071 Erin Meyer – Navigating the complexities between cultural differences

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Hello and welcome to the Rising Generation Leadership Podcast with myself, Errol Lawson, and our very special guest today is Erin Meyer. Erin is a professor at INSEAD, one of the leading international business schools. Her work focuses on how the world's most successful managers navigate the complexities of cultural differences in a global environment. She offers cutting-edge insight and practical strategies to improve the effectiveness of projects that span the globe. Erin, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you. Thank you, man. Erin, before we go into our interview today, just fill in any gaps, first of all, in your bio, if you will, please. And give us a glimpse into what you're up to in the world right now.

Well, maybe since I'm going to be talking about cultural differences, I'll just talk a little bit about my own kind of cultural, cultural journey. So as you can tell from my accent, I'm American. I was raised in the US. I was raised in a very monocultural place. I was raised in Minnesota, but I spent most of my adult life living outside of the US in Southern Africa and Southeast Asia. I've lived in Paris now for 17 years. So I'm married to a French person and my children have recently announced to me that they are French. So that's a little bit of my cross-cultural background as we get into this discussion.

Wow. Wow. Wow. And how did— how does your work— how does your— first of all, how did your faith play a role in your work? And what's been your journey to where you are right now?

Well, I, I think what's most important about understanding cultural differences is trying to see things from other people's perspective. And of course, when we work with people who come from cultures who are really different than our own, we may easily judge their behavior from our own cultural viewpoint. And all of my work has been trying to figure out how people from the other point of view understand the situation. And I'll give lots of examples of that today, but I think that that does have a big link to the church because, of course, if we want to understand anybody that we're working with, it's all about putting ourselves in other people's shoes.

Excellent. And I know you've been doing this work now for a long time, but, you know, just give us a bit of the background. Like, did you So, imagine you went through college, uni, you studied in the States?

I actually studied in the States for undergraduate and then I went into the Peace Corps, which is like a volunteer organization with the US government, and I taught students in Botswana for several years. Then I ran a program for immigrants and refugees in the US for a while, and then I got into the cross-cultural industry and I started studying this. I actually had an experience early on in my work that made me want to do this research on cultural differences. I'll just share it with you so you can get thinking about this topic. I was on a trip to Japan and I gave a short presentation to a small group of Japanese. At the end, I asked if there were any questions and my Japanese colleague who was traveling with me— I asked if there were any questions and the audience did not raise their hand. So I went to sit down. And then my Japanese colleague who was traveling with me said, Erin, I think there were some questions. Do you mind if I try? So then he stood up in front of the group and he said, Erin Meyer has just spoken with you. Do you have any questions? No one raised their hand. But this time he looked very carefully at this quiet, motionless audience. He studied them and then he gestured to one woman and he said, do you have a question? And she said, oh, thank you very much. Yes, I do. She asked a very important question. Then he did it several other times, pointing at people who were just sitting there quietly and motionless, saying, do you have a question? Oh, yes, I do. Afterwards, I said, how did you know that those people had questions? He thought about it and then he said, well, it had to do with how bright their eyes were. I thought, wow, for me coming from Minnesota like I do, that's really difficult. Then he clarified. He said, Erin, in Japan, we don't make as much eye contact as you do in the West. So when you ask the group if there were any questions, most people were not looking right at you. They were looking somewhere else. But a couple of people in the room were really looking right in your eyes, and their eyes were bright, which signifies they'd be happy to have you call on them if you would like to. So the next day I gave another presentation. Again, I asked if there were any questions, and again no one raised their hand. But this time I thought I'd just try. So I did what he suggested. You know, I just Quietly studied the audience, and I saw immediately that he was right, that most people in the room were not looking at me. And there was this one gentleman in the room who was really like in a very eager way looking right at my— in my eyes. Now, were his eyes bright? I don't know. But I made a little gesture and I said, you know, he kind of nodded his head and I said, do you have a question? And he said, yes, thank you. So that was a very interesting moment for me because it just got me thinking about how With globalization, that so many of us were needing to be effective communicating with people who came from such different cultures than we were. Yet if you're not from that culture, you don't have the cues to help you understand what's going on around you. And that made me really want to do research to see if there was a kind of a system that I could develop that would help people to better, you know, pick up these subtle cultural messages that were lurking in the air.

