Due to a number of factors such as technology and globalisation our day to day lives – whether business or personal increasingly involve broader international networks. And while in the IMI blog we often consider our “effectiveness” in how we interact with and manage others but all too often we do not discuss the critical factors of nationality and culture.
How do cultural differences impact on your ability to do business? And how can we make sure we are maximising our relationships with those in our network who may be operating with cultural differences to our own.
Erin Meyer is a professor at INSEAD, one of the world’s leading international business schools. Her work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Singapore Business Times and Forbes.com. In 2013 the Thinkers 50 named her as one of 30 up-and-coming thinkers and in October 2013 British Airways Business Life magazine on their list of ‘Ten Dons to Watch’. Her work focuses on how the world’s most successful global leaders navigate the complexities of cultural differences in an international environment.
IMI: Based on your current work – if you only had 6 words of advice to give a business – what would they be?
EM: Succeed Globally with a Culture Map
IMI: What does this mean?
EM: Today, whether we work with colleagues in Dusseldorf or Dubai, Brasilia or Beijing, New York or New Delhi, we are all part of a global network (real or virtual, physical or electronic) where success requires navigating through wildly different cultural realities. Unless we know how to decode other cultures and avoid easy-to-fall-into cultural traps, we are easy prey to misunderstanding, needless conflict, and ultimate failure.
Yet most managers have little understanding of how local culture impacts global interaction. Even those who are culturally informed, travel extensively, and have lived abroad often have few strategies for dealing with the cross-cultural complexity that affects their team’s day-to-day effectiveness.
To help people improve their ability to decode the cultural differences impacting their work and to enhance their effectiveness in dealing with these differences, I have built on the work of many in my field to develop a tool called the Culture Map. It is made up of eight scales representing the management behaviours where cultural gaps are most common.
The eight scales are based on decades of academic research into culture from multiple perspectives. To this foundation I have added my own work, which has been validated by extensive interviews with thousands of executives who have confirmed or corrected my findings. The scales are:
- Communicating: explicit vs. implicit
- Evaluating: direct criticism vs. indirect criticism
- Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical
- Deciding: consensual vs. top down
- Trusting: task vs. relationship
- Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoidance
- Scheduling: linear-time vs. flexible-time
- Persuading: applications-first vs. principles-first
By analyzing the relative positioning of one nationality to another on each scale, managers learn to decode how culture influences day-to-day international collaboration and therefor avoid the common pitfalls.
Managers have always needed to understand human nature and personality differences – that’s nothing new. What is new is that twenty-first century managers must understand a wider, richer array of work styles than ever before. They have to be able to determine which aspects of their interactions are simply a result of personality and which are a result of differences in cultural perspective.
IMI: Where should we look for further information?
EM: Read The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. Or my HBR article: Navigating the Cultural Minefield www.erinmeyer.com.
Erin Meyer will be holding a Masterclass at IMI on September 30th. If you are interested in attending click here to register.
