How to Bridge Cultures and Lead Global Teams for Success (Interview with Erin Meyer)

Today, I'm delighted to welcome Erin Meyer, author of The Culture Map, co-author of No Rules Rules, and a professor at INSEAD, to the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Erin, welcome to the show. You've devoted much of your career to exploring corporate culture in all its intricacies. Could you tell us a bit about yourself maybe? but also how you discovered your passion for culture.

Yeah, thank you. Hi, David, nice to be here with you. Yeah, so I am an expert in cultural differences, in both national cultural differences and organizational culture. And I was actually raised in a very monocultural place. So I was raised in the Midwest of the US, like surrounded by people who had only lived in Minnesota. And it was only as an adult that I started moving to other countries. So first I moved to Southeast Asia and then Southern Africa and then 25 years ago, I moved to France, where I live currently. So I'm joining you from Paris currently. My husband is French. My children have explained to me that they are French. I have learned that from them. And throughout this experience, I became very interested in understanding how different cultures, different parts of the world, had different understandings about what it means to give feedback in an effective way, or how we build trust differently in different parts of the world. And what I saw in my work was that people in different countries were observing the behaviors around them and having very different perceptions of those behaviors, not based just on their individual personalities, but really on the culture that had formed their beliefs. So that's what led me to do this, this culture mapping system that I use for mapping out national cultural differences. And then later on, I went also on to studying organizational cultures. So my first book, The Culture Map, is all about national cultural differences, which is, I believe, what we'll talk mostly about today. And then my second book, which I wrote with the chairman, uh, with the founder and chairman of Netflix, Reed Hastings, is about organizational culture. And I explore in that book especially how to develop an organizational culture that leads to innovation, looking specifically at the unusual Netflix culture.

Brilliant. And we're definitely going to be exploring, you know, Both, but principally the culture map, I think. And Erin, I'm particularly excited about this conversation. We've kind of known each other for a few years, I think, since we've met prior to the pandemic, when I think you headlined the Unleash conference in Paris, when I was the kind of mainstage MC. And we were going to try and do this podcast around the time of the pandemic, and you were going to take advantage of when you came to London, and it didn't happen because of the pandemic. So I'm delighted that a few years later that we're doing this. And you kindly recently spoke at our Insight 222 Global Executive Retreat in Amsterdam on the 8 dimensions of culture, which you also explain in detail in your book. I'll just hold it up for those watching this on video, The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. And for our listeners, Erin, can you share a synopsis of what The Culture Map is about?

Yeah, so we really look at the kind of invisible intricacies that impact our effectiveness. And, you know, maybe I'll just give a kind of a simple example that I often share about my 2 cultures. So the US and France, where I've basically spent about half of my life in each of those countries. And one thing that's very interesting when it comes to feedback is like Americans, we think of our culture as being very direct, but actually when it comes to the way that we provide feedback, we are much less direct than most, at least continental European countries, and definitely much less direct than the way that French people tend to provide criticism. So I've had, you know, dozens of examples of French people moving to the US, and they give feedback in the way that is just considered to be totally appropriate here, and they are perceived then as being arrogant or lacking motivational competence in American environment. I think what we do in the US is quite unusual, actually, in many countries, which is that we have this tendency of giving, you know, we learn to give 3 positives with every negative, or to catch people doing things right. So when we start that feedback, we start by saying, you know, I love this, and this was fabulous. And after we go through all of that positive feedback, you know, this is something that you can do a little bit differently. So, you know, I have an example of a French woman moving to the US. She gets feedback from her new boss, and he gives— her new American boss— he gives it that way, starting by telling her all the things he feels she's doing well. And she thinks, wow, that's the best performance review I've ever received. By the time he gets to the real message, she isn't even listening anymore. So then she walks away thinking, fabulous performance review. And this guy thinks later on, you know, she didn't do anything that I told her to do in the performance meeting. So these kinds of things often are not even recognized as being cultural differences, and that's what's so important. That's what makes it so important that we spend a little bit of time kind of stopping and thinking, wait, was there something cultural going on there? And if I can be aware of that, how can I then adapt my style in order to improve my effectiveness?

