very interesting comparison between German and American small-talk styles using the metaphors of coconuts and peach.

Now she describes the German style as very “coconutty”, very task-oriented. As you can see. only a very thin layer of private self is exposed at work. Work is work and personal is personal and the two are not mixed. It’s much more professional to remain reserved, focused and serious, and not spend too much time enquiring into people’s lives with small talk. Of course, over time you’ll be able to crack through the hard “coconutty” shell and enter the truly personal world, which is very nice and very milky, but not on first contacts. It takes time.

So with coconuts, with these kind of individuals, small talk is usually devalued in favour of work. In fact, if you spend too much time small-talking you are not professional.

Now, by contrast, you have the more peach-like American style. At first meetings you dive straight into the soft personal area, ask lots of questions — “What do you do?” “Where are you from?” “Do you have any children?” “Are you married?” — and you show lots of enthusiasm and explicit engagement with other people. What they say to you is really interesting. It’s important to show them that you have an interest in them, to show them that you like them, to show other people that you value them.

So you see, coconuts and peaches, these two small-talk styles, are very, very different and they reveal important differences, culturally and interpersonally.

And sometimes the two styles don’t go very well together. The coconut might feel that the peach is a little superficial, over-optimistic, over-positive and the peach might feel that the coconut is rather distant, rather cold, sometimes a little bit impolite, even arrogant.

And I know that these are stereotypes but I think they are interesting stereotypes because it creates a moment for you to think. Am I a coconut or a peach? What are my values? What is my small-talk style? And there is no right and no wrong, the critical thing for you to do is to think strategically. You need to know yourself, know your own style, know the style of the other person and create a strategy to bridge across the two styles and if you do that you can be a successful international small-talker.

So good luck!

Pfirsich
Thema
Aufbau und Pflege von Kontakten
Experte/Expertin in für interkulturelle Fragen
Vergleich
Pfirsich
Schicht
zeigen, offenbaren
konzentriert
Fragen stellen nach
Schale
abwerten
tauchen
ausdrücklich
oberflächlich
distanziert
unhöflich
Klischees
entscheidend
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COMMENTS

Submitted by Nina on Wed, 25/03/2009 - 16:53.
Das Video ist super! Gut verständlich, amüsant, lehrreich!
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Submitted by mi7ar on Wed, 25/03/2009 - 20:46.

I'm definitively a peach. And I really enjoyed watching this video.

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Submitted by Louie on Thu, 26/03/2009 - 09:28.

Hi Bob,

As an English trainer here in Germany, I'm a faithful Business Spotlight user. And I try to encourage all my learners to subscribe! I use the website every day. It's fantastic.

Your new series is excellent and I'm thrilled about it!

Bravo!

I do have one request and that is to also look at Canadians and at doing business with the Canucks. There seems to be a lack of information on this topic. (Yes, I'm Canadian.)

Thank you!

Leena

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Submitted by ahaenlein@... on Thu, 26/03/2009 - 10:39.

Many thanks to Bob Dignen for his excellent video presentation. Intercultural communication plays such an important role in business and industry these days. For learning purposes it would be good if you could provide the presentation also as an audio podcast (MP3-format), so that one could also listen to this "on the move", and a transcript be most helpful.

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Submitted by olaf-t.hirsch@... on Sat, 28/03/2009 - 19:32.

Thank you for this new type of interactual learning! Great idea!
I think today it's very important to know how different can people react. I'm just now waiting for the new video.....
Otherwise I'd just like so say that business-spotlight is very helpfull for my use of the english language and I do enjoy it very much!
Olaf

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Submitted by catalina_2211 on Thu, 02/04/2009 - 15:39.

Thank you very much for this fantastic opportunity! Thanks BOB, thanks Business-spotlight for this wonderful gift and for these excellent video presentations!

I enjoy my online time on business-spotlight side every day!

Best regards

Paula

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Submitted by Paul Whitson Mi... on Mon, 06/04/2009 - 18:22.

A very good presentation, with some pretty useful comments and observations. This will, I believe, be very beneficial for advanced learners of Business English
Yours sincerely
Paul Middlemiss

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Submitted by Maria-Christina on Wed, 15/04/2009 - 14:25.

Hi Bob,

thank you for your impressive presentation. It is a pleasure to listen to you.
I agree completely.

Christina

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Submitted by joanwillmann@... on Thu, 29/10/2009 - 10:26.

Very apt. I am definately a peach. Is there a way to get this in text form for my classes?

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Submitted by Deborah Capras on Thu, 29/10/2009 - 17:19.
Hi
We're busy transcribing the text as I write! We'll be posting all the transcripts online in the next week or two (depending on our intern's typing skills!)

Deborah Capras
Deputy editor
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Submitted by istepan on Thu, 17/12/2009 - 21:37.

Hello all,

I have some technical Problem. I don't know why, I couldn't see the video.

Could somebody help me with it?

Thank you!

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Submitted by Deborah Capras on Fri, 18/12/2009 - 07:40.
Do you have flash installed on your computer?
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Submitted by IsabellaWhite on Tue, 26/01/2010 - 00:52.

Am absolutely a peach. Reading this article made me realize what kind of person I am when it comes to speaking. I'll definitely won't talk with a coconut-kind of person because we won't go together I'm sure. The points, the author discussed here are all true especially this statement "So you see, coconuts and peaches, these two small-talk styles, are very, very different and they reveal important differences, culturally and interpersonally". As what I read in many custom research papers and custom term papers, people who have different views and opinions usually don't go together.

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