The Culture Map

I've returned to this book many times. It was a recommendation from a Couchsurfing guest after we were discussing our cultural differences. It's an amazing insight into how to interpret different people from different cultures and how to successfully communicate across cultures. I only wish I would have known about this book when I was managing teams across continents.

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.

Get this book even if you're in no managing position nor you wish to be. It'll help you navigate people.

We are not just our personalities, we are also our cultures. And the way we communicate, evaluate, persuade, lead, decide, trust, disagree and schedule is most often cultural.

Some behaviours can be explained historically. People from Japan are high-context communicators, as the country was on lockdown for a long period where it perfected to talk to each other between the lines. Germans are sticklers for punctuality, as it was one of the first countries to industrialise and needed its workers to arrive on time for all their machines to synchronise. In Nigeria trust is build through relationships, because they can't rely on a functional legal system in case business contracts aren't honoured.

Coming from one culture to live and work in another - which on surface doesn't appear all that different - I can now see that certain differences I noted down to personality are in fact cultural. My Austrian education was principles-first, and I always feel a bit ungrounded when confronted with Canada's application-first approach. I communicate in super low-context and get frustrated if not all details are spelled out literally. My trust is given by appreciating someone's skills and reliability, while I don't see the need for relationship-building chit-chat. And I absolutely get frustrated if plans are broken and schedules are not kept :)

It's hard to acknowledge if one comes from a culture that's usually hanging out at the edge of the scales, but obviously - same as with personalities - there are upsides and downsides to all types of behaviour. And major conflict emerges from the friction when different cultures clash, which happens more often now, as the world becomes more and more global.

Super fascinating!