That's really good. I actually also lived and worked in France, not as long as you have, Erin, and Uh, for 7 years. And, uh, my, my wife is English, so we were 2 English people living in the south of France. Um, both our children were born there. And for example, my son supports the French rugby and football team over the English one, even though he only lived in France for 2 years. But anyway, you know, that's, that's, that's good. So we could probably, I know that we'll talk about some of the cultural differences between maybe France and the US and the, and the UK, because they're definitely, I definitely recognise some of those when I was there. So, you think about, you know, most of the people that listen to this podcast are working in HR roles. They're either managing, or managing people themselves maybe, or being managed by people of different nationalities, particularly, you know, if they're working in a global company. And increasingly, I guess, both with migration, but also managing distributed teams now, you know, as a leader, as a manager, you're always managing people from different places. You know, what are some of the things that organizations and those leaders should keep in mind when working with the Culture Map?

Yeah. So, I think one of the most important things is to recognize that our experience of different cultures depends on the culture that we come from. So, for example, like if I'm working with a team, I'll give you an example. So, you're from the UK. You told me you spent time in France. I was working with a team that was made up of half British and half French people. So, when I asked the British guy, you know, how's it going? He says to me, well, Erin, oh my gosh, you know what it's like to work with French people. They are all— they're disorganized, they're chaotic, they're always late. A little bit later, a group from India joins the same team. And after they're working together, I say to one of the Indian women, how's it going? And she says to me, well, Erin, you know what it's like to work with French people. They're very rigid, they're very inflexible, they're so focused on the structure and punctuality of things, that they're not able to be flexible as things change around them. So why these completely opposite perceptions of what the same culture is like? Because on my, my time orientation scale, what I call the scheduling scale, we can see that France falls somewhere between the UK and India, then leading to these opposite perceptions. So I think that's the critical thing to recognize, and I see those all the time. I just had a a brand new example of this where, of course, in comparison to European cultures in general and the US, Chinese culture tends to be very hierarchical. Oh wait, sorry, I got my example mixed up. France tends to be very hierarchical in comparison to the US. But I was working with a Chinese woman just a couple of days ago and I asked her how things were going in France. And she said, oh my gosh, you know, French culture is so egalitarian. It's absolutely crazy. And that's, of course, because on my leading scale, the US is more egalitarian than France, but France is more egalitarian than China. So I think that's really the point is that when we talk about culture, we can't look as a multicultural organization and say, you know, this culture is like that. It just doesn't make any sense. Instead, we have to think about the complexity of how different cultures perceive and react to one another based on their relative positions on the scale. And then we can start having discussions that reflect the complexity of what's actually happening around us.

Yeah, one of my favorite things in France was— so I worked at this company for 5 years. A great company, and I really enjoyed my time there, but the hierarchical bit just made me sort of smile because I just remember how offices were assigned. So, if you were a certain level, you got your own office with a round table and a certain size. If you were the next level up, you got a slightly bigger office with a square table. So, you'd have maybe 4 people that could meet at that table rather than 2, and so on and so forth. And it was very, very rigid. So, you could walk into someone's room and you'd know immediately, not even from their title, from the way the office was structured, which, what level they were in the organization.

Yeah, and that's so interesting because when I interviewed Elsie Shen, this Chinese woman, a couple of days ago, she said, you know, Erin, in France, she was working for Hermès, for the scarf company, right? She said, you know, it's amazing because like in China, we pay a lot of attention to the position of the people that we're working with. But in France, they say égalité, fraternité, right? And that égalité, that egalitarianism, They really believe it. You go into these meetings and you'll see people at all levels in the organization talking like they're completely equal. So, it's just fascinating to see how we have these different perceptions. And it's not that one is right or wrong. It just depends on the direction that you are looking at the culture from.

