Heritage Month is a reminder to embrace different local cultures and celebrate the melting pot that makes us the “Rainbow Nation”. How can you celebrate your roots without stepping on anyone’s toes?
In South Africa, we cherish a variety of different beliefs and traditions. With 11 official languages, learning to live with each other often requires a lot of patience and respect in the workplace and even at home.
Author Colin Browne uses the following example to explain how people from different backgrounds can work together successfully. “Employees in a business are like children in a sandpit. If you have a group of children who play well together, they will build sandcastles. They may build very elaborate ones. They’ll have such a good time doing it that they will want to do it again tomorrow,” he says. In his book How To Build a Happy Sandpit, he highlights how recruiters should get involved in ensuring that candidates fit into a company’s corporate culture.
COMPANY CULTURE
- Understand that you may come from different backgrounds, which will affect perception and decision-making.
- Try to find out more about your colleagues – what languages they speak at home, where they come from, and what traditions they celebrate and when.
- Remember you are all working towards the same goal. As a company, there are inherent values you should strive towards and targets you need to achieve.
- Acknowledge that your way or belief system may not be the only one, or even the best one in any particular situation. Our different value systems guide how we perceive problems, so it may benefit the whole team to consider solutions from individual team members.
When it comes to keeping your traditions alive at home, praise poet and cultural activist Jessica Mbangeni encourages everyone, especially women, to take a special interest in their culture and heritage. “Traditions are an authentic and a necessary way of life, no amount of education or wealth should divorce a person from their culture,” she says. “It’s too easy to discard that which we were brought up with and choose ‘sophisticated’ ways of living without appreciating that our culture is our foundation and an important part of our being.”
Mixing different cultural traditions can also be difficult when you’re combining families. Instead of trying to enforce one way or another, explore the intention behind certain gestures. You’ll often find that your intentions are the same and that only the expressions differ. If you learn the reasons behind someone’s customs and actions, you’ll discover that we’re all more alike than we realise.
Share this article:
Linked In | Facebook | Twitter | Email
|
