The Culture Map - Erin Meyer - Italian Subs

Summary

In this insightful talk, Aaron Meyer, a professor at INSEAD and author of 'The Culture Map,' explores the impact of cultural differences on global business communication. He discusses the complexities of navigating low-context and high-context cultures, the varying approaches to giving and receiving negative feedback across cultures, and the significance of silence in different cultural contexts. Meyer emphasizes the need for global teams to adopt low-context processes to bridge communication gaps and shares personal experiences to illustrate cultural misunderstandings, offering practical advice for improving cross-cultural interactions.

Takeaways

• 🌍 Understanding cultural differences is crucial for global business success, as what is considered good business and common sense varies across cultures.
• 💡 Global leaders must navigate complexities such as when to speak, the role of leadership, and the most constructive ways to give negative feedback.
• 🇨🇳 A Chinese employee, Bo, in London faced challenges due to cultural differences in communication, leading to misinterpretations by his British colleagues.
• 🇫🇷 A French woman, Sabine, experienced difficulties adapting to the American workplace, leading to a perception of lack of effort from her American boss.
• 🌐 Cultural decoding involves recognizing how decisions are made and trust is built differently around the world.
• 📊 Culture mapping is a system developed to help understand and decode cultural differences by analyzing various scales and dimensions.
• 🔍 Individual and regional variances exist within every culture, so generalizations should be taken with caution.
• 📝 Low-context cultures value explicit, simple, and clear communication, while high-context cultures rely on more implicit and nuanced communication.
• 🔄 Global teams benefit from low-context processes to mitigate communication challenges between diverse cultural backgrounds.
• ⏰ Perceptions of silence and the meaning behind it differ significantly across cultures, affecting communication and understanding in a global context.
• 🤝 Adapting communication styles and being aware of cultural feedback preferences are essential for effective cross-cultural collaboration.

Q & A

What is the main focus of Aaron Meyer's work?

Aaron Meyer focuses on how the world's most successful global leaders navigate cultural complexities and differences in the business environment.

What is the significance of cultural differences in a global business context?

Cultural differences significantly impact how we understand one another and ultimately affect how we get the job done in a global business setting.

What is the term used to describe the ability to understand and navigate cultural nuances?

The term used is 'cultural mapping,' which involves breaking down culture into different scales and examining how decisions are made and trust is built differently around the world.

How does Aaron Meyer's background influence his perspective on cultural differences?

Aaron Meyer's background of being raised in a monocultural environment in Minnesota and later living in various countries, including Paris for 15 years, has given him firsthand experience of cultural differences and their impact on business.

What is the main challenge faced by Bo Bo Chen, the Chinese client mentioned in the script?

Bo Bo Chen's main challenge was adapting to the cultural expectations in a British business environment, where he initially did not speak up in meetings, leading his colleagues to perceive him as having nothing to add.

What was the misunderstanding between Sabine and her American boss, John?

The misunderstanding was that John expected Sabine to adapt her style to the American context and make changes he suggested, but Sabine felt she was doing well and had received a positive performance review, indicating a cultural difference in feedback and expectations.

What are low-context and high-context cultures?

Low-context cultures assume a low level of shared reference points and value explicit, simple, and clear communication. High-context cultures assume a larger body of shared reference points and value sophisticated, nuanced, or implicit communication.

How do cultural differences in feedback styles affect international teams?

Cultural differences in feedback styles can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Direct cultures may use 'upgraders' to strengthen negative messages, while indirect cultures use 'downgraders' to soften the feedback. This can result in team members feeling insulted, untrusted, or mislead, depending on their cultural backgrounds.

What is the significance of silence in different cultures?

In some cultures, silence is perceived negatively, indicating discomfort or a need to fill the gap with speech. In high-context cultures, silence might be seen as a sign of thoughtful listening or careful consideration before responding. The comfort level with silence varies across cultures and can affect communication in global teams.

How can global teams effectively communicate across cultural differences?

Global teams need low-context processes, such as clear and written communication, recapping key points, and providing explicit feedback. Team leaders should also be aware of cultural preferences for silence and feedback styles to ensure all members have an opportunity to contribute effectively.

