Janteloven

I learned a new word this week: tilbakemelding. It means “feedback”. Feedback is something I’ve been exposed to for many years, from having a supervisor red-line a research thesis to receiving criticism on my teaching style*. I roll with it, because I truly believe that criticism makes you better**.

I, like many other lecturers, use feedback as a teaching tool. I have recently been tasked with preparing a group of students for an upcoming international competition conducted in English, and I decided to use a 'trial by fire' method to whip them into shape as I didn't have much time.

I made them each stand up and give a presentation about whatever struck my fancy, and then I gave them feedback on it – I pointed out the good and the bad. But to help them gel as a team, I also asked the students to give feedback to each other. I’ve used this technique before when teaching in the US and the UK with great success. I should’ve known better in Norway.

Student 1 stands up and gives an adequate presentation. After giving him some pointers, I opened up the floor to the other students. No one budged***. So I gently nudged another student to offer some thoughts. This is how the conversation went:

Me: “Student 2, how did you think that presentation went?"
Student 2: “It was okay.”
Me: “Could you expand on that? What did you like?”
Student 2: “I like that he spoke so slowly. It made it easy to follow.”
Me: “Great! And were there any areas for improvement?”
Student 2: “Yeah, I thought he spoke too slowly. It made it hard to follow.”

And herein lies the problem with asking a Norwegian to give feedback. It’s not that they don’t have any constructive thoughts to offer, but it is very culturally uncomfortable to be seen to criticize another person. This means that there is rarely a harsh word said, but, likewise, there is rarely strong praise given.

After one of my very first lectures in Norway, one Norsk gentlemen approached me and said, “Thank you for the class. It was okay.” I was devastated. “Okay” in my book means barely adequate or could have been (markedly) better. I tried to take it on the chin and wandered back to my office feeling a bit dejected.

A few months later after another lecture, the scenario repeated itself. But this time, after receiving the ‘okay stamp of mediocrity', I decided to push it. Again, I want to do the best job I can for my students, so if there was an issue, I wanted to know about it so I could address it.

“You say you feel it was okay. What could I have done to make it better?” I asked. He looked at me, puzzled. He then explained to me that, when a Norwegian says something is ‘okay’, that’s likely the American equivalent of doing a handstand. Very understated, these Norwegians. He went on to tell me that to get told something is ‘okay’ may well be one of the nicest compliments to get from a Norwegian. This did not compute for me.

And then I discovered janteloven (Jante Law). Janteloven is a set of loose guidelines dictating proper behavior in Norwegian**** culture. According to Wikipedia, janteloven is made of up ten points:

1. Don't think that you are special.
2. Don't think that you are of the same standing as us.
3. Don't think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. Don't think that you know more than us.
6. Don't think that you are more important than us.
7. Don't think that you are good at anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think that anyone of us cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach us anything.

If that isn’t a testament to an ‘us and them’ culture, I just don’t know what is. I’m not saying it’s bad (or good), just different. I was raised in a way that was almost completely opposite to these teachings, hence why I probably have little cultural clashes about things like tilbakemelding. It also explains why the praise is muted and the criticism softened.

I can’t totally get on board with janteloven, I must say. I think there’s value in humility, but I also think there’s equal value in self-confidence and knowing your abilities. I would rather see balance than extremes.
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* These ‘criticisms’ are usually masked as ‘teaching evaluations’, but students never say the nice things. It’s only the angry ones who seem to take the time to fill them out.
** That’s kind of a lie. I think criticism with the right intent makes you better. Just slagging someone off for no reason is not productive and it just makes you look like a meanie.
*** What this actually means is that everyone suddenly became very interested in a tiny speck on their desk and stared intently at it. People, please don’t think that by not making eye contact with me that I can’t see you. I know you don’t want to be called on. Which is exactly why I will call on you first.
**** And Danish, Finnish, and Swedish culture as well.

Me being me

This week has gone quickly and has left me a little knackered. After an eating, sleeping, and TV-watching weekend in Paris, I was thrust headlong back into the grind as I faced three presentations this week. They were all in some way about international human resource management and culture.

At the second presentation, made to a group of recent university graduates working in the oil industry, I spent an hour describing different academic constructs related to culture and discussed how to avoid pitfalls and conflict solely based on differing cultural expectations. I’ve given this talk (what feels like) a zillion times, and I breezed through, peppering the dialogue with examples of cultural gaffes I myself have made*.