Wow. Wow. And I'm going to go into that a little bit more in a few minutes. But Erin, what was the— how did you know that this is what you were called to do, this line of work and service to people?

You know, that's an interesting question. What I can tell you is that I've never been interested in anything else. And what I mean by that is I'm a professor in the organizational behavior department at INSEAD, at the business school that I teach at. Cultural differences just fascinate me. I mean, there's nothing else that makes— that fascinates me like that. And my colleagues often tell me that it would be better for my career if I also learned to teach other things. They'd say, well, wouldn't Erin, you know, just branch out? You know, why don't you learn about teamwork, about, you know, general leadership? There's a lot of kind of general programs at INSEAD that all of the other organizational behavior professors teach, and I don't because my, my focus of research is quite specific, but I never— I have never had that level of passion for another subject. And I can't tell you— I can't tell you why.

That's great. So has there been like a significant epiphany, should I say, or a turning point on your journey where maybe you were heading in one direction, your leadership journey, An event happened or something happened, um, you got a revelation of some sort and it caused you to go in a different direction altogether. Can you tell us about a time like that?

Well, I think what's very interesting when you're studying cultural differences is that of course you're also studying yourself, right? Um, and when you get started, you don't know what about you is cultural, right? You know, you just know like who you are, right? But you don't know, you know, what's Erin and what's the culture that I come from. Right. So what was very interesting for me when I moved to France was to start to recognize how much of me was a product of my culture and then to try to make those changes. I mean, like, just to give you an example, so I mentioned earlier that my husband is French, and one thing that is very common in French culture is to have very strong debates and open disagreements. I had this experience when I first moved to France where I was invited to a French friend's house for dinner. During the dinner, the group got into what I thought was a huge fight with people raising their arms and everyone expressing their opinion with such emotional strength that I thought this was a disaster. Someone looked at me and said, well, Erin, what do you think? Absolutely no opinion. But then I saw that the group went on to change the subject. There were no hard feelings. And in fact, they all thought that this had been a great evening. So I began to realize that learning about cultural differences also meant that I needed to learn to be able to adapt my style to be very different working with different parts of the world. And as I travel the world a lot and I give presentations almost weekly in another country, I'm always trying to think about how can I adapt my style to be most effective to this group that I'm working with. And that was not something that was obvious to me at the beginning.

That's great. That's great. And then, you know, what's the lesson there for us, do you think, as leaders?

Well, I think the lesson, you know, people often say to me, if I'm leading in a multicultural environment, is it more important for me to be authentic or is it more important to be I think the answer to that question is it's most important to be both.

Good.

So when I talk about this concept of authentic flexibility, and authentic flexibility is like you might have one foot, like your left foot, that's really deeply rooted in the culture that you come from, and that's the most natural way of working for you, the most comfortable way. But the most effective global leaders are also continually working with their right foot to learn how how to adapt their style to the environment that they're working with to get the results that they need. Of course, if you're always working on developing your right foot, then you have a choice. You can choose, in this situation where I have someone from this totally different background than my own that I need to influence, I'm going to adapt my style to work their way to get the results that I need. Then another time, you know what, in this situation, I'm going to ask them to come to me. I think everyone can think of some I know somebody who leads in a global environment who's never worked on their right foot. They just have their own foot. The problem with those people is that they're stuck. They don't have a choice.

Absolutely.

I actually think that is the visual of global leadership, is someone who's worked enough on their flexibility that they know, when am I going to do it my way and when am I going to do it the other way?

That's great. And I think that relates to so many different areas of our life because so many of our cities today— I mean, I'm in Birmingham in the UK, which is the most multicultural city in the UK, some say Europe. And so that same mindset and thinking and philosophy applies to the person today who maybe they're listening and they're leading a church that they're trying to— for it to be a multicultural church environment and they're from a particular culture, that still applies in a family. I'm, I'm from— I'm British-born Jamaican. My wife is Nigerian-born Nigerian. And so we both have very different cultures. Yes. And straight away, you know, the same mentality, that flexible authenticity. I love that. I love that. Powerful stuff. You know, I know you've been doing this for a long time now, but what's, what's, what's been your biggest challenge in leadership so far? Tell us that story, if you will, please.

