Karl, a large man from Canada, was visiting an office in India for the first time. He was led around by Maneesha, a smartly-dressed, super-punctual woman who made sure Karl was at all of his meetings on time. Towards the end of the first day, she took Karl to meet a group of brand-new freshers who were going through some technical training. Karl joked about looking like a huge white monster, and promised not to be too scary.

Karl walked along behind the trainees and stopped behind Sangeetha. He noticed a few mistakes in a sentence she was typing and asked her in a friendly tone to “just fix it quickly”. She stared straight ahead at her screen. Karl said, “No, it’s easy, just erase that word and add a period.” Sangeetha’s eyes grew even bigger than before; she asked to be excused, and hurried to the bathroom.

Megan had just arrived for a one-year internship in India. She was put in a small group of desks with three younger single guys. Her first week went well, and she enjoyed working with her colleagues. On Friday, one of the guys mentioned at lunch that they were going out to a bar that night. Megan said, “Sounds like fun, can I come? I don’t have anything to do.”

The guys looked at each other and nervously agreed. Later in the day, one of them said he was not feeling well and might go home for the night, and the other two slowly dropped out as well, leaving Megan without any plans, and wondering what happened.

Nothing is higher on the list of ‘I-don’t-want-to-look-like-a-fool-in-a-new-country’ than knowing how to interact with women and men, specifically the opposite gender. It can seem extremely simple when done right, but extremely devastating when done poorly. In this article, we’ll explore how gender affects relationships in the workplace for an outsider in India. [Read more…]