After I finished talking, I opened up the floor for questions. In some ways I don’t know why I go through this exercise as there is rarely a question to be had** and I end up standing at the front, silently and desperately pleading for someone else to open their mouth.

And one recent graduate did just that – opened his mouth, I mean. I hadn’t anticipated that my explanation of my own cultural gaffes would actually deny me some credibility as a cultural “expert”***. He asked:

“If you know so much about culture, why do you make mistakes with it yourself?”

Good question, kid.

At the time I breezed off an answer I thought would satisfy the herd, but the question stuck with me. Why do I make the very mistakes I advise others how to avoid?

I think it comes down to emotion. Even if you know the ‘right’ answer or the ‘correct’ behavior in a given situation, when you are feeling stressed or defensive or sensitive, you revert to your core. And often my cultural core is diametrically opposed to the situation with which I am dealing.

So even though I know that raising my voice to a Norwegian will get me nowhere, when I am being told that my visa will take four months and not the promised four weeks to process, I revert to type. I become that stereotypical aggressive American. Even though I know that conflict is not resolved through hard negotiation tactics in Norway, I still use ultimatums as a bargaining chip. This strategy rarely works, but I can’t seem to help myself.

I can’t seem to help myself because, no matter how many layers of other cultures I wrap myself in, at my core, I am what I am and what I always was and what I likely will continue to be.

I think this realization is in some way freeing as I am allowing myself to make the mistakes I know I shouldn’t. But to be any other way wouldn’t be me being me. So I will keep telling others how to avoid cultural conflict, and I will do a pretty good job at avoiding it myself in most cases. But when I slip up, I will permit myself to be wrong and know that it’s okay.

It’s just me being me.
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* One of the most important lessons I learned when talking about anything that could be perceived as uncomfortable is that you are safer making fun of yourself and having a group laugh at your own expense than you ever will be trying to use veiled humor directed at the audience. I learned this lesson only after managing to insult about 150 Norwegians with what I thought was a funny anecdote about the perceptions of Norwegians by foreigners. Let’s just say 150 sharp intakes of breath and about as many dirty looks later, I resolved never to make the same mistake again.
** My own take on this is not that there are not questions, but that a Norwegian, no matter how beautiful their spoken English, feels awkward speaking English in front of their fellow countrymen. I sympathize with this as I know the level of panic if I even have to utter one sentence på norsk into a microphone, so I just appreciate it and move on. I still do hold out hope that one brave soul might ask away.
*** I put “expert” in quotes as I am really an expert in nothing but the preparation of Tex-Mex food and celebrity trivia.

College by Computer

I’m in Paris at the moment. You might wonder why I’m blogging while on holiday, but holidays are not the same for Husband and me as for most other folks. We spend our ‘real’ lives talking and thinking and explaining, so when we go away, we want to do none of those things. So here we are, in the most visited tourist spot in the world (Honest!), and we are doing nothing.

Actually, that’s not true. In the 24 hours we have been here, we did visit a supermarket to buy copious amounts of cheese and wine, and we have watched more pointless TV than either of us has seen in the last month combined. And now Husband is sleeping while I listen to my iPod and read trashy gossip rags.

On our way here we bought a stack of magazines from the airport, and, once I had finished OK, Hello, and InStyle, I was forced to move on to Husband’s reading material, which included decidedly more highbrow fodder. I reluctantly flipped open Popular Science and was slightly horrified to find that there was stuff in there that was... you know… interesting.

Despite my holiday resolution to be an intellectual slacker, I was drawn to one article in particular about online education (It’s in the September 2008 issue, pages 54-59, should you be so inclined to read it yourself). I was interested for two reasons: first, there was nothing else to read, and second, I myself have been an online instructor for various universities for the past four years, so I had a frame of reference.

The article was explaining how the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made a unique move by creating a free online catalogue of almost all of their course lectures whereby the non-MIT worthy (they only accept 12% of applicants, so don’t feel bad) can view real lectures by real geniuses for their own personal edification.

This got me thinking about the educational opportunities available to expatriates in Norway (and anywhere else really). Last week I had a new expat couple in my office asking about master’s programs in English. The trouble is, outside of Oslo, there are not that many. I felt bad sending them away with only a few options that I gathered seemed less than interesting to them.

