Working with Multi-Cultural Crews
One of the processes that we have had great success with is something we call the “Thirty-Word Challenge.” We start at thirty words. We take the expats, normally Supervisors, and challenge them to come up with a list of the thirty words that they believe their crew absolutely need to know. While they’re working on this list, we go to the National crews and ask them to come up with thirty words in their language that they absolutely want their leaders to know.
Would it surprise you that these two lists are rarely the same?
The lists from the ex-pats are generally focused on technical words, such as “blocks,” “slips,” “wrench.” The lists from multinational/multilingual workers tend to focus on relational and feeling words or phrases, such as “please,” “thank-you,” “Can you help me?” But the best part of this exercise is putting the two groups together and letting them compare their lists.
…Getting people to “communicate” is integral to safe and efficient operations. But communication is not always enabled by the same language and is not disabled by having multiple languages on a rig.”
This is an excerpt from my book ‘Commit to Safe and Efficient Operations’ you can get a copy here: https://bit.ly/3sQ45xM
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