Yeah. Yeah. So, it's really good. I mean, well, I'm sure we're going to talk lots of different examples as well. And apologies to any of my former colleagues who I worked with in France if they were Hopefully, they're also with a little bit of humour around them as well. So, as I said, yeah, so I lived and worked in France for a number of years, and I quickly learned that communication styles, for example, are very different in France compared to the UK, particularly if you look at things like, you know, in context, etc., as well. And it took a while to get used to, to be honest with you, because I, up to that point, I'd just worked in the UK, and maybe in the UK sometimes we're not very good at saying what we actually mean. Whereas I think my experience of working in France was actually French people, the French colleagues I had were much better at saying what they actually thought. Sometimes it could be a bit, you'd be, ooh, okay. And it took, as I said, it took a little bit of time to get used to. I'd see arguments almost break out between 2 people in the office on a particular point. They get very heated and then 15 minutes later they're outside having a cup of coffee and laughing about it. We would never have never have— well, any of the companies I'd worked with, or companies, people I'd worked with in the UK, that wouldn't happen. It'd be much more discussive, shall we say, and people keeping, you know, tones that wouldn't be so up and down. And I wondered really, Erin, I mean, you've probably got some great examples about that as well, you know, but if you think about that from a, maybe from a leadership perspective, how can leaders bridge that gap between maybe low context and high-context communication styles. And, and you might want to explain a little bit what we mean by low and high context as well for listeners.

Yeah, I definitely do, because I think as the listeners are hearing your, your expression, though, about how French people really say what's on their mind, I mean, I believe there's actually something quite complicated there, which is that it's true that, like, French culture is much more direct with criticism than my culture, and even more so than your culture, right? Because the UK Definitely more indirect than the US. But, and when it comes to my disagreeing scale, I mean, the French culture, they love a good debate, which is what I think you just described, one of the most confrontational cultures in the world. But they're also quite a high-context culture. So I do want to describe that difference, which can be fascinating to think about. So low-context are cultures where we really spell things out. So these are cultures where we believe in, like, really literal, explicit communication. So in a low-context culture, we're having a discussion. If I want you to understand blue, then I need to say blue. If I give a presentation in a low-context culture, I'm taught that I should tell you what I'm going to tell you, and then I tell you, and then I tell you what I've told you. You, right? So those are like really explicit cultures. And like, if we look at that, the US is the lowest context culture in the world. This focus on really making sure, like active listening, right? Like I say one thing and then you repeat back what you think that you've heard, that you've heard that I've said, so that I can make sure we all understood one another exactly as intended, right? And then of course we have high context cultures. And in high-context cultures, there's a lot more nuance and, let's say, sophistication or layering in the communication. So while we're talking, I'm saying some things literally, and you're, you're understanding the literal message, but you're also hearing a lot of the things that I have not said. So we have these expressions, like for example, in Portuguese, there's an expression Subentendido, and that means don't listen to what I said, listen to what I meant. Or there's an expression in Japanese, kuki yomenai, and that means someone who is unable to read the air. So in a high-context culture like Japan, it's really expected that as I'm talking with you, that you are reading or picking up all of the unsaid spoken messages. And so, like, to go back to your, your example about France, I mean, France is a higher context culture than, than the UK and much higher context than the US. And the way that that might come up would be that, like, um, well, like, in my culture, at the end of a meeting in the US, we almost always do a recap, right? So first we do a verbal recap and then we do a written recap. So that's a low context. But often if I'm in a meeting here in Paris, at the end of a meeting, people will just kind of stand up and someone will say, et voilà, right? There it is. And I'll think to myself, but voilà what? And then I'll see that people just understand what's been decided. They know what's supposed to happen next without going through all of those levels of clarification that I'm so used to in my own culture. So that's a very important dimension, and it's separate from the direct and indirect feedback, which we can talk about a little bit later. And maybe I'll say one more thing, which is that we often can see, like, why is the US the lowest context culture in the world and Japan the highest? Well, that's because of immigration levels and amount of shared history. Hmm. So in Japan, like an island society, homogeneous population, people living in very close proximity for thousands of years, people got to the point that they could just, like, understand each other without speaking. And then in the US, where just a very short shared history, we came from all over the place, different languages, different histories, Americans learned, oh, if I want someone else to understand me, I really have to, like, simplify the communication. to the lowest common denominator and then repeat myself and then put it in writing. Yeah, so I think that's a really important one. And most importantly to recognize is that when we're working across cultures, often the unspoken high-context messaging doesn't work. Yeah. Because the person listening to us doesn't have the same cultural lens. As the person who is speaking. So we might find that we actually have to dumb down our communication or become more simple and more literal in the way we're talking.