So of course, for me, what I lead is I lead classrooms. I lead classrooms and I lead audiences. And I think that one of the things that— speaking of authentic flexibility, one of the things that has been very challenging for me is that Americans— and I'll put myself into this category as an American— we talk a lot. And we don't like silence.

Right.

And when other people are speaking but their voice gets a little bit quiet, we jump in and we start talking.

Right.

And I've noticed— I mean, that style that is so natural to me is completely ineffective when you're leading a global classroom. Right. So what happens, of course, in a global classroom is that some nationalities, like Americans— I think British people also, Nigerians, you said your wife is Nigerian. Syrians like to talk too. French people, Italians, Dutch end up doing the dominating in the classroom because in those cultures people don't like a lot of silence. They're very comfortable just speaking without preparation and speaking without knowing what other people in the room think. Right. But at the— on the other hand extreme, I mean, we have lots of people from countries like Korea or Japan or Thailand who are in my classes who are less likely to speak unless they've really had, you know, some time to think through what they're going to say, they've had some time to maybe check and see what other people think, and then they've been clearly invited to speak. And it has been a big project for me in my classes to really adapt my own style to model for the classroom.

And how have you done that? How have you been able How do you do that? How do you make sure to bring everybody in and let all voices be heard?

Well, what I do is, first of all, I— okay, so, I mean, just to get kind of specific, but if I notice that a part of the classroom is doing a lot of the talking and another part of the classroom isn't, then I have them— then instead of just saying, who has input? I'll give them a question and I'll give them a moment to speak to the person next to them about the question. And then when we come back, I call on people to speak. And I call, of course, on people that I've heard from less. So that gives people from more group-oriented cultures an opportunity to check with those around them, from more high-certainty cultures, so cultures where people are not so comfortable making mistakes in front of a group, to prepare. And then for people who come from cultures where they're waiting for a clear invitation, it gives them the clear invitation to speak. But then I also have to adapt my own behavior. I mean, this has been my huge weakness, and I'm always coaching myself on Which is that while people are talking, it just sounds so simple, but stand quietly. Don't show with my body that I'm ready to jump in and talk. And the more that I model that, of course, the more the other people in the classroom start doing it and the more balanced participation we get.

Wonderful. Wonderful. It's fascinating. I love your framework there. Fascinating stuff.

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At this stage in your journey, how do you now define success?

Well, success for myself?

Success as a leader in your field.

Yeah.

Having achieved so much, your book is out there, it's impacting all around the world. Um, you're speaking around the world, um, you're, you're helping people to think differently about how they relate to people and other cultures. But you've achieved a significant amount. Yeah. But at this stage now, looking forward, how do you define success?

Well, what's really important to me and has been important to me is to get a dialogue started. Uh, when I started studying things like how trust is built differently in different countries and how what we consider constructive feedback in different parts of the world, and I started addressing these topics with companies and organizations, what I noticed was that people were quite hesitant to talk about cultural differences because they worried that if they talked about them openly, that it would somehow be suggesting that individuals are not different. But of course, in the world today, every individual is unique. And we are also molded by the culture that we come from. It's not one or the other. And I wanted to get a dialogue started so that in companies and organizations, people weren't just judging everything from their own perspective all the time, but actually starting to talk. How do you see this? What's the most effective way to make a decision in your country? And I think that I have started to do that, but of course, there is a lot more work to do. So how I define success is the more that I see that this has become a common topic in the world, the more I feel successful.

That's great. So the awareness. And you know, I wonder, it's not a question that's on my list, but I feel led to ask. When you see societies around the world where there are cultural conflicts, really, Um, you see a lot of it in America right now in the news, um, whether it's in, you know, Romania and it's the Romans, gypsies and the Roma, you know, um, or in, in other parts of the world. Um, does your philosophy speak to those kinds of challenges? Do you have a perspective on how they can be resolved?

