by Erin Meyer
The system worked. This group of thirty-two Saudi Arabian managers were the most punctual group I have ever worked with. At nine o’clock sharp, every single student was in his seat. The only catch was that I was subject to the same rules. If I arrived late after a break or allowed my lecture to run long, I had to pay, too. That day cost me fifteen euros—but I will do better next time.
People can be remarkably adaptable when it comes to the Scheduling scale if the team leader establishes a clear and explicit team culture.
Cam Johnson, the American manager who moved from Tokyo to Beijing, explained in an interview the method he used when bringing Germans, Brazilians, Americans, and Indians together on one team. He recalled:
When the team had its first face-to-face meeting, we invested half a day working in small break-out groups to create a team charter. We spent a full hour discussing what we wanted our conference calls and meetings to be like and what approach to timing we would follow. I asked them to decide as a group how they wanted to work together, and what level of flexibility versus structure they expected from one another during the meetings. We didn’t talk at all about cultural differences in that meeting. We just talked about how we, this specific team, wanted to collaborate.
Having a clear discussion about scheduling systems up front can ease frustration that may otherwise pop up down the line. Having framed an agreement, the group can follow its own team culture instead of allowing members to follow the methods most natural in their home countries. After the team style has been created, the team leader will need to reinforce what the group has agreed and set aside time to revisit the agreement about twice a year, making any adaptations necessary.
“YOUR WAY IS SO INEFFICIENT!”
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Scheduling scale is that those from each side of the scale see those from the other side as inefficient and imagine they must lead lives that are terribly difficult and stressful.
When giving a talk about cultural differences during the trip to Indore, India, mentioned earlier, I had to constantly remind myself, “Flexibility is the key to success.” Although I’d started my talk thirty-five minutes after the scheduled time, many participants arrived an hour late—or two—and others came and went at unforeseen moments, hearing my presentation in fits and starts. During this session, I told the story about my back-to-back presentations—the one in Denver orchestrated by Danielle with her time-tracking cards, and the one in Brazil that Ranato felt had been cut short inappropriately after just sixty-five minutes. I used the story, of course, to dramatize the extreme differences that cultures can exhibit when it comes to the Scheduling scale.
Afterward, a woman in her sixties, an accomplished psychologist garbed in a beautiful sari, came up to offer a comment. She’d been startled by my experience in Denver. “This type of rigidity that you have described to us about your American culture . . . it sounds extremely inefficient,” she remarked. “All that time you spent rehearsing your presentation, getting the minutes down just right. It must be incredibly stressful and time-consuming to give a presentation in this type of environment. You must all get heart attacks! Yet the business culture of the U.S. has set an example for the rest of us for decades. I find it puzzling.”
A response all but leapt to my lips. “No, no, no,” I wanted to say (but restrained myself), “the system in my culture is an example of efficiency and relaxation. We set the plan, we prepare, we follow the plan. It is here, during this very session right now, when we are supposed to start at 9:00 a.m. but people arrive and leave (and come back again) at random. . . . this is what is inefficient and stressful. This is inefficient, because you are investing your time in coming to the session, but you are not getting what you are supposed to out of it, because you don’t experience it from beginning to end . . . in order . . . one step at a (linear) time.”
I opened my mouth to try to explain that, but I thought better of it. Instead, I invited this woman to go and stand with me in the evergreen-shaped line that was sprouting up at the coffee machine.
Epilogue
Putting the Culture Map to Work
When Ethan, my older son, was a baby, I invited a Danish colleague visiting Paris from Copenhagen over for dinner. It was a very cold January night, and Søren and I were talking in the kitchen while my husband dressed Ethan in the other room. After listening to my new-mother woes, Søren, who has three children, looked out onto our balcony and asked, “Do you give Ethan his naps outside or inside?”
I didn’t understand the question. “Outside or inside of what?” I asked. It was so cold outside that I had put insulation around the door to keep the biting wind from whistling through the cracks. Was Søren suggesting I put our child out in the icy winter air for a two-hour nap? I wondered whether there was some fundamental rule of mothering that everyone had forgotten to tell me.
I was surprised when Søren explained that, in Denmark, it is quite common for parents to put their babies out in the winter afternoon for a nap. “We wrap them up and bring them in if it gets to be below minus ten degrees. It’s good for them. They sleep better and they’re less likely to get sick.” Søren’s minus ten was Celsius, the equivalent of fourteen degrees Fahrenheit. Even folks from my hometown in Minnesota would say “Brrr!”