Yeah, it's really interesting actually, because I was, I was wondering if it had something to do with, with languages, you know. And, and obviously the reason why you said obviously the US is the way it is because of all that immigration over the last sort of 250 years, I guess. As you said, quite a young country in comparison to Japan. But I was thinking as well about, you know, if you're working, you know, let's be honest, you go to a meeting, you've got lots of different cultures there, some from low context, some from high context. Again, back to time in France, that was a multicultural team. I had people from the US and the UK. I had people from Northern Europe, people from Southern Europe in that particular team. I would summarize, being British, I would summarize the actions into an email afterwards. I would always try and keep it succinct. But the Americans would tell me, thanks very much for doing that. That's really helpful. And some of my French colleagues would say to me, but we'd already agreed this. You don't need to follow up with an email as well. So, and then you kind of start to learn, don't you? Okay. So, I don't really need to, even though it seems a bit alien, I'm not going to copy these 2 people in this note. It's helpful for these people, so we get to the outcome we want to get to, but it's not helpful for these people, and that probably annoys them a little bit. So, I need to maybe think about whether I would copy them in or not, you know. So, it's just things like that, and I guess you learn with it, with experience within individual teams.

Yeah, and I think that's actually a really important example because we can take it even a step further. So, I'll give you an example from Saudi Arabia. I was working with this Uh, the Saudi guy, and he said, you know, Erin, like in my culture, if we have a discussion on the telephone and we make some decisions verbally, that would really be enough for me. And then if you get off of the phone and you put into writing what we've decided and you send that written recap to me, that would be a clear signal to me that you don't trust me. And that's something that I've seen come up again and again, whether it's in the Middle East, uh, or in Southeast Asia, when let's say Anglo-Saxons or Germanics, people both, so Germany also a very low-context culture, like Germans love to put things in writing, right? So just to make sure we all understood the same thing, right? But when that German guy does that recapping, it actually may be a sign to the other person person that he feels that they're not trustworthy without him realizing it, right? So I do believe that that's actually not just— that that's really something we need to talk about in our global teams, and we need to make a decision like, hey, how are we going to deal with the fact that we have such different ways of working? And then of course we might decide as a team, well, let's take turns putting it in writing. It becomes part of our team culture. But if we don't have the discussion first, then people have a lot of reactions really related to where they come from without recognizing the cultural element.

Yeah, and it's difficult. And, and that's ultimately relationships, you know, whether it's at work or outside work, it's all about trust. It's one of the most important elements of it, isn't it? If you don't have trust, then, you know, then you're not going to get that depth of relationship that you need to, to deliver the outcomes that you want to deliver. So Yeah, it's really because, I mean, again, with my mindset being British, okay, it's got better over the years because I've kind of learned from experience. I think I'm being helpful by summarizing the actions. Whereas you said, if I would have been doing that to any Saudi Arabian colleagues that I've been working with, they would actually think, well, David doesn't trust us. That's not good.

