Graduate / Advice needed .. Essay on outside home country experience [4]

Hi All,

I have to answer this essay for LBS:
London Business School offers a truly global and diverse experience. Describe any significant experiences outside of your home country or culture. What did you gain and how will your experience contribute to London Business School?

I have not been outside my home country (which is India) but have worked in JP Morgan Chase and have interacted a lot with people outside my home country. I have wrote an essay describing one of such experience. Please suggest where to add/ substract/ change the essay to make it better. Please give it as soon as possible as the 2nd round date is due soon. Essay:

In my current organization, one of the initial projects that I took up required me to work with a team of floor analysts all of whom belonged to a different nationality than me. The project was the first experience for me of working closely with people outside my home culture.

The initial project discussions were very formal and lacked the easy sociability that I was used to in previous organizational experiences. Adding to it was the fact that most of the team was located in US and our interactions were mostly through video or tele-conferences. I felt that although individually everyone was contributing their bit, as a group we lacked the camaraderie and bonding which was imperative for focused team effort and superlative performance. I sensed that the cultural differences were acting as a barrier in creating the collaborative team spirit. This prompted me to make efforts to learn about the people beyond the work they did.

As I came to know about the analyst's families, backgrounds and cultures, it affected me in a profound way. One of the analysts was of Chinese origin and had come to America around 7 years ago for higher education. Another analyst was an elderly American lady who had separated a year back from her husband and now lived with her 3 children. Learning about their lives and the difficulties they had faced made me value them as person and strengthened our bond deeply. I spent time understanding their cultures and backgrounds and examining it in the context of my own. This helped me appreciate the differences in their working styles, values and aspirations.

I believe that this experience would help me significantly in the multicultural settings of London Business School. Being open minded about cultural diversity, I would be able to understand and appreciate diverse views in the truly global settings of London Business School. This would help me create a collaborative environment easing cross pollination of ideas and a constant exchange of knowledge.