How Multicultural Communication Helps Working With Different Cultures
Did you know that there are seven times more words in English than in French (500,000 versus 70,000)?
Are you aware that alcohol is one of the key ingredients to building strong relationships in Japan?
And would you believe that in parts of Nigeria, business meetings are scheduled only after the Muslim Supreme Leader looks at the moon and announces the holiday schedule?
Welcome to The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures by Erin Meyer
Erin has consulted on international business for decades and has laid out the mistakes people make in multicultural communication while working with other cultures and what we can do to avoid them. She analyzes 8 dimensions of business and where different countries fall on each spectrum.
Multicultural Communication Dimensions Accross Businesses
Communicating: low-context vs. high-context
Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback
Persuading: principles-first vs. applications-first
Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical
Deciding: consensual vs. top-down
Trusting: task-based vs. relationship-based
Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoids confrontation
Scheduling/Time: linear vs. flexible time
There is so much good stuff in this book, but I’ve boiled it down into some of the most interesting–and hopefully useful–bits from the whole book.
Context
The concept of context is fascinating. The United States is the lowest-context culture in the world and Japan is the highest. This means that in the US (followed by Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK), we say exactly what we mean. In Japan and other Asian and African cultures, much of the communication is unspoken, or between the lines. Romance language countries (like Italy, Spain, France and Latin American countries) are in the middle.
The mistakes are that people from high context countries will often interpret meaning from their foreign colleagues that isn’t there. And people from low context countries will miss out on a wealth of meaning because they aren’t listening beyond the words.
Humor
When I worked in London, I often heard the British say that Americans “don’t understand irony” and aren’t funny (could be they were just referring to me). But based on the theory of context, a more precise explanation is that Americans are simply more low-context than the British. So when Americans make a joke, they are likely to indicate clearly through explicit verbal or physical cues, “This is a joke.” Us Yanks just haven’t mastered the art of the dry delivery (or understatement) yet.
My favorite example of understatement was this announcement made by a British Airways pilot in 1982 after flying through a cloud of volcanic ash over Indonesia:
“Good evening again, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Eric Moody here. We have a small problem in that all four engines have failed. We’re doing our utmost to get them going and I trust you’re not in too much distress, and would the chief steward please come to the flight deck?”
Giving Feedback
A French woman got transferred to a team in the US. After her latest review, she felt great. Her boss had told her a list of things she was doing well and only one area that needed work. Her boss, on the other hand, was exasperated and about to let her go. He had repeatedly told her the one major area she needed to work on, yet she seemed to ignore him.
The difference, of course, is that the French are used to direct negative feedback and are trained to criticize passionately and provide positive feedback sparingly. Americans give indirect feedback utilizing the “feedback sandwich,” packaging the constructive stuff in between lots of positive. So to her, 7 positives and 1 negative meant she was killing it!
Time/Scheduling
I’m convinced that my wife, who is also American, gets her sense of timing from the developing world (we’ll see if she actually reads my blogs). Time is one of the biggest areas of confusion and frustration in working across cultures and multicultural communication. When I sold telecom services in Costa Rica, I was astounded that people would come to meetings two hours late–or not at all–and never even mention it!
The Swiss and Germans operate in linear time, whereas less developed countries, where things are in constant change, are in flexible time. There’s a story about a Nigerian whose company was bought by Germans. The Germans regularly scheduled meetings months in advance, which the Nigerian felt absurd.
“I can’t possibly schedule a meeting three months from today because it is impossible to know what will have changed. I am from the Muslim part of Nigeria, and where I live you don’t even know when the holiday is going to start until the Supreme Leader looks at the moon and says that the holiday starts now. If I don’t know which days will be a holiday, how can I possibly know at which moment two months and seven days from now I will be available to talk on the phone?”
Trust and Relationships
An American company had merged with a Brazilian one, and in the first months, the executives from each company went to meet with the others in their country. After meeting for a few days in the US, the Brazilians were confounded. “We jumped straight into detailed business discussions without taking any time to build our relationship. How do we know we can trust these guys?”
A few weeks later, when the Americans were leaving Brazil, they had the opposite reaction: “All we did was go our for drinks and dinner and football games. We barely even talked business!”
As the author put it, “In countries like the United States or Switzerland, business is business. In countries like China or Brazil, business is personal. If your work brings you to the BRIC cultures (Brazil, Russia, India, China) or anywhere in the southern hemisphere, you must learn how to build relationship-based trust with your clients and colleagues in order to be successful.”
In relationship-based cultures, the relationship is most important. In task-based cultures, it’s about actions and objective measurements.
One Spaniard said this about us Americans: “One of the aspects I find so difficult about working with Americans is that, although they are very friendly, sometimes surprisingly so, they don’t show you who they really are in a business relationship. They are so politically correct. They don’t dare complain or show negative emotion.”
This is a classic “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” situation. What the author suggests is that if you are in a relationship-based culture, take the time, energy, and effort to build a personal connection with them. Build trust as a friend from the heart. Forget the deal for a while. Go out. Enjoy some meals. Share some drinks. Relax. Build an emotional connection. Open up personally. Make a friend. A real one, the kind with whom you are willing to let your guard down.
Conclusion
I saw a t-shirt once that said, “Stereotypes are a real time-saver.” Of course this book is full of generalizations and all people are different. That said, if you learn to flex and style-switch to the culture with which you are working, you’ll make more friends, be “on time” for more meetings and probably have more fun when it’s time to sing karaoke!