What resources does Aaron Meyer offer for further understanding of cultural differences?

Aaron Meyer offers tools on his website, aaronmeier.com, including a culture map for various countries and a self-assessment to help individuals understand their personal cultural map and determine if they are living in the right cultural context.

Outlines

00:00

🌍 Navigating Global Cultural Differences

This paragraph introduces Aaron Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, who focuses on how successful global leaders handle cultural complexities. It discusses the importance of understanding cultural variations in business practices and common sense, such as attitudes towards speaking up or staying quiet, leadership roles, and constructive feedback. Meyer shares anecdotes about a Chinese client, Bo, and a French woman, Sabine, who faced challenges in London and Chicago due to cultural misunderstandings.

05:01

🗺️ Cultural Mapping: Decoding Differences

Aaron Meyer explains his concept of 'cultural mapping,' a system that breaks down cultural differences into scales to understand how decisions are made and trust is built worldwide. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing individual and regional variances within cultures and introduces the idea of dimensions that help in mapping out cultural differences, such as the French and Brazilian business cultures.

10:02

💬 Low vs. High Context Communication

This section delves into the concepts of low and high context communication, defining them and providing examples from various cultures. In low context cultures, communication is explicit, simple, and clear, while high context cultures rely on more nuanced and implicit communication. Meyer discusses the impact of these differences on international interactions and provides examples from German, French, Japanese, and Nigerian cultures to illustrate the point.

15:03

🚫 Giving Negative Feedback Across Cultures

The paragraph discusses the varying ways different cultures give negative feedback or criticism. It contrasts the direct approach of the Dutch with the more indirect approach of the British, highlighting the misunderstandings that can arise from these cultural differences. Meyer also touches on the impact of education systems on feedback styles, drawing from his personal experience with his children's schooling in France and the US.

20:05

🔇 Interpreting Silence in Global Teams

This section explores the different meanings and comfort levels with silence across cultures. Meyer explains how cultures with a high comfort with silence, like Japan and China, perceive it differently from those with low comfort, like the US and France. He shares his experience with Bo, who struggled to find his moment to speak in meetings due to cultural differences in dialogue patterns. Meyer emphasizes the importance of understanding and accommodating these differences in global team leadership.

Keywords

💡Cultural Differences

Cultural differences refer to the variations in beliefs, practices, and social behaviors that exist among different cultures. In the video, these differences significantly impact global leaders' effectiveness, as they navigate through complexities such as varying attitudes on communication and leadership. For example, the Chinese client, Bo, and the French woman, Sabine, both experience challenges due to cultural misunderstandings in their respective international work environments.

💡Global Leadership

Global leadership involves the ability to lead and manage effectively in a multicultural and international context. The video emphasizes the importance of understanding cultural nuances to succeed as a global leader. Aaron Meyer, the speaker, focuses on how successful global leaders adapt to and decode cultural complexities, which is crucial for effective cross-cultural communication and collaboration.

💡Communication Styles

Communication styles refer to the various ways in which people from different cultures express themselves, share information, and convey messages. The video discusses low-context and high-context communication, highlighting the need for clarity and explicitness in low-context cultures like the United States, versus the more implicit and nuanced communication preferred in high-context cultures such as Japan.

💡Cultural Decoding

Cultural decoding is the process of understanding and interpreting the underlying meanings, norms, and values of different cultures. In the video, the ability to decode cultures is essential for navigating cultural differences effectively. It is a skill that global leaders must develop to understand and be understood by colleagues and clients from diverse cultural backgrounds.

💡Feedback and Criticism

Feedback and criticism refer to the responses or evaluations given regarding someone's performance or work. The video discusses the varying approaches to giving negative feedback across cultures, with direct cultures like the Netherlands using more straightforward language and indirect cultures like the UK employing more softened phrases. Understanding these differences is crucial to avoid miscommunication and maintain positive working relationships.

💡Silence in Communication

Silence in communication is the use or interpretation of pauses and quiet periods in a conversation. The video explains that different cultures attribute different meanings to silence, with some viewing it as a sign of active listening or careful consideration, while others may see it as a sign of discomfort or disinterest. Managing expectations and understanding the cultural implications of silence is important for effective cross-cultural communication.