So what’s a knowledge hungry expat to do?

Go to school from your laptop, that’s what.

I personally have taken a few classes from American universities to brush up on a lackluster skill set, and I can highly recommend it. But there’s a cost for most courses as for-profit schools have until very recently dominated the market. After reading the Popular Science article, I decided to do some digging for some free options. You won’t get credit, but you also won’t have to write a check.

If you’re looking to learn for learning’s sake (or you’re just bored and need some academic stimulation without the hassle of exams), check out some of the sites below. I’ve listed them from most general to most specialized. The first three are especially good as you can access lectures in every subject under the sun from every university, Ivy League to local community college.

YouTube EDU
iTunes U.
Academic Earth
Big Think
MIT Open Course Ware
Google Code University

"Thank you for being a friend"

I find it a little difficult to make friends. This might come as a surprise as I lay out little blips of my life on the internet for all to read, and I spend my professional life standing in front of groups of people and often share things about myself to make a point. But it’s hard for me to open up and invest in a real friendship.

I suspect there are many reasons for this, but primarily because I am quite private and it takes me a while to warm up to folk. Conversely, it also takes others time to warm to me. I’m actually pretty shy, particularly in one-on-ones, and sometimes this gives people the impression I am standoff-ish, so I know when I find a real friend that it isn’t something to take lightly.

And here in Norway, I have been lucky to find quite a few real friends.

Making friends as an expat is a little different than in ‘real life’. It’s like going on a camping trip and bonding with a complete stranger based on your mutual experience of hardship*. Friendships are approached quickly, and sometimes you find yourself friends with people you might never have back home.

This is a tricky thing as, after a while, you realize that mutual nationality or shared expat woe is not enough of a foundation for a real relationship. There has to be some meat on the bones to sustain things. Some of those friendships naturally wane, but sometimes you get past the surface and realize there’s a real connection. I have made a lot of friends that I never would have back home – not because they are not wonderful people with a lot to offer, but because we might never have had occasion to cross paths in other circumstances. And I am thankful for those friendships.

This week marks the departure of another dear friend. I say ‘another’ as this is the third person that I am really close to who is bidding Stavanger adieu. I also know that there are more goodbyes to come in the near future. Part of this is due to the economy (expats, lovely though they may be, are expensive) and part to do with other life decisions.

I visited the soon departing friend yesterday to take some stuff off her hands, and I am ashamed to say I almost had a little cry while I was there. Even though I have had to say goodbye to many friends over the years, either because I was moving on or they were, it never really gets easier. I didn’t think my tears would help an already difficult situation, so I sucked it up and smiled. I waited til I got home to have a little weep**.

I would like to say I was weeping for altruistic reasons, but the truth is I was weeping just as much for myself as anything else. It hurts to be left behind. I know my friendships don’t end when someone boards a plane, but things do change. And part of what makes being an expat enjoyable is the people with whom you experience it. I am sure I would be singing a different hymn about the joys of living abroad if I had not been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of so many amazing people.

I wish I had some poetry to throw at the situation, but the truth is, it just sucks.

So to the soon departing friend, the departures yet to come, those that have already left, and those that don't plan on going anywhere, thank you for being my friend. Thanks for bringing something to my life that wouldn’t have been there without you.

This is not goodbye, but merely ‘see you later’.
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* I know not everyone would buy into my camping example as hardship, but my idea of camping is a hotel without room service. We all have different scales.
** I am a crier. This surprises a lot of folk as I might appear to be quite, well, be-atchy, but I am actually a big old softie. Anyone who has had to witness one of my birthday or Thanksgiving speeches (painfully teary but thankfully brief) can attest to this.

23 minutes

So an American drives into a tunnel...

No, this isn’t the start of a bad joke, but rather an experience I had just this week. I left work at 4pm on Tuesday forgetting it was the start of Norwegian ‘rush hour’.

The four o’clock hour used to signal that the afternoon part of my workday was halfway over (I worked a lot, what can I say?), but in Norway it signals the revving of the engines for the journey home. It still feels like I am cheating someone if I leave at 4, but when in Rome and all that.

