More than a Great Tourist: How to Lead a Cross-Culturally Competent Video Team

I love traveling. With travel being limited during the pandemic, it has made me all the more aware of how much I appreciate experiencing new places, trying new foods, and meeting people along the way.

I’m hardly alone. Just take one scroll through Instagram to see how much people enjoy visiting foreign locations or traveling to the latest hip scenic spot for a photo.
Anytime you travel to a new location, you experience what’s called the “honeymoon” phase of integrating into a new culture. Everything is novel and exciting as you experience it for the first time: the people. The shops. The food.

Most people travel somewhere for a week or two, then travel home with wonderful memories of their experience as they transition into “normal life.” Over time, the experience wears off and they’re off to a new location to experience the thrill of discovering a place for the first time.

Often, people who travel frequently pride themselves in being experienced travelers, experts at navigating the transportation systems of various countries and adapting to the time change. It’s easy for them to meet up with other people to work for a couple days before going back home. The culture doesn’t seep into their experience. 

They are content with being a great tourist.

While being fluent in the logistics of frequent travel is admirable, there’s more to life than simply being a great tourist. There are numerous other facets of being in another country which can be deeply satisfying and rewarding, but they require diving deeper and developing a bit more grit.

If English is your first language, you have the benefit of English having so much leverage around the world. It’s so widely used that you can get by in many places with only speaking English. Because it’s so popular, it can be easy for those of us who speak it to assume that everyone else will adapt to our way of working, communicating, and thinking since English is often the default.

Local tourist guides, “fixers” or logistics managers who speak English will often cater to tourists or foreign workers to make their lives easier. They might guide them around or help them solve problems when things go wrong. And although this is valuable for the English-speaking foreigner, it also perpetuates a problem. The foreigner still hasn’t really needed to adapt to the local culture to thrive. They have simply surrounded themselves with the right people who understand how they think, how they speak, and are willing to bend over backwards to meet their needs.

Real cross-cultural competence happens when the tourist is willing to shift their way of doing things to match the local culture. As a warning, going through this process isn’t easy and is often referred to as “Culture Shock.” It’s uncomfortable. But it’s in this process of shifting the way we do things to integrate ourselves into the culture that we can become more than just great tourists.

In my background of working with video crews internationally, you can pay people to be on your team so that they can conform to your way of doing things. You set the standards of communication, the process, and handle the logistics, and the team operates based on what you need to get done. This can be a very successful way of producing compelling video content, but it also risks being extractive in nature, if it’s not done correctly.

I’ll give you an example. I was on a trip to India where the team lead told me about a videographer who had been on a previous trip. The team lead described him as very demanding about what it took to get “the shot.”

“He did a great job with the video, but he will never be invited back again because of how demanding he was.”

When a team is on a trip, they have deliverables to produce whether it’s photo or video, but if they aren’t careful they can get too focused on the deliverables without paying attention to the people and the culture in the process.

Cross-cultural competence starts with listening. As a team lead, videographer, or photographer, ask a ton of questions. Get curious about what you’re experiencing. Use conversations with the people in that culture to gain awareness and insight into how you can better adapt to fit the culture. Stay flexible — to new ideas and changes in the schedule.

As creatives, we love a good story. We love good experiences. But it’s important to be culturally sensitive, and to not use other people’s pain to tell a good story, or enrich the experience.

Think before you do anything to “get the shot.”

Leading a cross-culturally competent team doesn’t just mean being able to navigate the logistics of a culture, it also means being able to work with people who don’t always think like you and letting them shape the way you view the world.