How does teaching English in China help you to become a better manager in the business arena? It prepares you for the different learning styles that your employees will have and it helps you to understand the teacher (boss)/ student (employee) relationship. But you don't have to spend ten years teaching in China to learn the lessons that I've learned because I'm going to write them down for you so that you can benefit from what I've learned and better understand the mentality of the people working for you or the people you are working for.

First of all, one thing that people in China have in common, with very few exceptions, is that they attended a state-run school. And the learning styles in a Chinese classroom (strongly influenced by a history of Communism) are different than those in an American classroom (strongly influenced by freedom and an open market).

I remember my teachers being thought provoking, asking a lot of questions and expecting a lot of questions in return, and encouraging debate and classroom participation. If our perspective on a given topic (not about math, of course, but about more subjective classes like history, literature, or government) differed from our teacher's perspective, we talked about it from every angle and felt free to express our different opinions. If nobody else in the classroom agreed with us, there might be some who would cower, but there were no repercussions for those of us who were confident enough to stand alone behind the ideas that we felt held some merit.

When I stepped into a Chinese classroom, I found that the students were very silent. They sat in their seats prepared to listen to my lecture. They didn't ask questions and they didn't participate in the class. It was so frustrating and not what I was accustomed to or what I had expected. It didn't take them terribly long to come around a bit (especially if they had had a "foreign" teacher in the past), but every new class started out the same way- very little interaction between the student and the teacher.

Later on, I realized that this same behavior carries over into the workplace. When and American businessman finds himself sitting around a table with Chinese employees trying to open a discussion and get some new ideas about a project, he will find that most Chinese employees will sit around the table and wait to hear all of his brilliant ideas while supplying very few of their own. There are a few mental "roadblocks" keeping your employees from giving you the feedback you desire: 1.) they're not used to giving feedback, 2.) they're not used to looking for new ideas (they are simply accustomed to memorizing the ideas that have been used in the past), and 3.) they don't want to put forth an idea that might draw attention to themselves. To finish this article, please visit www.chinabizsuccess.com.

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