Working in Indonesia: Four Lessons Learned

In my experience, there are three points to note with Indonesian work culture: respecting elders, distancing from elders, and conversational norms.

I’m a tall, white, forty-year old man with blonde hair and blue eyes. There’s no option for me to blend in with the crowd because I’m so obviously foreign. In a community that has a long history with blue-eyed, blonde, white people having a lot of say and a lot of promise in their nation – not necessarily in a good way, historically – my presence brings a mix of reactions.

Some people look at me and think positively of me. Others view me as just another colonizer and don’t want to talk to me. In addition to being a foreigner, I’m also not a Muslim which means there are a lot of areas I cannot walk into and plenty of places that are off-limits to me.

There are many more restrictions I need to be mindful about besides those due to a myriad of social, historical, religious, and cultural forces at play but none of them are personal. They do get in the way of business however because I need to go through a lot of intermediaries and bureaucracy, making business decisions difficult and slow. But there are ways to make things go smoother and they are the four lessons I learned while working as a foreigner in Indonesia.

 

Lesson One: Setting the Stage

The first thing I had to address was how differently Americans and Indonesians go about things.

In my experience, there are three points to note with Indonesian work culture: respecting elders, distancing from elders, and conversational norms. During meetings, plenty of time is spent on being polite – to the point that conversations are diverted towards positive topics in order to avoid negative topics –, talking about family, and discussing everything but the topic on hand.

Whereas I, as an American, am used to facing problems head-on and raising my voice to show that I’m engaged in a topic. Behaviors which are seen as aggressive in Indonesia or as an indication that something is wrong. Moreover, I’m not very familiar with Indonesian culture so it’s highly likely that I do something wrong therefore it’s good to be frank from the start.

At the first meeting with my Indonesian colleagues, I assured everyone that I knew I wasn’t Muslim or Indonesian and admitted that I didn’t know much about Halal which was the topic of the project I was assigned to oversee. For those three subjects, I was willing to defer to their expertise. On the other hand, I informed them that my expertise was the business side of things.

With those boundaries set, I gained two things: being judged by the standards I set for myself and being more easily accepted as their work partner. This allowed us to continue on to the next step of understanding each other better. We spent fifteen to twenty minutes talking about our cultures, stereotypes, our work styles, our relationship with families/friends, and more.

Then, we made a list of promises to each other which acted as what I like to call our “Office Communication Bill of Rights”. One point was on my habit of raising my voice. I let them know it’ll likely happen and they can talk to me about it after meetings if need be. But the point is they’re forewarned and shouldn’t raise the issue during meetings because we need to focus.

Another is that I had them promise to begin meetings talking about the bad news first and the good news second. By outlining this, there’s no way for us to avoid bad news which is crucial to work progress. However, because this isn’t normal to them, my promise is to not rush them. If they need to work themselves towards the bad news then I need to give them time and space.

Creating boundaries and the “Bill of Rights” from the beginning set the stage for the way we interacted with each other from then on and allowed us to effectively meet each other halfway.

 

Lesson Two: Social Credibility

In Indonesia, there’s no such thing as a quick meeting. If people are going to get-together for an important business meeting then the whole affair will take three, four, or even five hours.

This is because of two things. One, traffic in the city means just arriving at the meeting place takes time. No one’s traveling three hours for an hour-long meeting. Second, they want to know who you are as a person. How you carry yourself, how well you speak, whether you’re married, and other personal topics will be points of discussion. Because the way you fit into your own social group and into your own community is viewed as a reflection of yourself.

It’s important that you’re able to sit down and chat about your personal life as well as everything else under the sun. They lend towards your social credibility and inform potential clients or business partners how well you’ll fit into their work life and how well your companies will work together. In fact, I would say it’s one of the deciding factors that make or break deals.

As an American, this was foreign to me. We make deals with people we don’t necessarily like in the United States so long as the numbers look good. But in Indonesia, that’s not the case. Numbers are certainly important and they get your foot through the door. What takes you to the next stage after that is not the numbers however. Instead, it’s your social credibility.

The reason for this is because Indonesia’s huge and there’s a lot of opportunities which lends the idea that even if one opportunity is let go of, another would just come knocking. Since that’s the case, they would rather work with someone they like or they have connections with.

None of these mean you have to cater to your potential clients or business partners especially however. All you need to do is set the stage and they’ll accept as well as judge you accordingly because the important thing is that they know who you are and what they can expect from you.

 

Lesson Three: Mind the “Group”

Last year, I went back to America for Thanksgiving and realized that living in Indonesia had changed my mind-set. My American friends – just like I was before – had no issue bringing up bad memories and joking around about things. That type of ‘emotional abuse’ is our version of a love language in America and particularly in Kentucky where I’m from. But I felt uneasy.

I found myself sensitive to whether the mention of this or that would hurt so-and-so’s feelings and bring down the mood. Considerations which I had never been concerned with or thought about before. It was the type of politeness and care for the “group”, the “community”, that the Indonesian culture emphasized and that I’d needed to be conscious about at the very beginning.

Without knowing, I’d adopted the same mind-set.

The learning curve had been quite steep though especially with religion in the picture. Religion is a very cultural thing in Indonesia and is very much part of their cultural identity. There, it’s necessary to be aware of religion and how it affects things like choices for meeting places, meeting times, and so on as you need to consider who’s on holiday, doing prayer, and et cetera.

Even restaurant options need to be chosen with care. You can’t just choose a Halal vegetarian restaurant, for example, so that no Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim are upset. Because there are absolutely some who will be upset that you even contemplated the idea. Knowing the culinary preferences of your co-worker, client or business partner is something to keep in mind.

Being mindful of every person in the “group” or “community” by putting much care and thought into what time to meet, which area to meet in, the restaurant choice and its menu offerings, and whatnot are what gets you into the religious conversation. Luckily for me, I had and still have my team who are local Indonesians to guide me and steer me away from mistakes.

 

Lesson Four: Making the Stage

At the end of the day, no matter how much I set the stage and adapt to Indonesian culture, there are times where I’m just in the way as a foreigner because I’m not familiar with the culture, there’s a language barrier or something else. In those cases, the best thing to do is to step back.

There have definitely been times I’ve gone to meetings with my local team members and all I did was make the stage for them to stand on. I would do introductions to express how important the meeting is to Kenja that I, as a director, went to meet them, underline the utmost confidence and respect I have for my team, then excuse myself so that the meeting can happen smoothly.

Doing that, showing my respect to the other party, not only lends credibility to my team members but also shaves months off of the relationship building. It’s a strategic play but it’s also something that needs to be done when it’s apparent that both parties would be comfortable working alongside locals rather than a foreigner like myself who they’d feel more wary about.

However, knowing when to do this strategy is the key. Just as there have been times when I knew my local team would go further than me for whatever reason, there have also been times when I took the lead because I would go further than them. The latter’s usually the case when we’re meeting with government officials or local expats as I have more experience with them.

 

In conclusion, there are a lot of factors to consider and many restrictions to be careful about when working as a foreigner in Indonesia. It’ll be hard at first and there’s a definite learning curve to get through but these four lessons will ease the way. Just remember to set the stage, build your social credibility, mind the “group”, and know when to make the stage for others.