Well, I do think that in the world today, and perhaps always, that cultural perspective has impacted clashes between groups of people. And I think that, you know, usually our— usually these experiences, you know, are based on some level of misunderstanding, that we don't understand the other person's perspective. Mm-hmm. I often see that with politicians. You know, you have a couple of presidents who are sitting together in a discussion and you see all sorts of cultural differences that are impacting the way they're perceiving one another. So I don't— I'm afraid I don't have an easy way to resolve all of this, but I do think the more that people start talking about cultural differences and understanding, you know, this isn't a question of him being condescending or him being arrogant, it's just a question of the way that they express themselves in their culture. Mm-hmm. The more that we can put ourselves in each other's shoes, the more that we can overcome these misunderstandings that lead to so much conflict.

Good. And, and, um, thank you for answering that. It wasn't one of my, um, list of questions here, but I thought, I wonder, you know, it's topical right now. Um, what's your biggest weakness as a leader?

Well, um, I already talked about this, this issue of, uh, of, of not— of speaking too much. Um, I think that, uh, another one is that I'm constantly having to really force myself to stop jumping to conclusions. Because that is my weakness, it's something that I think about constantly and therefore can help other people also think about. I've been doing some work over the last few years with this company Heineken. Mm-hmm. I just thought that this gave a great example about About leadership weakness in general. So you guys, I mean, you know that Heineken is, of course, this big Dutch brewing company, and they are present all over the world. And the Netherlands is where Heineken is based. The Netherlands is—

I've been to the factory in Amsterdam.

Oh, yeah, right. Okay, so the Netherlands is one of the most egalitarian countries in the world. And what that means is that people learn from a very young age that the authority figure is really just a facilitator among equals. Mm-hmm. That resonated. Their philosophy resonated with me because I come from Minnesota, which is a Scandinavian part of the United States, where those same philosophies of calling your teacher by your first name, questioning authority, is also very deeply in our blood and in my blood. These Dutch people then, they're moving, of course, all over the world. They purchased this huge operation in Monterrey, Mexico a couple of years ago. Mexico, and I was working with the Mexicans who were trying to manage in this Dutch environment, and they found it so difficult. Of course, in Mexico, children learn to show a lot more respect to an authority figure.

Yeah.

These Mexicans were saying, oh, managing Dutch people is absolutely incredible because they do not care at all that I'm boss. I go into these meetings, they're challenging me, they're contradicting me, they're taking my ideas off in opposite directions. This manager, you know, sometimes I just want to get down on my knees and beg them, please don't forget that I'm in charge. So I think that's an interesting example about leadership today, because today it's not enough to be able to lead the Dutch way or the Mexican way or the Minnesotan way or the Chinese way. We have to be flexible enough to adapt our leadership style to the population that we're working with to get the results that we

Powerful stuff. And what should be your strength as a leader?

I think that my strength has come from the fact that I work with so many populations, so many different cultural populations on a day-to-day basis. And this happens not because I travel, but because at INSEAD where I teach, we have leaders who come from around the world for all of our programs. Although we're in France, only 7% of our participants are French. So every day I'm hearing people complain about other cultures from their perspective. And what that has led me to is to recognize that there is never one truth. And not only that, to see that cultural reactions are always relative to the gap between those cultures. I'll just give you an example of this. I was working a while ago with a team, a global team where I had French and British who were on the team. I asked the British, what's it like to work with the French? The British said, well, Erin, you know the French. They're really disorganized. They're always late. They're always changing the topic in the middle of the meeting. It's really difficult to follow them. A little bit later, I had a group from India who joined the same team. After they'd been working together, I asked the Indians, what's it like to work on this French team? They said, well, Erin, you know the French. They're really rigid. They're really inadaptable. They're so focused on the structure and punctuality that they're not able to be flexible as things change around them. That comes because I have this framework that I work with. I mean, you can see that on my framework that on what I call the time orientation scale dimension or the scheduling dimension, that France falls somewhere between the UK and India, which then leads to these opposite perceptions. But that just shows that there is always several ways of understanding one behavior.

