The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
by Erin Meyer
30 popular highlights from this book
Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business:
“Trust is like insurance—it’s an investment you need to make up front, before the need arises.”
“When interacting with someone from another culture, try to watch more, listen more, and speak less.”
“Multicultural teams need low-context processes.”
“The Chinese manager learns never to criticize a colleague openly or in front of others, while the Dutch manager learns always to be honest and to give the message straight. Americans are trained to wrap positive messages around negative ones, while the French are trained to criticize passionately and provide positive feedback sparingly.”
“We have this word in German, Sachlichkeit, which is most closely translated in English as “objectivity.” With Sachlichkeit, we can separate someone’s opinions or idea from the person expressing that idea. A German debate is a demonstration of Sachlichkeit. When I say “I totally disagree,” I am debating Erin’s position, not disapproving of her. Since we were children, we Germans have learned to exercise Sachlichkeit. We believe a good debate brings more ideas and information than we could ever discover without disagreement. For us, an excellent way to determine the robustness of a proposal is to challenge it.”
“Millions of people work in global settings while viewing everything from their own cultural perspectives and assuming that all differences, controversy, and misunderstanding are rooted in personality. This is not due to laziness. Many well-intentioned people don’t educate themselves about cultural differences because they believe that if they focus on individual differences, that will be enough.”
“As she is the senior person in the room, I wait for her to call on me. And, while I am waiting, I should show I am a good listener by keeping both my voice and my body quiet. In China, we often feel Westerners speak up so much in meetings that they do this to show off, or they are poor listeners. Also, I have noticed that Chinese people leave a few more seconds of silence before jumping in than in the West. You Westerners practically speak on top of each other in a meeting.”
“There’s a wise Bahamian proverb: “To engage in conflict, one does not need to bring a knife that cuts, but a needle that sews.”
“In the Netherlands, we give feedback very directly, but we are always polite.” I love this comment, because a Dutch person’s feedback can indeed be both brutally honest yet delightfully polite—but only if the recipient is Dutch. If you happen to come from one of the 195 or so societies in the world that like their negative feedback a bit less direct than in the Netherlands, you may feel that Maarten’s “politeness” is downright insulting, offensive, and yes, rude.”
“One of the biggest mistakes lower-context managers make is assuming that the other individual is purposely omitting information or unable to communicate explicitly.”
“You may find that part of your personal style comes from the culture where you spent the first years of your life, another from the culture where you attended college and held your first job, another from your father’s culture, and still another from your mother’s culture.”
“Try seeing, feeling, and tasting the water you swim in the way a land animal might perceive it. You may find the experience fascinating -- and mind-expanding.”
“The way we are conditioned to see the world in our own culture seems so completely obvious and commonplace that it is difficult to image 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.”
“When Chinese vaguely express an idea or an opinion, the real message is often just implied. They expect their conversational partner to be highly involved and to take an active role in deciphering messages, as well as in mutually creating meaning. In Chinese culture, pang qiao ce ji [beating around the bush] is a style that nurtures an implicit understanding. In Chinese culture, children are taught not to just hear the explicit words but also to focus on how something is said, and on what is not said.”
“Today, whether we work in Düsseldorf or Dubai, Brasília 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.”
“The moral is clear. Presenting to Londoners or New Yorkers? Get to the point and stick to it. Presenting to French, Spaniards, or Germans? Spend more time setting the parameters and explaining the background before jumping to your conclusion.”
“If your business success relies on your ability to work successfully with people from around the world, you need to have an appreciation for cultural differences as well as respect for individual differences. Both are essential.”
“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.”
“•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: linear-time vs. flexible-time”
“This is where I learned the traditional American rule for successfully transferring a powerful message to an audience: tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you've told them. This is the philosophy of low context communication in a nutshell.”
“You may find yourself reacting defensively when you hear what others have said about the culture you call your own. It isn't true: my culture is not a bit like that. At the risk of pouring oil on the fire, allow me to repeat the familiar story of the two young fish who encounter an older fish swimming the opposite way. He nods at them and says, "Morning boys. How's the water?" Which prompts one of the young fish to ask the other, "what the hell is water?" When you are in and of culture, as fish are in the water, it is often difficult or even impossible to see that culture.”
“Speaking of cultural differences leads us to stereotype and therefore put individuals in boxes with general traits. Instead of talking about culture, it is important to judge people as individuals, not just products of their environment. At first, this argument sounds valid, even enlightened, of course, individuals no matter their cultural origins have varied personality traits. So why not just approach all people with an interest in getting to know them personally and proceed from there? Unfortunately, this point of view has kept thousands of people from learning what they need to know to meet their objectives. If you go into every interaction, assuming the culture doesn't matter, your default mechanism will be to view others through your own cultural lens and to judge or misjudge them accordingly.”
“This is the philosophy of low - context communication in a nutshell:Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them ,then tell them what you’ve told them.”
“There's a clear link between this cultural pattern and Germany's place in history as one of the first countries in the world to become heavily industrialized. Imagine being a factory worker in the German automative industry. If you arrive at work four minutes late, the machine for which you are responsible gets started late, which exacts a real, measurable financial cost. To this day, the perception of time in Germany is partially rooted in the early impact of the industrial revolution, where factory work required the labor force to be on hand and in place at a precisely appointed moment. In other societies -particularly in developing world- life centers around the fact of constant change. As political systems shift and financial systems alter, as traffic surges and wanes, as monsoons or water shortages raise unforeseeable challenges, the successful managers are those who have developed the ability to ride out the changes with ease and flexibility.”
“High context cultures tend to have a long shared history. Usually they are relationship-oriented societies where networks of connections are passed on from generation to generation, generating more shared context among community members. Japan is an island society with a homogenous population and thousands of years of shared history, during a significant portion of which Japan was closed off from the rest of the world. Over these thousands of years, people became particularly skilled at picking up each other's messages - reading the air.”
“In the United States and other Anglo-Saxon cultures, people are trained (mostly subconsciously) to communicate as literally and explicitly as possible. Good communication is all about clarity and explicitness, and accountability for accurate transmission of the message is placed firmly on the communicator: “If you don’t understand, it’s my fault.”
“Many British people are fond of delivering ironic or sarcastic jokes with a completely deadpan face. Unfortunately, this kind of humor is lost on many Americans; they may suspect the British person is joking but they don’t dare laugh, just in case he is not.”
“For a Dutchman, the word “excellent” is saved for a rare occasion and “okay” is . . . well, neutral. But with the Americans, the grid is different. “Excellent” is used all the time. “Okay” seems to mean “not okay.” “Good” is only a mild compliment.”
“the Russian saying “If we pass a stranger on the street who is smiling, we know with certainty that that person is crazy . . . or else American.”
“Presenting to Londoners or New Yorkers? Get to the point and stick to it. Presenting to French, Spaniards, or Germans? Spend more time setting the parameters and explaining the background before jumping to your conclusion.”
