n my MBA studies, I have worked with students from over 50 nations.

Often times the interaction was very

friendly and I learned a lot about how people who did not grow up in the US, approach problems and come up
with solutions to these problems. As a person who wants to do business globally, I found this to be a very rich
learning experience. Doing group projects with a person from India, South Korea and Iceland, all at the same
time, leads to some dynamic learning environments. It allows a person to grow and develop a multi angled
approach to finding solutions. However, this was not the best part of the learning experience.
What do you do when a Korean member of your group refuses to work with a Japanese member, until they
apologize for what Japan has done to Korea in the past? How do you deal with Mainland Chinese and
Taiwanese fighting over politics? What do you do when Germans refuse to work with Russians? These are the
times when you really get a look into the mind of a person from another culture. Anyone can act nice and work
professionally, but what happens when they are upset or angry over something personal and you need them to
work as part of a team? This is when you learn how to deal with people from other cultures in stress filled
situations, the same kind of stressed filled situations you may find yourself in, on the job.
One situation, I had to personally deal with, were issues between Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese. One day the
Mainland student decided they were not going to listen to the Taiwanese because he was from “rogue province.”
As an American I knew about these political issues but I really didn’t see how this had anything to do with
being in school and working on a project. I asked a friend of mine who is from China but has lived in the US for
ten years, what to do. I always thought of him as American, he looks and acts like one. Yet when I told him of
the issue I was facing with my group, he told me that I shouldn’t recognize Taiwan or anyone from there
because they are a rogue state. This was a surprise to me that he would say this. His nationalism was coming out
strong and the issues of Taiwan not being part of China seemed to be a very deep rooted issue among the
Chinese students at my campus, even my friend who has lived in the US for so many years.
Wanting to get this issues resolved (as I had not choice) I set out to talk to various people on the issue. Being a
part of student government, I had a little more at my disposal than most. I understood the problem was that
the Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese students were not a community but two different communities, both
trying to represent the Chinese community as a whole. It was more an issue of who could get the most support
and had the loudest voice. Of course this did nothing but create problems for those of us caught in the cross
fire. Student government decided to create a Chinese night, in which both groups would work together to host
the night. We had our fingers crossed that they would not beat each other up and that the reaction to the
night event would be positive.