And, you know, I think it was John Maxwell that said that, um, your— the secret to your success is hidden in your daily routine. Typically speaking, what does the first 90 minutes of your day look like? And I bet it changes all the time with

Yeah, my first 90 minutes of my day is running after my children. Oh, that's clear. So I have these 2 boys, they're ages 7 and 10, and my first 90 minutes of my day is about getting them ready, getting their lunches ready, getting them off to school. Ethan is starting— my older son is starting a new school in September where we're going to have to drive him, so I guess that's going to be even more complicated. It's been very interesting for me because my— as you can deeply hear, I'm very American in my American mothering. But then I'm raising these children who are becoming really much more French than they are American. And I think for any of your listeners who have been raised in multicultural families, it's a very unsettling experience for a mother to realize that her children

Wow, that's amazing. I'll bear that in mind for my wife.

That's

right. Have there been any other habits that have— what have been the key habits that have contributed towards your success as a leader?

So what I— okay, so you asked me about my first 90 minutes of the day. What I try to do after I get my kids out of the house is to spend 90 minutes of the day doing the most important thinking that I need to do. Right. Because in addition to teaching and working with companies, I also write frequently. So the first 90 minutes of the day are the 90 minutes that I use to work on coming up with new ideas and writing. I know that later on in the day I get tired. I'm not going to be able to accomplish that anymore. I think finding the space and the quietness to do that, especially when you need to come up with something innovative, is the most important thing that you can

That's good. Any other key habits?

Well, then I will also tell you— this has to do with my specific job. Okay, so I wrote this book called The Culture Map, as you know, and The Culture Map system is that I have these 8 scales that look at different behaviors like how do we communicate effectively in different parts of the world or what does it mean to Lead a team effectively in different countries. Then I have, through a lot of research, countries that are positioned up and down these scales. Then you can map out the different countries and you can compare where they're similar and different to one another on the different scales. For example, I'll tell you what my habit is. My habit is that whenever I'm speaking to people and they tell me what countries they're working with, I start mentally mapping out those countries on my mind. So I did that earlier with you when you told me that your wife is Nigerian. I just started thinking about the Nigerian cultural map. Then you said, okay, and I'm partially Jamaican. I started thinking about the Jamaican cultural map. And then let me just tell you where I go with it. So like, for example, now you can discuss this with your wife tonight and tell me what she thinks, but I have a dimension that looks at direct versus indirect negative feedback, right? And it looks at cultures that, where people give feedback much more frankly versus cultures that give negative feedback or criticism, let's say, much more subtly or softly. Absolutely. A country like Jamaica is quite far to the more subtle side of the scale. Nigeria, interestingly, I think is the most frank culture in Africa, so the more direct culture. When I'm working across African populations, that's something that comes up a lot. I don't know if that falls with your— life's individual personality, but that's what I was doing when you were talking about your family.

They don't hold back.

I'll send you— I have a little software tool that maps out different cultures up to one another. I actually wrote on my notes here, send Errol Nigeria. It's

fascinating. This is fascinating stuff. Wow. Hey, I'm sure people are listening right now and they're excited just to hear this. And I think what's really great— guys, go and get the book, get Erin's book, and then just get into it. And I really believe you'll see how much of it applies to our everyday life, especially if you're living in a multicultural society or you're in a multicultural education establishment, business, or church, you're a leader. Leader in a business thinking about going global, thinking about growing to another level, this, this stuff is so relevant and these insights are so powerful. Um, Erin, just a couple more questions for you.

Yeah.

Um, at the beginning of your leadership journey, what, if anything, was holding you back from going into leadership?