I live 3.2 kilometers from my office (yes, exactly - I tracked it), so it normally takes me less than ten minutes to jet between the two locations. But Tuesday… oh, Tuesday. On Tuesday, I lost 23 minutes (yes, I tracked that, too) of my life that I shall never get back.

I entered the aforementioned tunnel, which is just over a kilometer long, and realized immediately I had made a grave mistake. There is normally a bit of a back up, but as I was one car length in, it became apparent that there was something wrong. I sat in the same position for about 2 minutes, edged forward a car length, another two minutes… lather, rinse, repeat.

After about ten minutes of tunnel crawling, my seatbelt began to feel a little tighter, my forehead started to throb, my chest tighten. I swerved my head every which way to see what was holding up the line (I even tried to lean out of my sunroof, much to the amusement of nearby tailgaters and much to my shame in the recollection).

What was blocking the way?

How long would it take to get through?

Why was no one moving?

Why didn't I go to the bathroom before I left work?

Now I am not a laid-back person even at the best of times. But the gripping ambiguity of the situation was sending me over the edge quickly*. So why was this 23-minute experience so fraught with anxiety?

Dutch researcher and all around culture guru Geert Hofstede says that there are five dimensions to culture, with one being the concept of uncertainty avoidance. Hofstede describes uncertainty avoidance as the ability to handle vagueness and ambiguity and ultimately reflects an individual’s quest for Truth (with a capital T). My quest for Truth that day was really just to know how many minutes I was going to have to sit in my car before the sweet, sweet respite of gray daylight emerged from the other end.

According to Hofstede’s research, Americans tend to have a high tolerance for uncertainty and do not need to know the ‘what comes next’ in every situation in order to feel comfortable and secure. Clearly Hofstede did not ask me about this predilection. Norwegians also fall into this same category, meaning they do not believe in one ‘best way’ of finding Truth. Because I didn’t personally identify with either of those situations, I did a little digging to see with which country I was most closely aligned when it comes to uncertainty avoidance.

It would appear I share a philosophical kinship on this topic with China.

Who knew?

The bottom line is that I have learned my lesson and will no longer leave the office at the same time as every other Stavanger Sentrum employee. I will no longer enter a tunnel when I can see it is already backed up. And if I do enter said tunnel, I will not have a flat out panic attack if I don’t move along quicker than 3 kilometers an hour. Instead, I will think about Hofstede and the fact that a billion other Chinese people would likely be panic attacking right along with me. Even if it is 23 minutes I will never get back, it’s not the end of the world either.
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* I realize this makes me sound like a crazy person, but I promised to always tell the truth in this blog. And the truth is, I am a crazy person. I just usually do a better job of hiding it.

Death and taxes

Only two things are certain in life... there’s little we can do about the first but wait, but for the second… well, there’s little we can do there either.

A common complaint of expatriates living in Norway is the notion that income taxes are sky high. This is true, compared to say, Qatar, where there are no personal income taxes (PIT), or Paraguay, where PIT maxes out at 10%. But is Norway really much higher than other countries? Some nifty little wizards at KPMG have compiled a report addressing just that.

According to the 2009 Individual Income Tax and Social Security Rate Survey, Norway has a PIT rate* of 40%, the UK 40%, and the US 35%**. However, these are not the highest PIT rates. Denmark has a PIT rate of 62.3%, Sweden 56.7%***, Netherlands 52%, and Austria, Belgium, and Japan 50%. But that’s only part of the story.

When you consider a combination of the highest tax rates based both on personal income tax and social security tax, the highest-taxed locations might surprise you (well, it did me, but I am easily surprised). KPMG found that “When taking both the personal income tax rate and social security rates into account for employees earning 100,000USD, the countries with the highest rates were Slovenia (54.9 percent), Croatia (53.5 percent) and Hungary (48.1 percent).”

In fact, if you consider both PIT and social security tax, on 100,000USD of gross income, one would pay 32.9% in Norway and 25.3% in the US. While a difference of more than 7% might seem quite large, it is worth noting that I am getting a lot for that 7.6% differential in Norway. I am pretty sure that difference is worth inexpensive-to-free health care, subsidized-to-free childcare and schooling, and even a gratis university education from a public institution (how I wish I would have had this kind of benefit before Sallie Mae and I met).