A few years later, I got a call from a Danish woman who would be attending my weeklong course at INSEAD. “You asked us to prepare three things that are strange or surprising about our culture to share with the group on Monday evening,” she said. “But I’ve thought a lot about it, and I can’t think of anything unusual or strange about where I come from.”
“Why don’t you talk about putting your babies outside to nap on cold winter afternoons?” I suggested
“Would someone think that is strange?” she asked me, sounding utterly shocked. “Don’t people do that in every country?”
The way we are conditioned to see the world in our own culture seems so completely obvious and commonplace that it is difficult to imagine that another culture might do things differently. 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.
Of course, this book is not about babies, but about business. Yet the same rule applies: It is only when you start to identify what makes your culture different from others that you can begin to open a dialogue of sharing, learning, and ultimately understanding.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE CULTURE MAP
Start by plotting your culture using the eight scales. You’ll then have a map to compare your culture to those of your business partners. You can see how it works from the e-mail exchange I had with a French participant who had recently finished my course:
Hi, Erin.
After attending your presentation at our annual conference last week, I’ve been thinking about the invisible cultural boundaries impacting the effectiveness of my global team.
As you know, I’m a vice president at automotive supplier Valeo—a French company with big client bases in Germany and Japan, and a growing presence in China. I work frequently in all four countries and have people from each on my team.
When I moved to China, I thought the difficulty would be in bridging the cultural differences between Asians and Europeans. And it is true that the Asian members of my team are uncomfortable with the way our French and German members publicly disagree with them and give them negative feedback. I’ve coached the team members on how to moderate their approaches and reactions to work more effectively together.
But to my surprise, the most serious difficulties we have on the team are between the Chinese and the Japanese. The Chinese gripe that the Japanese are slow to make decisions, inflexible, and unwilling to change. The Japanese complain that the Chinese don’t think things through, make rash decisions, and seem to thrive in chaos. Not only do these two Asian groups have difficulty working together, but the Japanese in many ways behave more lik
e the Germans than like the Chinese—something I never anticipated.
I’d appreciate any thoughts and suggestions you may have.
Olivier
My response:
Dear Olivier,
Start addressing your problem by creating a simple culture map using the scales outlined during my presentation. Plot out each culture on the eight scales and draw a broken line connecting all eight points. This line represents the overall pattern of that culture on the map. I’ve done that for you with the four cultures from your team.
FIGURE E.1.
Now check the lines for Japan and China. On several scales, they cluster together. As you’ve experienced, the Chinese and Japanese are both uncomfortable with direct negative feedback and open disagreement. That reflects the fact that, on scales two (Evaluating) and seven (Disagreeing), the Europeans cluster on one side and the Asian cultures on the other. Still, in most cases, the Japanese perceive the Chinese as very direct—note the difference between these cultures on scale two (Evaluating). The French see the Germans in the same way.
Next, take a closer look at scales five (Deciding) and eight (Scheduling), and you’ll see the likely source of the frustration on your team. Although Japan, like China, is very hierarchical (scale four, Leading), it’s a consensual society where decisions are often made by the group in a bottom-up manner. That means decisions take longer, as input from everyone is gathered and a collective decision is formed. By contrast, in China, decisions are most often made by the boss in a top-down fashion (scale five, Deciding).
Furthermore, the Japanese have a linear-time culture (scale 8, Scheduling). They build plans carefully and stick to the plan. Being organized, structured, and on time are all values that the Japanese share with their linear-time German colleagues. Indeed, on both scales five (Deciding) and eight (Scheduling), the Japanese are rather close to the German culture, farther from France and quite far from China.
In comparison, the Chinese tend to make decisions quickly and to change plans often and easily, valuing flexibility and adaptability over sticking to the plan. On these two scales (Deciding and Scheduling), the Chinese are closer to the French than to the Japanese.
Given these differences, it’s understandable that your Japanese and Chinese team members are having difficulty working together. Can the problem be solved? Absolutely. The next step in improving these dynamics is to increase the awareness of your team members about how culture impacts their effectiveness.
Have your team read a couple of chapters from this book, or describe a few of the concepts yourself. Then discuss cultural differences at one of your team meetings or over a team dinner. 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?
It doesn’t matter whether your team members agree with what they’ve read; what’s important is to start exploring and discussing the differences in value systems and work methods. Just as fish don’t know they’re in water, people often find it difficult to see and recognize their own culture until they start comparing it with others.
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.
The more aware the team becomes of how culture is impacting their work, the more effective they will be at bridging the differences. The French expression Quand on connait sa maladie, on est a moitié guérie (Once you identify your sickness, you are halfway cured) certainly applies to multicultural teamwork. Help your team articulate the cultural differences that are impacting their effectiveness, and they will begin to work better together.