Well, I think that one of the things that's so critical today That makes things so challenging is that, of course, you have the people that you work with face-to-face, but through globalization, we are now in contact with people from really different parts of the world over virtual media. Right. So I know for myself, when I first got it— got started, I was working a lot over virtual media, and I didn't recognize how much my own cultural bias was impacting my effectiveness. Mm-hmm. I'll just give you an example of this. I was doing some work a while ago in India, and I had this Indian participant who said to me, Erin, in the US, at the end of a meeting, you always— you Americans, you always recap what you understood should happen in writing, and then you send that recap to us. But in India, when we have a discussion on the phone and we make some decisions verbally, No, that would be enough for me. And then if you get off of the phone and you put into writing everything that we've just decided and you send that recap to me, that would be a very strong sign to me that you don't trust me. And of course, when we're communicating over virtual media like the telephone or email or Skype, we may have all of these reactions or impact on other people without even recognizing realizing how we've impacted them. And I think for your church leaders, that's also very interesting. I know I'm speaking at this Global Leadership Summit in August, which is for church leaders across the world. And they have a— although we have an in-church audience, by far the most attendees are attending virtually. So even in churches, we need to influence people over video conference. I think that that just demonstrates that even when we're not in the same room with the people that we are communicating with, that we really need to focus on understanding the cultural background of the people that we're working with so that we can be as persuasive and effective as possible. That's what I try to do in my Culture Map book is to give people a system so that they can decode and tease out these complex cultural differences.

Powerful. You know, a question for all of us listening, you know, are our cultural biases holding us back right now in, in our leadership, in the position that we're currently in? Is the thing that's preventing us from moving to our next level our cultural biases? It's worth thinking about. Go get the book. Erin, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. Erin, who have been your top 3 most significant mentors in your journey so far?

Well, my number one is this woman, Herminia Ibarra, who is also a leadership expert. She's a professor at INSEAD and has been— has had a huge impact on my own work. She is one of the only other other— well, let's say successful female professors at INSEAD and has given me a huge amount of advice. She has written a lot of books about authenticity in leadership. Okay, so that's number one. Number 2 is my mother.

My mother has, I think, probably an unusual role in my life. Which is that everything I write goes through my mother. Oh. So my mother— I worked with a lot of editors and professionals when I wrote my book, but no one spent more time on my book than my mother did.

And I often think that I couldn't be the— I couldn't have the influence that I do if it wasn't my— I didn't have my mother running behind me all the time. Helping me figure out how to make my messages as clear as possible. Wow. Then let's see, number 3. Number 3, well, I've been— when I write, so when I wrote my book, I used this book, Made to Stick, which is written by the Heath brothers, as my guide. And what I love about the Heath Brothers' writing is that they take ideas that could be rather uninspiring and they write them with a lot of very colorful anecdotes. So I have used them every time I— every day when I sit down to write myself, I often take out their book and look through it, and it gets me in the mood to start writing. So those are my favorites.

Awesome. Now, I'm going to dig a little bit deeper into each of those 3, just a moment. What's the best piece of advice you've gotten from each of those 3?

So, from Herminia, she helped me recognize that the work that I was doing was— I had these messages that I didn't recognize were so applicable to everybody in the world. I had thought of my messages about cross-cultural communication as being mostly important to managers who were leading global teams. What she helped me recognize in my framing is that really anybody who's working in any kind of role where they have to be inspirational, Is working cross-culturally. And I think you gave a great example a little while ago when you talked about what it's like to live in Birmingham. So I'm in— I'm actually, although I live in Paris, I'm in Minnesota right now. And in Minnesota, we have a huge Somali population. Right. And I was in Texas speaking at a conference last week. And of course, in Texas, there's a huge Latino population, individuals from Latin America. So I started thinking Through her, I started thinking about my work as something that touches everybody. That helped me see my messages being much more wide-sprung. Then, okay, gosh, my mother. My mother is— I know what I got from my mother, which is that my mother taught me not to think that or to act like I knew it all.

Right.