There’s really nothing witty or clever to joke about regarding tax rates so I won’t bother trying (although please feel free to comment if you do have some humor to share about this). However, it’s good to know that I am not being gouged by the Norsk tax system quite as badly as I thought I was. Cheers, Norge!
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For some reason a discussion of taxes requires a lot of footnotes. Of course it does.
* Note that this is the highest tax rate in countries with graduated tax systems.
** This is the federal tax rate only and does not take into account state income taxes.
***The PIT rates for Denmark and Sweden include a social security component as this is rolled into the PIT rate. They get a lot of free stuff for their tax dollars so don't feel too sorry for them.

Kan du snakke norsk?

I've been a bit slack on the blogging for the last week, partly due to my lack of Nyquil and persistent illness (the hacking cough is starting to...umm... hack off those around me now). The main reason I've been lax, however, is because I have returned to work after the summer sabbatical. I am a professor at a business school, and, while the money is not great and the glamour even less so, it affords me summers off, which is worth more than a salary offers.*

This week marked the return of the students, and it meant this chick had to get back to work. It's a tough job sometimes as I feel I am quite low-brow most of the time, based solely on my love for tabloid newspapers and crappy gossip sites. I have had to get back into the swing of things and 'academic' myself up again. See you next summer, Perez Hilton!

Part of the back-to-school process involves meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Usually by October I have reverted to my usual policy regarding meetings, which is to avoid whenever possible. But in my start-of-term exuberance, I try to show up for the biggies to be a team player. This week I have spent at least ten hours in meetings. That alone would normally be enough to make me tear my hair out, but added into the mix are the fact these meetings are all in Norwegian.

This would seem an obvious thing since I am, after all, in Norway.

But I have whiplash from transitioning from English to Norwegian, and have been ingesting headache tablets at an alarming rate as a result. Let me lay it on the table - I am rubbish with Norwegian. For the first year and a half I lived here, I avoided learning any Norwegian at all. It's so easy to do as 95% of Norwegians speak English beautifully. But when I took my new job, I felt a large chasm between me and the rest of the staff due to my self-imposed language barrier.

Don't get me wrong - everyone was and is so kind to me, always offering to translate the important things or help me when I look confused (which is more often than not). But I felt I was an outsider since there always had to be a break in the meeting for Boss to ask if I understood. I didn't want to be singled out and I didn't want to create any additional work for others, so I resolved to learn some Norsk.

I first signed up for a Norwegian course at a local learning center. It met for 3 hours one night a week. I made it through the first 45 minutes of session one and left, never to return. The problem was really ego. Those who teach are usually the worst at being taught.** So the following week I hired a private tutor and spent the next six months taking lessons twice a week.

Because it was one-on-one, I dictated what I wanted to learn. I spent hours with Tutor translating work emails, academic articles, and textbooks. The result is that I have a fairly large vocabulary of management-related words, but I have absolutely no idea how to string them into a sentence, as mundane things like grammar and tense bored me.

This means I can follow a meeting by picking up keywords and context, but I would be hard pressed to muster up much more conversation than a four year old Norwegian child (and that might even be over-estimating my abilities a bit). It also means that I am always five minutes behind and 50% off topic when in meetings as I take far too long translating things in my head.

Recently the Norwegian Directorate of Integration and Diversity (IMDi) published a study detailing integration results for foreigners living in Norway. In this report, they note that "Numerous studies... document the need for better Norwegian language skills among many immigrants who have been resident in Norway for some years. (p.19)"

I'm not surprised. I am pretty certain I am one of those immigrants they're talking about. In my own work as a cultural researcher and academic, whenever I speak about cultural integration in a business context, I always emphasize the importance of learning the local language, even if your own language is widely spoken. It's about understanding nuance and meaning and removing barriers to relationships. I am embarrassed to say I have not sufficiently done that.

This all boils down to the fact that I've got to sort it out and suck it up and find myself a classroom to sullenly skulk in to so I can learn properly. It won't be fun, nor easy, but I have to practice what I preach. Jeg må prøve, you know.
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* I stand by this statement. I have worked for a lot more money and gained an ulcer, so working for less money but more freedom reaps its own rewards in my book. I certainly spend less on antacids and therapy now.
** I just didn't think smacking on the CD that came with the textbook and playing it for 20 minutes straight was a teaching technique with which I could get on board. I'm fussy like that.