The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

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One of the best ways to evaluate whether a culture is monochronic is to look at how it approaches meetings. In monochronic cultures, meetings have a fixed start and end time. Meyer states that usually, a detailed agenda is sent out to participants ahead of time. Each topic may be allotted a particular number of minutes on this schedule. Inc.” called it “superb,” and we share the magazine’s opinion. And that’s even though we are not leaders of an international team or CEOs of a multinational conglomerate. At university, I had a semester-long class about intercultural communication. We learned all the model's researchers come up with in the last 100 years, and we did exercises to practice avoiding miscommunication. Egalitarian: The ideal distance between the manager and subordinate is low. The leader is one of the equals, whose role is rather to facilitate than manage (for example Sweden).

We build relationships and acquire trust differently in task-based and relationship-based societies. In task-based cultures, business is business, in relationship-based cultures, business is personal. Potential business partners first want to know if they can trust the other party. If there is no trust, there will never be a business relationship. However, you are better off avoiding confrontation altogether in East Asian countries, since it is harshly frowned upon. How Late Is Late? Scheduling and Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Time In Israel and France – and to a lesser extent in Germany and Russia – you are expected to get confrontational, and this will not impact the relationship in any negative way.When managers have to deal with mixed cultures, it is best to alternate between explaining the why to the ‘principles first crowd and showing the ‘applications first the how of the task. Scale 4 – The Leading Scale In certain societies, open confrontation is encouraged and appropriate and will not impact the relationship in a negative way. These societies include France, Germany, the Netherlands or Israel. People here perceive an argument more like a sparring exercise, but not a real fight. They often use disagreement as a way to learn more and further explore varying ideas face. For an individual or a group to maintain social harmony, under no circumstances can anyone lose face. If you work with colleagues from different cultures, or if you had any awkward moments where you misunderstood what another person tried to tell you, then I highly recommend reading The Culture Map. The author suggests asking the following question after a team member of yours was fired to determine the answer: "Will you continue your relationship with the person who has been fired even though he is no longer part of your company? " Linear schedules – Linear styles focus on one task before they move to the next one and prefer to adhere to deadlines. Moreover, such cultures find it impolite to shift attention from one task to the other without finishing the first task.

Having that said, Confucianism heavily influenced the way people deal with others within their own social circle but the ideology provides little guidance on how to deal with people who are not part of one’s own social circle. That’s why certain Asian cultures deal with outsiders, they might turn out to be confrontational, and sometimes even hostile but would never act in the same way with friends. 7. Scheduling: linear-time vs. flexible-time Chapter 6 – Trusting: This is the most important scale and it’s also one of the most complex. Building trust across cultures is a delicate task and it requires a lot of cultural knowledge. The author describes the trust continuum as task-based on one end and Relationship-based on the other. task-based cultures are those where “Trust is built through business-related activities”, compared to relationship-based cultures that are “built through sharing meals, evening drinks, and visits at the coffee machine.” This is a very wide gap and failure to understand these differences can lead to difficulties in building fruitful relationships.Has your boss ever yelled at you directly for having made an error, "David, this work in unacceptable, why did you prepare the report in this way?" Meyer suggests that a culture's disagreement style reflects the philosophy that influenced it. Cultures that disagree openly teach the Hegelian method in school, which influences how they disagree as adults. (Shortform note: Meyer only cites the Hegelian influence in France, but the fact that other theoretical countries also disagree openly suggests the Hegelian influence on disagreement style is broader.) Similarly, disagreement-avoidant Asian countries reflect Confucian beliefs about society: people must follow their prescribed roles in society or else society breaks down. So to disagree openly with someone is to suggest they’re not being true to their prescribed role and is thus far more taboo. (Shortform note: Meyer doesn't discuss why Latin American and Middle Eastern cultures avoid disagreement, calling them only “sensitive and easily bruised.” Historically, both regions highly value honor and experience public shame, which may explain why they avoid public disagreement in the modern world.) Meyer suggests that just as the Hegelian method used in the French educational system influenced how they persuade people in business settings, it also influenced how they disagree. In other words, the French disagree openly in business settings because that’s what they were taught to do in school. Therefore working styles with people from egalitarian cultures should be inclusive, where employees are felt as being part of the big decisions. For people in hierarchical cultures, managers should invite employees to give their opinions. This is one of the key takeaways which I found valuable in the book The Culture Map. Scale 5 – The Deciding Scale

Shortform note: Meyer focuses exclusively on national cultures, so in this strategy, she’s referring to understanding only how your country’s culture has affected your work. But this finding is also true for other kinds of cultures that we may be parts of. In addition to understanding our national culture, looking at what other kinds of cultures—our gender and generation, for example—have influenced us is also an essential business skill.) The world is a melting pot of cultures. Every country, culture, region, or religion has different rules, regulations, rituals, and norms. Today, the world has become smaller and interactions between different cultures, especially at the workplace, take place on a daily basis. It is therefore essential for leaders in all organizations to be able to understand that people exhibit different behaviours that can be most certainly attributed to the difference in cultures. In The Culture Map, cultural communications expert Erin Meyer presents a framework you can use to analyze how cultures differ from yours as well as practical strategies to mitigate any cultural misunderstandings. She also explains why these cultural differences developed in the first place. Managers handling different cultures should be able to understand the differences between flexible and linear cultures and use culture schedules accordingly for individuals. At the same time, the manager should fix the schedule style for the team as a whole and adapt and change when necessary. For each scale, the author offers examples of cultural differences and suggests how to approach these differences effectively. The eight scales are as follows:Low-context cultures have precise and clear styles of communication where there are lesser chances of misinterpretation. Countries such as the US and Australia are low-context because their history is shorter, more recent, and has influences of immigrants that required communication to be precise. Meyer defines high-context cultures as cultures where communication doesn’t occur at only face value. To communicate effectively in a high-context culture, you must read between the lines. We can not disregard individual differences but we shouldn't ignore the range that culture sets either. Erin Meyer answers this question in the following way: "The culture sets a range, and within that range each individual makes a choice. It is not a question of culture or personality, but of culture and personality." While hierarchical cultures typically have a top-down decision-making process and egalitarian cultures typically have a consensual decision-making process, this is not always the case. Japan, for example, is a very hierarchical society, but decisions are being made collectively. 5. Trusting: relationship-based vs. task-based