💡Cultural Mapping

Cultural mapping is a system developed by Aaron Meyer that breaks down cultural differences into various scales to help individuals understand and decode the complexities of different cultures. The video describes how this tool can be used to analyze decision-making, trust-building, and communication styles across the world, providing a framework for individuals to better navigate cultural differences in a global context.

💡Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are formal assessments of an employee's work performance over a certain period. In the video, the concept is used to illustrate cultural differences in feedback, where the French expatriate, Sabine, misinterprets her American boss's feedback due to cultural differences in the expression and interpretation of criticism. This highlights the importance of understanding cultural norms when giving and receiving feedback in a global workplace.

💡Low-Context and High-Context Cultures

Low-context and high-context cultures refer to the degree to which communication relies on explicit verbal messages (low-context) or shared unspoken understanding and implicit communication (high-context). The video uses these concepts to explain the challenges faced by individuals like Bo, the Chinese client, who comes from a high-context culture and finds it difficult to communicate in a low-context culture like the UK.

💡Global Teams

Global teams are groups of individuals from different countries and cultural backgrounds working together towards a common goal. The video emphasizes the need for global teams to adopt low-context processes to ensure effective communication and collaboration. This is because the complexities of high-context communication can lead to misunderstandings and inefficiencies in a team setting.

💡Cultural Adaptation

Cultural adaptation refers to the process of adjusting one's behavior, communication style, and work habits to fit into a new cultural environment. The video discusses the experiences of individuals like Sabine, who had to adapt her style to the American context when she moved to Chicago. Successful cultural adaptation is crucial for personal and professional success in an international setting.

Highlights

Global success requires decoding cultures foreign to our own, even within our local environment.

Cultural differences have a tremendous impact on how we understand one another and how we accomplish tasks.

Aaron Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, has developed a system called 'culture mapping' to help decode cultural differences.

The story of Bo Bo Chen, a Chinese employee in London, illustrates the challenges of cultural communication.

Cultural nuances, such as when to speak or stay quiet, and how to give negative feedback, vary greatly across cultures.

The concept of 'low context' and 'high context' cultures explains the level of shared reference points assumed during communication.

High context cultures rely on more implicit, nuanced communication, while low context cultures prefer explicit and clear communication.

The importance of understanding cultural differences in feedback is highlighted by the contrasting experiences of a British and a Dutch colleague.

Cultural comfort with silence varies, affecting how individuals from different cultures perceive and participate in meetings.

Leading global teams requires an understanding of cultural differences and the implementation of low context processes.

The use of 'upgraders' and 'downgraders' in feedback differs between cultures, influencing how criticism is delivered and received.

Cultural differences start from an early age, as seen in the contrasting educational feedback systems of France and the United States.

Aaron Meyer's book 'The Culture Map' provides tools for understanding and navigating cultural complexities in a globalized business environment.

Cultural awareness is crucial for effective communication and collaboration in diverse teams.

Aaron Meyer's research and tools are available on his website for further exploration of cultural mapping.

Understanding cultural differences is not only about communication but also about building trust and making decisions in a multicultural world.

