In today’s world, no matter where you are based, if you are a part of a global business network you are likely to work with people from other parts of the world. In fact, global businesses are taking full advantage of the opportunities that allow them to have access to the best of the best, often at competitive prices, from around the globe. There are also unique environments such as the UAE, where around 200 nationalities live and work together.
While a diverse work or business environment has countless benefits, it also means businesses have to navigate their way through different cultures, which if not understood clearly could cause conflict and failure.
“Cultural differences impact us all the time when we are working internationally and we may not know that they are cultural and we may just think that they are individual differences. And that might lead us to come up with poor strategies for management,” says Erin Meyer, a professor at one of the world’s leading international business schools, INSEAD.
“I actually believe very strongly that the most dangerous cultural differences are the ones that we don’t realise are cultural. Once we recognise something cultural is going on and we understand that it is cultural, we are so much more effective,” she says.
Meyer was speaking to Weekend Review after one of her seminars in Abu Dhabi, where INSEAD has a campus. “The problem is we go around thinking... well this guy is arrogant, or this guy is disrespectful, or this person isn’t very smart without understanding the differences in the way we are taught to give negative feedback, the differences in the way we are taught how to analyse information, and that’s when these negative but subtle undercurrents impact our effectiveness.”
Decoding differences
Meyer, whose work includes publications in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes.com and Singapore Business Times, is an expert in the field of navigating through cultural differences. Her research in this field has led her to develop a model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business.
The model, which she has published in a book titled the Culture Map, consists of eight scales, each representing one key area that she says managers must be aware of, showing how cultures vary along a spectrum from one extreme to its opposite side.
The scales include aspects such as communicating, leading, disagreeing and even scheduling, which can be used to analyse and position one culture relative to another to help improve effectiveness. For example, an American business working with a business in India could use the model to see how the two cultures compare on the eight scales — how they value flexible scheduling or whether they prefer a hierarchical approach to an egalitarian one, which will provide a better understanding of the cultural differences and hence a more effective outcome.
Erin Meyer came up with her research idea after her travels and work around the world exposed her to situations such as different methods of teachings in schools.
Meyer, born and raised in the US, says she was struck with her research idea after her travels and work around the world exposed her to situations such as different methods of teaching in schools, cultural expectations as well as global leaders’ lack of awareness about those subtle cultural differences or lack of methods on how to deal effectively with the differences.
She described one such scenario which occurred during her time in Japan, which made her realise she could not use her “western assumptions” to make assumptions.
“I gave a presentation to this small group (in Japan). I thought of myself as a very good facilitator, and I asked the group if there were any questions and no one raised their hand so I went to sit down. But this Japanese person who was travelling with me said, ‘You know, Erin there were some questions in the room I think, can I try?’”
“He stood up and said, ‘Erin Mayer has just spoken with you, do you have any questions?’ But that time he looked very carefully at the group. As he looked at the group he pointed to one woman, and she had been sitting there motionless, and he said ‘Do you have a question?’ And she asked a very important question. Then he called on several people in the room who clearly had questions but I could not see anything when I looked at them except silence, motionless [people].”
“I asked how did you know those people had questions. He thought about it and said, it had to do with the look in their eyes. It had to do with how bright their eyes were. That was such a weird moment, because I had always assumed what I learnt in Minnesota, which is that if someone had something to say they would raise their hand. I had always assumed that would be true in other parts of the world.”
The next day Meyer gave another presentation and when at the end, no one raised their hands to ask any questions she decided to try what she had been advised. She looked around the room for people who were making direct eye contact with her. “When you ask if you have a question, most people aren’t going to look right at you. But if someone has a question, they will look right in your eyes.”
She looked at someone in the room who was looking directly at her and signalled to the person if they had a question, and they did.
“That was such an important experience for me. Because I facilitate classrooms almost everyday and what I realised was that with my western assumptions, I was actually totally unable to facilitate effectively. And if I had this idea of looking for these subtle signs, I could be so much more effective.”
“That was the driving force behind my work, wanting to help leaders and managers and anyone who is trying to be effective in cross-cultures to pick up the subtle messages and differences around them so that they can perform.”
Meyer’s points about how cultural differences can create a less efficient workplace or even make a business deal fall apart are best explained through her examples, of which she has plenty.
Example 1: When should we speak and when we should be quiet? A meeting in Kuwait involving Europeans, Americans and East Asians.
“I was working with this international company in Kuwait. They have doctors from everywhere. The head of the organisation told me ‘we don’t pay attention to cultural differences we just try to be accepting of every individual’.” Meyer admitted that sounded great.
“But I observed one of their meetings and what I saw in the meeting was that the American doctors and the European physicians and nurses were talking 90 per cent of the time. The people from Malaysia or Korea were almost silent the entire meeting.”
“Afterwards I spoke to some of the western doctors about it and I said is that common and they said ‘oh yes, they (East Asians) are very shy. They almost never have anything to say.’ They (American and European employees) don’t know that culture is impacting them but they have this feeling that these people don’t want to contribute or are lacking self-confidence.”
“But when I spoke to the East Asian participants they were like ‘oh you know, these doctors from America or Germany are poor listeners, they are arrogant, all they want to do is listen to themselves talk, they never want to listen to what anyone else has to say.’ Of course this is going to be something very cultural that we learn when we are very young children, which is, when should we speak and when should we be quiet.”
“If you recognise that people from different cultures learn to speak at different moments then when you are leading a global team… you have to think that I have to set up a system to make sure every voice is heard by making sure that we have an agenda where clearly everyone can talk or by calling on each person to make sure they have equal time.”
