Each of the following chapters is devoted to one of the eight culture map scales.

the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work. This is especially true as more and more of us communicate daily with people in other countries over virtual media like e-mail or telephone.

as an adult I fell deeply in love with the thrill of being surrounded by people who see the world in dramatically different ways from me.

In low-context cultures, effective communication must be simple, clear, and explicit in order to effectively pass the message, and most communicators will obey this requirement, usually without being fully conscious of it. The United States is the lowest-context culture in the world, followed by Canada and Australia, the Netherlands and Germany, an

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

Some cultures that are low-context and explicit may be cryptically indirect with negative criticism, while other cultures that speak between the lines may be explicit, straight talkers when telling you what you did wrong.

You may be considered a top-flight communicator in your home culture, but what works at home may not work so well with people from other cultures.

One interesting quirk is that in high-context cultures, the more educated and sophisticated you are, the greater your ability to both speak and listen with an understanding of implicit, layered messages. By contrast, in low-context cultures, the most educated and sophisticated business people are those who communicate in a clear, explicit way.

in countries like the United States or Switzerland, “business is business.” In countries like China or Brazil, “business is personal.”