Transcripts

no matter your church or organization

success in our world requires the skills

to decode cultures foreign to our own

and maneuver cultural differences even

in our own backyard

as a professor at insaan one of the

world's leading business schools in

france

aaron meyer has spent years focusing on

how the world's most successful global

leaders navigate these kinds of

complexities

whether we are aware of it or not there

are complex variations in what is

considered good business and common

sense from one culture to another

whether it is attitudes concerning when

best to speak or stay quiet

the role of the leader in the room or

what kind of negative feedback is most

constructive

these differences have a tremendous

impact on how we understand one another

and ultimately on how we get the job

done winner of the 2015

thinkers 50 radar award frequent

contributor to harvard business review

and author of the culture map let's

welcome

aaron meyer to the summit

so we are here to talk about how

cultural differences

impact our effectiveness when we're

working internationally

and i'm going to start by giving you two

examples about my

own clients and how they struggled with

this topic

so the first one is about a chinese

client that i worked with

his name was bo bo chen and bo was

living in beijing and for the first time

he was hired by a company outside of

china he was hired by a company

in london he was really excited he was

hired because he had

excellent english he was very

extroverted

and when he got the first opportunity to

come to a meeting in london

he prepared he prepared the entire

trip from beijing to london then he

arrived he greeted all of his

british colleagues he said thank you

very much for having invited me

but then during the actual meeting bo

said nothing at all at the end of the

meeting he got up again he shook hands

again with his colleagues

and then as he was leaving the room he

accidentally overheard

one of his british colleagues saying to

another colleague well

certainly seems like bo has nothing to

add

right okay that's your first situation

we'll come back to it later

the second situation about is about a

french woman i worked with her name was

sabine

when i worked with sabine she was living

in paris

but she was just about to be expatriated

here she was moving to chicago so i

spent some time with her before she

moved

helping her think about how she might

adapt her style to this american context

and then after she'd been in chicago for

four months

i did a pre-scheduled follow-up call

first with her new american boss

john and i asked john how are things

going for sabine

he said to me erin it's not going well

he said the problem is that i've spoken

with sabine

about these things she needs to change

several times i've seen

zero effort on her part to make these

changes

he said you know if she doesn't start

working on this soon

i don't think this expatriation is gonna

work out i did he told me

have my first performance review with

sabine last week and i was again

very clear with her so i'm hoping to see

some effort soon so i got off the phone

with john

with john and i called sabine and i said

how are things going in the u.s

and sabine said to me they are going

great

she said you know erin for the first

time i found a job

that takes advantage of all of my

talents she said you know erin i have to

tell you

i had my first performance review with

my new boss last week

the best performance review i've had in

my career

right okay now these two individuals

both had cultural differences

impact their effectiveness without even

knowing it so we're going to come back

to these guys a little bit later all

right

now let me just introduce myself a

little bit before we get into this topic

some more so

my situation is a little bit the

opposite of sabine's

i think you could tell that i'm american

i was raised in minnesota in a very

monocultural place

but now as an adult i've been living in

many other countries

in southeast asia and in southern africa

and i've lived now in paris for 15 years

so

my husband is french and this is

actually true my two boys

logan and ethan uh just told me last

weekend that they are french

which is quite unsettling for a mother

right when you hear that your children

are a different culture than you are

so i have been studying how cultural

differences are impacting business

and what i've been doing is working on a

system for helping people

kind of decode these cultural

differences and i call this culture

mapping so i have this system that

breaks culture

down into these different scales and we

look at how decisions are made

differently in different parts of the

world

we look at how we build trust

differently in different world regions

and then through lots of research we

have countries that are positioned

up and down these scales so those uh

little uh those little balls there just

represent countries

and what's interesting is that as you

start to put the dimensions together

you can start to do this kind of culture

mapping so here for example i just

mapped out french business culture for

you and brazilian business culture

what i wanted to do with you today is to

focus on

three dimensions that really look at

what it means to be

a good communicator in different

countries

and then afterwards i'll give you some

opportunities to learn more about the

other dimensions if you like

okay um so in order to get started with

this i need to mention

two things the first is that of course

when you look at the country positions

i know they look to be very precise

but please keep in mind that of course

in every culture we have

quite a bit of variance a individual

variant so i mean if you were doing

research with me

in australia we might find that some

australians are falling

out to the left of this uh this curve

uh sorry i'm getting a little lost here

um to the left of this to the left of

