The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures

by Erin Meyer

what in Arabic is called wasta, which translates loosely to mean something like “connections that create preference,” “relationships that give you influence,” or “who you know.”

Research suggests that the more you mimic the other person’s e-mail style, the more likely your collaborator is to respond positively to you.4

Trust is like insurance—it’s an investment you need to make up front, before the need arises.

In Confucian societies like China, Korea, and Japan, preserving group harmony by saving face for all members of the team is of utmost importance.

students in the French school system are taught to reason via thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, first building up one side of the argument, then the opposite side of the argument, before coming to a conclusion.

viewing conflict and dissonance as bringing hidden contradictions to light and stimulating fresh thinking.

But emotional expressiveness is not the same thing as comfort in expressing open disagreement.

in both Korea and China, behavior toward those with in-group status may be very different from behavior toward those with out-group status.

The strategy for succeeding in these cultures thus goes back to points made in the chapter on trusting.

First, if you’re the boss, consider skipping the meeting. Depending on the cultures you are dealing with, both your seniority and age may impact others’ comfort in disagreeing with you openly.

A second strategy for eliciting opinions in an avoids-confrontation culture is to depersonalize disagreement by separating ideas from the people proposing them.

A third strategy is to conduct meetings before the meeting.

In many Asian cultures, the default purpose of a meeting is to approve a decision that has already been made in informal discussions.

A fourth strategy for encouraging debate among those who would otherwise shun confrontation is to adjust your language, avoiding upgraders and employing downgraders (see pages 65–67 in Chapter 2) when expressing disagreement.

if I wanted to encourage team debate, it was important to use phrases like “I do not quite understand your point” and “Please explain more about why you think that.” These expressions encouraged give-and-take rather than shutting down the conversation completely.

On the other hand, if you are working with a culture that is more confrontational than your own, be very careful about choosing stronger words than are natural to you to express your disagreement unless you have a solid and nuanced grasp on exactly where the line is drawn between acceptable debate and inappropriate attack.

“Let me play devil’s advocate, so we can explore both sides.”

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall was one of the first researchers to explore differences in societal approaches to time. In The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time, Hall referred to monochronic (M-time) cultures and polychronic (P-time) cultures.

M-time cultures view time as tangible and concrete: “We speak of time as being saved, spent, wasted, lost, made up, crawling, killing and running out.

There’s a clear link between this cultural pattern and Germany’s place in history as one of the first countries in the world to become heavily industrialized.

In this environment, it doesn’t matter much if you start work at 7:00 or 7:12 or even 7:32. What matters is that your work structure is flexible enough to adapt with changes in the natural environment, and that you have invested in the critical relationships needed to keep your workers loyal in times of drought or flooding, erosion or insect infestation. In this environment, productivity and profit are directly linked to the flexibility and the relationships of the person in charge.

Cutting in line—even inadvertently—is a cultural crime in Sweden.

We are more flexible in India. Because we grew up in a society where currency wasn’t always stable and governments could change regulations on a whim, we learned to value flexibility over linear planning.

asked to take the question “offline,” meaning we will end the official part of the meeting now and discuss the question one-on-one afterward. Or I could have said I’d be happy to answer the question for anyone who wanted to stay longer.

People can be remarkably adaptable when it comes to the Scheduling scale if the team leader establishes a clear and explicit team culture.

We didn’t talk at all about cultural differences in that meeting. We just talked about how we, this specific team, wanted to collaborate.

It is only when you start to identify what is typical in your culture, but different from others, that you can begin to open a dialogue of sharing, learning, and ultimately understanding.

Ask questions like: • Do you agree with the positions as outlined in this chapter? Why or why not? • What else can you share with the group so that we better understand your own culture’s positioning on this scale? • Do you think these concepts are impacting our team’s collaboration? • What can we do to be more effective, given these differences?

what’s important is to start exploring and discussing the differences in value systems and work methods.

Be sure to conduct the discussion with humility and without judgment. The more you can joke about your own culture and speak positively about the ways other cultures operate, the easier it will be for everyone to share their thoughts and opinions without becoming defensive.

(Once you identify your sickness, you are halfway cured)

So no matter who you are working with or where that person comes from, you should begin any relationship with the desire to understand what is specific and unique to that individual.