The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

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At the heart of Erin Meyer’s exceptional book, “The Culture Map,” is an “eight-scale model” which should help managers and leaders of culturally diverse teams improve their effectiveness by offering them a platform to analyze the positioning of one culture relative to another and, thus, correctly decode the meaning of some actions and gestures. We’ve previously suggested reading business/leadership books from the country you’ll be working with. These 8 categories of cultural differences have helped us in the way we train companies, employees, and lead our personal lives.

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. The persuasion scale tells us how people are inclined to reasoning to successfully understand and commence a task.In The Culture Map, cultural communications expert Erin Meyer presents a framework you can use to analyze how cultures differ from yours as well as practical strategies to mitigate any cultural misunderstandings. Some of her favorites include Thinking, Fast and Slow, How We Decide, and The Wisdom of the Enneagram. A Harvard Business Review article points out that negative feedback improves your argument, especially when it comes from different fields: You’re forced to adjust and clarify your idea, which strengthens it. While visual learners may find this helpful, it’s not necessary, and may be visually confusing, to draw a line connecting all the axes. So to disagree openly with someone is to suggest they’re not being true to their prescribed role and is thus far more taboo.

Leadership Journeys [128] – Marjukka Niinioja –“I had to learn to stop myself from speaking to listen more. Decision making impacts every step of the business strategy and the processes ensuring that those strategies are properly implemented. In exchange for obedience, the boss protects and cares for her employees—especially in Asian cultures. Unless we know how to… avoid easy-to-fall-into cultural traps, we are easy prey to misunderstanding, needless conflict, and ultimate failure. Countries such as Japan and Korea are high-context cultures mainly due to the homogeneity in population.With applications-first reasoning (or inductive) reasoning, general conclusions are based on a pattern of factual observations from the real world. Someone from a high-context culture might accuse a low-context speaker of being too direct, whereas a low-context listener might often wonder if the high-context speaker will ever get to the point! However, when working with high-context cultures its important to be able to read between the lines and to reflect on what is being said and more importantly what is not being said. A common assumption about Asians is that they are vague when giving an opinion and take ages to get to the point. Flexible schedules – Cultures such as Kenya and Saudi Arabia are flexible where timelines are concerned and believe in multi-tasking.