this gray curve some to the right and

then we would get to the

the australian positioning if we were

doing research in kenya

we might find that some kenyans are

falling to the left of the yellow curve

some to the right of the yellow curve

and then we would have the kenyan

positioning

so just keep in mind that of course

although the country looks very specific

that there's always individual regional

or generational variants within a

country right

okay the other thing i need to point out

before we start looking at the research

is that when you look at the countries

don't think about the absolute positions

of them

only consider the relative difference so

to give you an example of this

i was working a while ago with a team

and at the beginning i had just

americans and french on the team and i

asked the americans

what's it like to work with the french

and the americans said to me well aaron

you know the french they said they're

very chaotic

they're very disorganized they're always

late

they're always changing the topic it's

very difficult to follow them

a little bit later i had a group from

india that joined the same team

and i asked the indians you know how's

it going working on this french team

and the indians said to me well aaron

you know

the french they're very rigid they're

very

inadaptable they're so focused on the

structure and punctuality of things

that they're not able you know to adapt

as things

change around them and that's linked to

what i call this time orientation scale

where you can see on the scheduling

scale that france falls between

the us and india which then leads to

these opposite perceptions

i gave the same example in germany a

little while ago

and one of the germans said you know

aaron this is a funny example for

us because we the germans in this room

we work frequently with americans and we

are always

complaining that the americans are

exactly the same way

that you've just described that the

americans complain about the french

right

so that's how these dimensions work it's

not about what is that culture

like it's about how do cultures respond

to or

understand one another okay so with that

i would love to get started

with our first dimension and i want to

talk with you

about these terms low versus high

context communication

and uh just start by saying that in a

low condex culture

when we communicate we assume

or consider that we have a low

level of shared reference points

so in a low condex culture when we're

communicating we feel

that we don't have the same relationship

or information or

context and because we assume a low

level of shared context

in these cultures we believe that good

effective

professional communication is a

communication that's very

explicit it's very simple and very clear

in a low context culture i believe if i

want you to understand blue

i have to say blue in a low context

culture i'm taught

that if i give a presentation i should

tell you what i'm going to tell you

and then i tell you and then i tell you

what i've told you right

why do i tell you the same thing three

times because everything is about the

simplicity and the clarity

of the message now in a high context

culture while we're communicating

we assume that we have a much larger

body

of shared reference points and because

we have all of the shared context

in these cultures we believe that good

effective professional communication

is much more sophisticated is more

nuanced or implicit or layered i teach

in two languages

english and in french and there are

these words in the french language

that mean high context we don't even

have these words in english

there's this word suzonton do and

means when i speak don't listen to my

words

listen to the meaning behind my words

so it's not what i said that matters

it's what i

meant that matters in uh

in japanese so

the japanese culture is the highest

context culture in the world

in japanese there is an expression which

is kooky

yomenai and the expression means someone

who is

unable to read the atmosphere

or someone who is unable to pick up

the subtle messages in the air so in

japan a good communicator

can really pick up all of those subtle

unspoken messages

and a good uh poor communicator is kooky

yeomani right

okay so now i just like to start by

looking at some of these countries with

you

and you can just see as you look up here

first of all the

colors don't mean anything i just have

for example different regions and

different colors but

you can see when you look up here that

all of the anglo-saxon countries

fall to the left-hand side of this scale

the u.s

the lowest context country in the world

right

um then if we move over you could see

that we have many latin countries and

mediterranean countries

that fall kind of mid-right on the scale

and then further over you would find

many african countries and even further

many

asian countries and partially this is

linked to language so

many asian languages are very high

context in themselves

for example in hindi the word

kul means both tomorrow

and yesterday so you see that in the

language you have to

constantly be reading the air to

understand what the word

means right then i just like to get you

to think about

how this impacts an interaction i had a

german who said to me you know aaron

in germany at the end of a meeting we

almost

always do a recap right first we do a

verbal recap

and then we do a written recap and then

we send that out

right he said now that i've been working

in france

often at the end of a meeting i'll get

ready to do that recap

and my french colleagues will just stand

up

and someone will say a voila

and i'll think to myself but voila what

and i'll be so surprised to see

that it just seems that people know

what's been decided

they understand who's supposed to do

what without going through all of those

levels of clarity that i'm so used to so

one thing you can take away from this

is that in low condex cultures we tend