And one of the things that I've found in the cross-cultural industry is that the more you think you know, the less you know, because the world is so complex and each culture is so detailed that you can never really be an expert on the world's cultures. So what I've tried to do in my writing is to always start by explaining the mistakes that I've made. For example, I start my book by giving this example about a training program that I was running in Paris for a couple of French people who were moving to China. I had a Chinese country specialist that I was working with, so a Chinese businessman, and he was very extroverted. I worked with him to prepare the program. He was supposed to give practical examples as I made the points about the differences in culture. And I was really excited. It was a very, very important program. And then I arrived in the classroom. I started my session, and I kept looking at Bo, at the Chinese person, and he didn't speak. And so I just kept talking. And I think I continued for 3 and a half hours, and I was really getting panicked. I thought, well, if Bo If Bo doesn't speak up, there's no way this program is going to be successful. Then finally, after 3.5 hours, I thought I'd just take a chance. Bo didn't really look like he had anything to say, but finally I looked at him and I said, Bo, do you have an example? He opened up his notebook and he had about 25 pages of typed examples that he brought with him. He sat up straight and he smiled and he said, well, thank you, Erin. I do. He started giving these really fascinating examples one after another. That just made me realize again how my own cultural bias was having such an impact on my effectiveness. Then we laughed about it afterwards. He said, well, of course Erin is the leader in the room, so I wait quietly and I try to be a good listener until she calls on me. There I could have left the room at the end of the day and he wouldn't have said anything.

Wow.

So, so what I learned from my mother is that every time that one of those things happen, that's a great thing for me to share with everybody. Because the more that I make mistakes and the more I talk about my mistakes, the more other people are willing to make mistakes also. The more willing other people are to admit their mistakes and talk about them.

That's good, man. That's good. And then the Heath Brothers.

Yeah. Well, okay, so I don't know them. I just use their writing as my inspiration, right? But what I've learned from them is that when you speak or write, that being specific in your storytelling is so much more important than anything else that you can do.

Wow.

So there's no

point in spending that if you Expand on that, if you will, please.

What's that? Expand on that, if you will. So there's nothing inspirational in talking in generalities and saying things like— so instead of saying, oh, well, the Chinese always wait to be called on and the Americans wait for people to jump in, if you want people to listen to that point, that you have to give a very clear story about a specific situation with a specific person and to paint the room for the group, for the audience, for the listeners so that they can get it. I believe that element of storytelling is what captures people's attention and that's why I always follow their work when I'm writing or speaking myself.

Wonderful, wonderful. The Heath Brothers. Sounds interesting right there, Heath Brothers, guys. So, um, we're almost done now, right? What's the last question is, or what is the, the one thing that you're most fired up about right now?

Well, what I've been doing a lot of work with lately, I've been working more and more looking at how trust is built differently in different countries. And of course, trust is the foundation to everything, right? I'm If you don't have trust, it's very hard to get anything done.

Yeah.

What we've seen in some of the more recent research is that there's, let's say, 2 kinds of trust. There's what we call cognitive trust. Cognitive trust is trust from your brain. Cognitive trust is like, I see you do good work. You're on time. You're reliable. I trust you. Then we have what we call affective trust, which is like trust from your heart. Affective trust is like, I feel an emotional connection with you, or I feel a personal bond with you. And what we've seen is that throughout the world, if you ask people why they trust their spouse or why they trust their mother, that they'll talk to you about affective trust. But if you ask people why they trust a business partner, we see a much stronger difference from one part of the world to another. Some countries like the UK or the US or Germany, the Scandinavians, there's a very strong emphasis on separating affective trust for home and cognitive trust for work. Hmm. Whereas in most East— well, all East Asian countries, as well as African societies, Latin American countries, there tends to be a much stronger focus on cognitive and affective trust being all woven together in a business environment. Then we see this play out in just very simple, practical ways in a day So, for example, I was doing some work a while ago with a Brazilian company that was going through a possible merger with an organization in the UK. And the Brazilians came from Rio to London in order to start the negotiations. And number one, morning one, they got down to business. It got to be lunchtime. The British had sandwiches ordered in. They had a very quick lunch. They got back to work. It got to be lunchtime. Be about 6:00 in the evening. The British said, okay, great, we accomplished a huge amount. We are really on the right track. We're all exhausted. Let's take a break. We'll start again tomorrow. They did this for 2 days. And at the end of the meeting, the British were thinking this had been a great meeting, they'd really invested their time wisely. And the Brazilians were thinking, well, how do we know if we can trust these people? So they requested a second meeting, this time in Brazil. The British came Morning one, they got down to business. But when it got to be lunchtime this time, they went to a good restaurant. They shared good food. They stopped talking about work. For an hour, the British started moving around in their seats. An hour and a half, the British started looking at their watches, right? For 2 hours. And the British were thinking, with all of this wasted time, how are we possibly going to accomplish what we've come here to accomplish? But for the Brazilians, this lunch really symbolized something very important, which is, dear colleagues, you know, we would like to show you that we respect you and we respect you. We want to make sure that we build this effective bond, this effective trust before we get down to work. So we see that every single emerging market country in the world right now has this strong emphasis on effective trust in. work along with cognitive trust. So that's really— I'm working on doing more research on that right now.

