There is something special about meeting people to face to face. I had a surreal experience this last few days meeting quite a few people for the first time that I had hired over the last 18 months. I feel like I knew them on one level, from phone conversations. Most of the time you compare your visual impressions of people to what you learn about them through conversations. However, I had a interesting experience comparing the visual impression to the person I got to know over the phone. That was really fun.
I will say this that the conversation over the phone is a good part of the picture, but not the entire perspective. The way people carry themselves, they way they smile, what they laugh at or do not laugh at. The body language can tell a different message and definitely things you would not normally pick up on.
I am in Cupertino, and really close to Apple HQ. Consequently there are a lot of people that live and visit here that area associated with Apple. When I mean a lot, I mean a lot. I really do not think people realize just how big Apple is as a company and how many people they have working for them. Not talking about the 100K or so direct employees. I am talking about the ecosystem. Probably 2M or more people in direct association, and probably another 20+M developers world wide. So yeah, I am surrounded by people that survive based on the ecosystem that Apple has created.
So I sat last night in a courtyard, and a large majority of the people around me were Chinese. I could recognize some of the words in Mandarin. Americans and Chinese both suffer from the same problem. Not enough face time between the two. Americans have this incorrect impression of Chinese business people by the occasional sales person they run into (I am not talking about Chinese-Americans), I am talking about a salesperson from a Chinese company. In reverse, Chinese get an impression of Americans by our sales people. Unfortunately, we have given off the impression of the loud, bragging, whiskey guzzling man that parties all the time. They probably scratch their heads wondering how we ever sell anything. We have our same impressions, but they are both incorrect.
China, like the U.S. is very diverse. There are all sorts of people, all with a wide and unique set of behaviors. I saw that last night very clearly. Whatever impression you think you have of people, watch them long enough and you will see all the subtle messages that are common to any culture. As humans we really are not that far apart at all.
Anyway, my face to face experience has taught me that I need to really check my impressions of people. I maybe more wrong than I am right.
Guy Reams