to nail things down

in writing more frequently than in high

condex cultures

where we leave everything open for

verbal interpretation

right a second example i was in china

last year

working with a multinational american

company and before i worked with them

the chairman of the company who was from

new york city

gave a presentation afterwards he left

i was talking about this with his

employees

the human resource director from

shanghai

raised his hand and he said you know

aaron this is really

interesting for me because the whole

time the chairman was talking

i was trying to make sure that i was

listening with

all of my senses that i was picking up

all of the levels of

meaning that the chairman was trying to

pass

and now that i'm looking at this i'm

asking myself

is it possible that there was no

meaning

and i thought to myself that that

chairman

would have been very surprised to know

that anybody

was trying to read the air

beyond his literal words right

now my third example is about parenting

i had this nigerian woman who said to me

a few weeks ago she said in nigeria

we raise our children to be high context

she said

you know if i have people over for

dinner and my daughter says to me

mom can i have another sweet i will say

to her

of course you can but she knows

by the look in my eye that i bet she

better not touch that sweet

and you know i just

thought about how i raise my children

and you know i learned this system from

an american parenting book

i have sat down with logan who's seven

years old right

and we made a list of all of the rules

we typed them out

and we posted them on the refrigerator

and i'll say to logan you know no you

can't do that

and he'll say well mom that's not fair

it's not written on the refrigerator

so you can see already at age seven

that one child is learning to read the

messages

in the air and the other child is

learning the most important message

is the one that's written down right and

put on the refrigerator

okay so um what i'd like to do now

is just get you to think about how

people complain about one another

when they're working internationally low

context people they say that high

context people are lacking transparency

that they're hiding information they're

secretive

high context people say that low context

people are condescending

they talk to us like we're children

either they're not very smart or they

think we're not very smart

i had someone from indonesia in my class

who said you know aaron

in my culture if we have a discussion

and we

on the phone and we make some decisions

verbally

that would be enough for me and then if

you get off of the phone and you put

into writing

everything we've decided and you send

that to me

that would be a clear sign to me that

you don't

trust me so a lot of people are having

these reactions going back and forth

without really knowing what's behind it

and if you think about what is behind it

i mean just think about the history of

the us

the lowest context culture in the world

and japan the highest context culture in

the world

in japan an island society

a homogeneous population people living

in

very close proximity for thousands of

years

the japanese just got to the point that

they could read the atmosphere

in the u.s 250 years ago

people moving from all over the place

having different histories different

backgrounds

americans learned if you want to pass a

message

you really have to simplify that message

to the lowest common denominator

right so that brings me to my first

conclusion

which is global teams need

low context processes and that's because

when you're communicating across

cultures the most difficulty happens

not between one low context culture and

another low context culture

like americans working with japanese

sorry americans working with germans

not between one low condex culture and a

high context culture

like americans working with japanese but

between one

high context culture and another high

context culture

like the french working with the chinese

because we're

all speaking between the lines we're all

reading the air

but the context that we use for that

communication is very different

okay we finished our just about finished

our first dimension

but i need to do something very

important for me as an american before i

move on

which is tell you what i've told you so

let me just start by doing that now

could you go back please so

the first thing that we got already is

global teams need low context processes

fine uh beyond that if you're working

with low context people go ahead and be

as clear as you can put it in writing

recap

three times now that's fine but what if

you're working with a higher context

culture

in that case you might repeat yourself

less

you might ask a lot of clarifying

questions and you might

focus on increasing your ability to read

the atmosphere and i'm going to give you

one last example

so this is a humiliating example for me

but i will share it with you for the

good of the group

so the situation was that i finished

writing my book

in the culture map in may 2014 and i was

feeling

really proud of myself like i'd really

accomplished something

and i then took a trip to japan

and i gave a presentation to a small

group of japanese

and at the end i asked if there were any

questions

and no one raised their hand so i went

to sit down

my japanese colleague then said to me

aaron i think there were some questions

do you mind if i try fine so then he

stood up and he said to the audience

aaron meyer has just spoken with you

do you have any questions no one raised

their hand

but this time he looked very carefully

at the group

yes do you have a question and the

person said yes

thank you i do and he asked a very

important question and then he did it

again

then he did it again he said are there

any other questions

and the person asked a very important

question so afterwards i said to him but