Is there a book in there coming out?

Yeah, maybe. Well, I do talk about it already in my current book, but I think that I could do a whole book on it now. The reason that it— the reason it's so important, I think, is that once you get the trust right, the other elements of cross-cultural differences are not as dangerous, meaning that If you speak too directly to me and we already have really good emotional bond between us, I'll forgive you. But if you speak too directly to me and we don't have that level of trust, well, I'm really not going to want to work with you again. So in any case, that's one of the things I'm looking at now.

It's really good. It's really good. Um, the thought comes to my mind, just the idea of really examining, um, you know, husband and wife, say, relationships that are, um, multicultural and just looking at what makes them work. And yeah, trust is a big one, as you said. Understanding is a big one. I'm sure there are other factors in there as well that would apply on a global scale. You know, it's really, really interesting stuff. Really fascinating. Erin, how do we find out more about you and the work you're doing? Where do we go?

So my website is erinmeyer.com, E-R-I-N-M-E-Y-E-R.com. I have all my work out there as well as a number of tools. I have some tools out there where you can play around. You can click on different countries that you work with and you can find out how they fall on these different cultural scales. There's also a little personal assessment that you can take for free and for fun on the tools page of my website where you can respond to 35 questions and then you can get your personal map and look at how your own personality compares to the different countries that you might be working with. Then you can figure out if you're living in the right country or not.

Wow, wow. I forgot to ask, you know, is there a book you'd recommend? Of course, we recommend Erin's book, The Culture Map. Go check that out on Amazon and via her website. Is there another book you'd recommend for a leader listening right now? You mentioned, you mentioned the Heath brothers' material. Well,

the other book in the cross-cultural field which has been a go-to for a long time now is this book, Riding the Waves of Culture by Fons Trompenaars. And that's probably the first book that I read in the cross-cultural field when I first got started, you know, 20 years ago. And it's still a book that I, that I love to go to on a daily basis. So I definitely recommend that also.

Awesome. Erin, thank you so much for your time. It was

a pleasure.

Thank you. Are you on social media anywhere? Can people find you on social media?

Yep, you can find me on Twitter. So my Twitter handle is Erin Meyer, so E-R-I-N M-E-Y-E-R, INSEAD, the name of my school, which is I-N-S-E-A-D.

Awesome. Erin, thank you. God bless you. We wish you all the best in your work and your endeavors to connect people, to bring people together for collaborations to happen, partnership to happen, for understanding to take place, for growth and new things to emerge. Um, love the heart of your work for unifying cultures and unifying people, um, across the globe. It's a really, really powerful piece of work, and we wish you all the best in that. Thank you for your time today. God bless you, man. God bless you.

Thank you, Errol. It was a pleasure to work with you today.

Thank you again for joining us today on the Rising Generation Leadership Podcast. I pray you've been inspired, you've been lifted, you've been encouraged to take your personal leadership to the next level. We really encourage you guys to just take action, make it happen, do something, start somewhere, go out and change the world in some way, big or small. Guys, if you've enjoyed the podcast, today, please share with your friends, share with your loved ones, your colleagues, someone out there you think might benefit from hearing this great content. And if you want some more questions answering, you got a question, email me errol@errolawson.com. Or if you want a free 30 to 45 minute coaching session with myself around the leadership challenge or issue you're working on in your business, your church, or in your organization, please feel free to email me right away. We'll get you booked in, it's errol@errolawson.com. Thank you again for listening. Go to our iTunes page, check it out, check out the previous episodes, give us a nice review. That would be awesome. Really appreciate if you could do that for us. We really appreciate you just for being here and listening. Thank you so much. God bless you, and we'll see you on the next episode of The Rising Generation.