“Cultural differences can bring huge benefits because we have such diverse ways of thinking, but if some of the cultures end up dominating and other cultures don’t speak you are never going to get the benefits that come from diversity like higher innovation. I would recommend that the Americans say to the Malay ‘we notice that they are not speaking, can you explain why?’ But not in the meeting.” Meyer stresses the importance of having that conversation separately and not in a formal setting.
Example 2: Providing criticism or how we give negative feedback. Scenario involving team from the Philippines, the US and France.
“Those are three cultures (Philippines, USA and France) where negative feedback is given in totally different ways. We are taught at school, by our parents and in a work environment to provide criticism in a totally different way in each one of those environment.”
“In the Philippines, we are taught that negative feedback should be given very softly. So if I need to tell you something is not OK, I should start by saying ‘you know this is something, you might possibly want to do a little bit differently,’ and I introduce it softly and I wrap-up in a soft way, and I might even try to give the feedback outside of the office, over a meal. I might pass the message through a third party, I don’t want to address it directly so I ask your friend who has a good relationship with you to pass the message over. So feedback is given very subtly in order to preserve the relationship.”
“In the US, people are taught to be very explicit but to begin by giving … positive detailed messages and then the actual negative message and to wrap up with something positive. ‘So these are the things I think you are doing well, this is what you need to differently, this is what I appreciate from your performance.’ So we get a lot of very strong feedback, three positives for every negative.”
“In France, people are taught to give positive feedback infrequently, negative feedback or criticism strongly and we recognise that criticism leads to more rigorous thinking. We feel in France that if something is good, I don’t need to say it, we know it’s good. And if something is bad, I should be clear about what is bad so that we can improve.”
Using Meyer’s observation about how negative feedback is provided, in a scenario where an American or a Filipino provide a French colleague with negative feedback about their work, the French person may perceive their feedback to mean that he/she did a great job. Because the French colleague would have received a lot of positive feedback from his US or Filipino counterparts and very little or subtle negative feedback, very different approach to how the French provide negative feedback. And vice versa, if a French colleague provides negative feedback to his/her American or Filipino colleagues, it is likely that they will be offended by his frankness.
“The best way is to ask questions about the other culture.”
Meyer suggests asking questions such as “I have lived in a couple of cultures, I know this is how they give negative feedback in the Philippines and in France, and in the US. What about your culture? How do we give negative feedback in your culture?”
“The more that we ask questions like that in organisations the more we improve our own effectiveness. The best global leaders are asking questions all the time, build on an underlying map of information that they already have.”
Example 3: Putting things in writing. An Australian business trying to close a deal with a company in Saudi Arabia
“In Australia the verbal word is not that important. What is important is what we put in writing. So at the end of a meeting, Australians are very likely to summarise what they have decided, put it into an email and send that email to the other person.”
“Most Arabic cultures or situations, what we have decided between us, if we have good trust and we were looking at each other in the eye, that’s the most important discussion.”
The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business |
By Erin Meyer, PublicAffairs, 288 pages, $18 |
Meyer describes a situation where an Australian company had been negotiating a deal in Saudi Arabia but negotiations came to a halt without the Australians really understanding why.
“Their (Australian company’s) head negotiator had got this top level Saudi man to agree to something on the phone but then after the meeting he put it in an email that you have agreed that you will do this and this and this. The Saudi man said, ‘I promised that to him on the phone and I feel like when he sends me that recap he is signalling that he doesn’t trust me. That he thinks I am not good on my word. Or that I won’t follow through and that made me not want to continue the negotiations with him’.”
“That is a very subtle thing. When do we need to put something in writing and what does the written word mean? That just brings us to all these complexities like contracts. Whereas in Australia, what we said on the phone is fine but what is important is what we put in writing.”
Example 4: Authority figures. Scenario of Indian managers working with Australian employees
“How much we defer to authority is one of the strongest differences across world cultures that we learn when we are growing up. In Australia, people learn that the child in a classroom is kind of like a facilitator among equals. So they call the teacher by their first name, they can easily disagree with their parents. Express confrontation to people who are above them.
In India on the other hand, children learn from a very young age to defer to the person who is in charge. To show a huge amount of respect to the person who is above them. And they learn that you shouldn’t say ‘no’ directly to your father, for example, and if you can’t do something you should indicate it without saying no clearly.
I worked a while with these Indians who were now managing a group of Australians. And one of the Indians said to me, ‘managing Australians is absolutely incredible because they don’t care at all that I am the boss so I come into these meetings and I am trying to roll out my strategy and I try to get everybody on the same page. But you know my Australian staff are contradicting me, they are challenging me, they are taking my ideas often in other directions. Sometimes I just feel like I want to get down on my knees and plead with them, please don’t forget that I’m the boss’.”
“That’s why I do the system of cultural mapping. Mapping one culture up against another. Because that moves us away from saying this culture is like this and that culture is like that. Instead saying this is the difference between these two cultures which is really important for the type of multicultural situations that you have in the UAE,” Meyer says.
“I think that’s one of the things that is the most challenging in leading, in a context like the UAE. It’s not enough for the UAE to know how to lead the Indian way, the Australian way, or the French way or the British way, but you have to be flexible enough and informed enough to adapt your style to the population that you are working with in order to get the result that you need. And that means, in the UAE more than anywhere else in the world, I don’t know any other country in the world that this is so important, that you have to have the complex global leadership skills that are indicative of what globalisation is bringing to us.”