how did you

know that those people had questions and

he said to me well he thought about it

and then he said well it had to do with

how bright

their eyes were

and i thought to myself wow you know for

me

coming from minnesota like i do that's

really difficult

but then he clarified he said you know

aaron in japan we don't make as much

direct eye contact

as you do in the west so when you ask

the group if there are any questions

most people are not looking right at you

they're looking somewhere else

but there are these two people in the

group who were really looking right at

you

and their eyes were bright which

signifies they would be happy to have

you call on them if you would like to

okay so the next day i gave another

presentation

again i asked if there were any

questions again no one raised their hand

but this time i thought i would just try

so i did what he suggested you know i

looked carefully at the audience

and i saw immediately that he was right

that most people were not looking

directly at me and as i looked at them

carefully

i saw that there was this one woman in

the room who was really looking right in

my

eyes and when i looked at her she held

my gaze

now were her eyes bright

i don't know

but i wanted to try so i made a little

bit of a gesture to her

and she nodded her head and i said do

you have a question

and she said thank you and she asked a

very important question

it was such an important learning

experience for me

because imagine at the school i teach

i have people from all over the world in

my classes

every single day can you imagine i had

all of these bright eyes

that i was entirely missing so we need

to constantly be working on these things

right okay now i want to move on to our

second dimension

which is one that looks at how we give

negative

feedback or criticism in different parts

of the world and

um i'm just gonna start by giving you an

example about a client that i worked

with i had this british guy

who was working on a team with this guy

from the netherlands

and the british guy wrote a report and

he sent it to the dutch guy for feedback

and when the dutch person received the

report he thought it was horrible

he thought there's no way that we can

send this to the client like this

so when the dutch person called up the

british person he had the value system

of the importance of

honesty that drove the way he gave the

feedback and he said you know

i read through your report and there's

no way that we can send this to the

client like this

he said the introduction is weak but

here are some things we could do

in order to improve the introduction he

said there's a lack of logic flow in the

middle of the report

but here are some things we could do in

order to improve that logic flow

a number of grammatical errors that i've

circled here

for you and as he went through that

feedback the british person was taking

this feedback really emotionally

he was thinking this person is an

arrogant jerk

and he doesn't seem to like me very much

he thought this is the last time

that i'm going to ask that person for

feedback now if you imagine the tables

turn and in the second situation it's

exactly the opposite

this time the dutch guy writes the

report he sends it to the british person

who thinks it's horrible

who thinks about how to improve it but

when the british person

calls up the dutch person he gives the

feedback in a different way

so he starts by saying you know i read

through your report and there were a

number of things about the report that i

thought were good

so this section i thought was very well

written this is what i liked about it

this section here i thought was very

well researched this is what i liked

now if you wanted to make some changes i

have just a few small suggestions for

you

so i was thinking that the introduction

to this report could be even

stronger with just some small

modifications

in the middle of the report could have a

very powerful

impact with some minor adaptations

there's some very small grammatical

errors no problem at all

i just cleaned those right up right

overall fine

now when the dutch person got this

report this feedback

he took it at face value he thought the

report's pretty good

i'll spend three minutes making a few

small changes and then he sent it out to

the client

and then he found out a week later from

someone else that that british person

didn't like the report and now he

thought this guy

is a hypocrite right you can't trust him

he lied to me

he thought this is the last time that

i'm going to ask this person for

feedback

so when you think about what it means to

be to give constructive feedback please

recognize that that's different from one

part of the world

to another now when you look at the

country positions here

you'll see that some countries have

shifted

from being to the right hand side on the

last

scale to the so they're high context

cultures

to the left-hand side of this scale so

these are cultures so these are

high context direct cultures those are

cultures

where we speak between the lines a lot

we read

the air a lot but if it comes

to giving a negative message we're much

more likely to use what i call

upgraders which are words that make the

negative message

feel stronger such as this is absolutely

inappropriate

or this is totally unacceptable in more

indirect cultures we use more

downgraders like you might possibly

think about doing this a little bit

differently maybe right

now another thing you might notice is

that some of the countries have shifted

from being low context

to more middle on this scale so the us

the lowest context culture in the world

very focused on recapping key points

putting things in writing

clear as possible in all situations

except when it comes to giving negative

feedback

and at that moment americans have been

taught to give three positives with

every negative

to catch people doing things right now

to do positive anchoring

