The Culture Map

When interacting with someone from another culture, try to watch more, listen more, and speak less. Listen before you speak and learn before you act.

You have two eyes, two ears, but only one mouth. You should use them accordingly.

By contrast, the United States, a country with a mere few hundred years of shared history, has been shaped by enormous inflows of immigrants from various countries around the world, all with different histories, different languages, and different backgrounds. Because they had little shared context, Americans learned quickly that if they wanted to p

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.

The culture sets a range, and within that range each individual makes a choice. It is not a question of culture or personality, but of culture and personality.

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 homogeneous population and thousands of years of shared history, during a sign

“One British colleague told me that, if my e-mail doesn’t fit on the screen of an iPhone, it risks not getting read,” Baron laughs. “That’s the test I use now before I send out my e-mail.”

Cultural patterns of behavior and belief frequently impact our perceptions (what we see), cognitions (what we think), and actions (what we do). The goal of this book is to help you improve your ability to decode these three facets of culture and to enhance your effectiveness in dealing with them.

There is just one easy strategy to remember: Multicultural teams need low-context processes.