I hope some of these ideas will help improve your team effectiveness. Please keep in touch and let me know how it goes.
Erin
BRIDGING THE FAULT LINES
If you face cultural challenges similar to those that troubled Olivier, try applying the same strategy. Create a culture map that enables an easy visual comparison of the various cultures represented in your team. Noting the points of similarity and difference will help you recognize the fault lines that may be dividing your team members—invisible psychological boundaries that separate groups, creating an “us versus them” mentality.
As you build your own awareness, you will be better able to act as a cultural bridge. Help your team members develop their cultural flexibility by coaching them to suspend their judgments and see the situation from an opposing perspective.
When invisible cultural barriers impact a global team, you’ll often find that each group is frustrated with the other’s approach. The more they complain, the bigger the fault line becomes. One way you can deal with this is by organizing the team so that there is less cultural homogeneity at each location. This can help to break down the us-versus-them divide. Olivier, for example, might want to have Germans, French, and Chinese all living and working together in Japan. It can also be helpful to rotate your team members when possible so a number of them spend a few months, or even years, at other locations.
Another valuable step is hiring people who are bicultural or have extensive experience living in more than one culture represented on your team. If you make a good choice and train that person well, he can play a critical role in helping one group decode the other’s behavior.
Sometimes cultural diversity on global teams creates fault lines, but other times that same level of diversity can be a great advantage. For example, suppose you are handed a project that has dozens of drop-dead deadlines and that therefore requires a linear-time approach. Get those people on your team with strong linear-time preferences to own that project. Another time you may have a client who is constantly changing his mind and serving him well requires flexibility and comfort with changing routes at the drop of a hat. Having team members who are strongly flexible-time (both because of their culture as well as their personalities) will help meet your client’s needs.
Sometimes, you may feel as if you really need direct negative feedback about how to improve something that you can’t get right. Having people with a frank feedback style who are from direct cultures on the Evaluating scale will be invaluable. At other times, you might need a small group of people to give negative feedback to a sensitive and valued client and to do it with the utmost delicacy. Here is an opportunity to call on the strength of those individuals who are pros at indirect negative feedback.
So when you look at your team’s culture map, consider not just the difficulties that might arise from the gaps but also the strengths that the differences may provide. Managed with care, the cultural and individual diversity can become your team’s greatest asset.
WE ARE ALL THE SAME, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT
During a course on multicultural negotiations, a young MBA student from Ukraine approached me during a break and asked me urgently, “Erin, you have been talking about the importance of cultural differences, yet I have always believed that no matter where we come from, humans are fundamentally all the same. Isn’t this true?”
Later that morning, I was buttonholed by a group of students from India who had been talking excitedly. “We are in the middle of a debate,” one of them declared. “As we have seen this morning, culture seems to have a big impact on business behavior. Yet last week, our whole class took a personality assessment, and we saw that the six of us—who are all from the same part of India—each have very different personalities. Isn’t every individual different?”
The answer to both of these questions is, of course, yes.
It’s true that human beings are fundamentally the same. At a deep level, n
o matter where we come from, people are driven by common physiological and psychological needs and motivations. When we are nervous or elated, we all find our hearts beating faster. When we are gloomy or depressed, we all feel enervated and exhausted. We all feel common human emotions such as jealousy, excitement, sorrow, and passion. At a deep level, we are all the same species. In this sense, no matter which culture we come from, humans are the same.
And, yes, every individual is different. Even when raised in the same community, by the same parents, working in the same environment, no two individuals are precisely the same; each of us has a unique style and set of preferences, interests, aversions, and values.
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. Don’t assume that you can determine anything specific about how they will think or behave from what you know about their cultural background.
Yet the culture in which we grow up has a profound impact on how we see the world. In any given culture, members are conditioned to understand the world in a particular way, to see certain communication patterns as effective or undesirable, to find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, to consider certain ways of making decisions or measuring time “natural” or “strange.”
Leaders have always needed to understand human nature and personality differences to be successful in business—that’s nothing new. What’s new is the requirement for twenty-first century leaders to be prepared to understand a wider, richer array of work styles than ever before and to be able to determine what aspects of an interaction are simply a result of personality and which are a result of differences in cultural perspective.
When we worked in offices surrounded by others from our own tribe, awareness of basic human psychological needs and motivations, as well as a sensitivity to individual differences was enough. But as globalization transforms the way we work, we now need the ability to decode cultural differences in order to work effectively with clients, suppliers, and colleagues from around the world.