which means if i have to tell you your

messages your work is not okay

i should start by telling you what i

like about your work which shows respect

before i tell you what to do differently

and i think now you can understand what

happened

to poor sabine i mean sabine who comes

from a country

france where positive feedback is given

less frequently

and less strongly negative feedback is

given

more strongly so when she went into that

performance review with john

and john started by giving her those

three positives

she thought to herself wow this is the

best performance review i've ever

received when he got to the real message

she wasn't even listening anymore

now i also wanted to make a quick

comment here as you're looking at the us

and france

about our education systems which is of

course where this all starts and

i told you i have these two little boys

uh ethan and logan and

i brought them this so they were born in

france they've always lived in france

i brought them this summer to minnesota

they're there right now

to minnesota so that they could learn

how to read and write in

english and i just see the way they're

bathed

differently so in the u.s

when ethan comes home from school he

shows me his paper

and his american teachers have written

things like

excellent work exclamation mark they put

stars and smiley faces

fantastic right and like when he doesn't

do well they write things like you're

almost there

a little more effort you're on your way

and i can tell you

it is not like this in france so in

france when ethan takes this

davis dictation test on monday all week

long he prepares

it gets to be monday he takes the test

he comes home he shows me the paper

there's always red marks all over it and

the teacher will have written things

like

applique exclamation mark which means

apply yourself

or she will have written n a which means

skills not

acquired and when i see this research it

hurts me

i think oh he's going to lose his

self-esteem he's not going to want to go

to school anymore

but i'm the one having culture shock you

know

ethan he understands the feedback in the

context it's received

mom what's the big deal i had the fifth

best paper in the class

right so i know you're not managing

nine-year-olds

but i do believe that this uh this

feedback teaches us to have a

tougher skin or a more sensitive skin

later on

in life okay i'd like to we went through

these first two scales already

i'd like to wrap up now quickly with our

third scale

by going back to the first situation we

started with

which was beauche okay so you remember

beau right he'd done all this

preparation and he didn't say

anything in this meeting and when i

worked with bo

he was suffering at least partially

from this dimension that looks at what

silence

means in different parts of the world

and i'll just

imagine that you ask me a question

and i'm silent for a few seconds what

does that silence

indicate in your tribe if you come from

a country

like the us france the uk

brazil you might think that silence

means something

very negative like maybe you'll think

that i'm angry

or i hadn't understood you i'm

uncomfortable

you'll respond by filling up that

silence by asking another question

or answering the question yourself right

if we come from a high comfort with

silence

culture like japan indonesia

vocen's china you might perceive that

same silence

as something very positive like that i'm

a good listener

or i'm thinking carefully before i give

a response or it might suggest

nothing at all there was i've seen in my

own work that americans become

uncomfortable with silence

around the two to two and a half second

mark in a dialogue

and this same research shows that the

chinese can easily go up

to seven or eight seconds of silence

without feeling that anything unusual

is happening and if you just think about

what that means for a discussion

in some cultures one person talks and

another person talks at the same time

right in these cultures if we talk

simultaneously

it shows i'm very passionate we have a

great relationship

everything's going well in i'll put in

that first category i would put latin

cultures mediterranean cultures

arabic cultures some african cultures

the second pattern

these are what we call perfect timing

cultures in these cultures we talk like

we play ping pong

that we don't like overlap and we don't

like

silence and i would put anglo-saxon

countries including the us

as well as germanic cultures into this

pattern

and the third pattern is one that looks

more like this where one person might

speak and then there's a pause before

the next person responds and

i think you could i would put all east

asian countries

into this third pattern so you can see

now what happened

to poor beau chen right if you have

people from all three of these cultures

working together

the third group loses because they're

waiting for that

moment to speak that never comes

right when i worked with bo he said you

know i'm so

frustrated aaron i go to these meetings

i'm all prepared

no one ever gives me a moment to speak

right

we can work on that when we're leading a

global team by inviting people to speak

giving them a clear moment recognizing

that

we are responsible for giving everyone

the opportunity

okay i am going to wrap up now i know we

only got to go through three dimensions

today but if you're interested in this

topic you can go to my website

and i actually have a couple of

aaronmeier.com and i have

have a couple of little tools you can

play with they're just free tools

but one of them you can click on up to

55 countries

and you can get the culture maps of

whatever countries you might be working

or living with

and the second one is a short

self-assessment where you can

fill out some questions and get your own

personal map

and then you can find out if you are

living in the right country

okay it was a pleasure to work with you

thank you