Yeah. But, you know, David, I do want to say, I think it's important to kind of mention some of the differences because of Of course, like, the UK is really high-context compared to the US, right? And a big one of this, I mean, you know, is that, like, your sense of humor in the UK is so high-context in comparison to us in the US. It's very confusing for Americans working with British people. I was in London a couple of weeks ago. I'm working with this British class. They're, like, making jokes, I guess, and people are saying things. I think it's a joke, but I'm not sure. Because of course in your culture when people make jokes they always do it in this deadpan way, like your face just completely neutral, so then I don't dare laugh. What if it's not a joke? So I'm always saying to my British students, you know, if when you make a joke, if you would please do what we do in the US, which is that we put a label on it, right? So we make the joke and then we say, just kidding, and because we've said just kidding, then you know you can laugh. But you guys don't like to do that, do you?

No. Sometimes you have to say, that's a joke. Yeah. As you said, you label it, you know, that's supposed to be a joke.

Yeah. Otherwise we miss it entirely.

Yeah. Yeah. You see, it's really interesting, even though where the, the, there are so many similarities obviously between the US and, and, and the UK, and I guess they're much closer in terms of, they are much closer in terms of context, there's still differences. So then if you think about the US and Japan, wow. There's a huge difference.

Yeah, that's right, that's right. And I want to give you— maybe I told you this one when I was in the Netherlands with you, but I have this brand new example about this sense of humor thing where I think just highlights how low context we are in the US. I had this Italian guy in my class, he said, you know, Erin, in Italy, he said, in Italy, if we make a joke and the other person thinks it's funny, they laugh. He said, but in the US, if you make a joke and the other person thinks it's funny, they say, that's funny. Yeah. And I like, I've never, I never thought about that. I said, oh yeah, you're right. We say, that's funny, and we laugh. And he said, no, Erin, I've been observing this carefully when I've been in the US. I've seen the laughter is optional. And I said, that's funny. All right. Okay. So, we have— it's so interesting to hear how other cultures observe our culture, right? We learn a lot.

So, let's move from communication to feedback. So, again, you know, probably like yourself, I mean, I've managed people from different nationalities throughout my career and been managed by people from different countries with different contexts as well. And as you said near the start, you know, there's a stark contrast Contrast in how you give and receive feedback. You gave that great example at the start about the French lady with the US boss. And it only exacerbates what actually is quite a hard thing to do, to give feedback or receive feedback in the right way. Again, thinking from an organizational perspective, how can companies train their managers and team members to give and receive feedback effectively? Yeah. When some cultures lean heavily on giving heavy criticism and being direct and others avoid it, particularly like the British, I guess.

Yeah. And I think I want to give just a little bit more of an example as to how we may see these differences so starkly. So, okay, we'll give it a cross-European example. So, you're in the UK. When I was with you last, we were together in the Netherlands. Such different cultures when it comes to feedback, right? So, the UK clearly, of the European cultures, is the least direct with feedback, and the Netherlands, one of the most direct in the world. Only Israel and maybe Russia being more direct than the Netherlands. So, I'm working with this team, they're made up of half British and half Dutch people. The British guy writes the report, he sends to his Dutch colleague for feedback. The Dutch guy gets it, he thinks, well, we can't— this is horrible, we can't send this to the client like this. He thinks about how to improve it. Now, when the Dutch guy calls up the British guy, he has the value system of the importance of honesty in the way he gives the feedback. So he says, you know, I read through your report, we can't send this to the client like this. The introduction is weak, but here are some things we could do to improve the introduction. Lack of logic flow here. Here are some things we could do to improve the logic flow. Some grammatical errors, I've circled them. Now, the British guy takes this feedback personally. He thinks, this guy is arrogant, he doesn't like me, and in return, I don't like him. Now, if the tables turn and we look at it the opposite way, so let's say the Dutch guy writes the report and sends it to the British guy, again, he thinks, horrible. But the British guy, before he calls up the Dutch guy, he thinks about, okay, like, how am I gonna give the feedback? So when he calls up the Dutch guy, he says, you know, this part here I think was very well written, this is what I liked, and this section over here was very well researched, this is what I appreciated. Now, if you wanted to make some changes, I have just a few small suggestions for you. Like, you might possibly think Think about doing this a little bit differently, maybe. So, of course, then the Dutch guy, he takes the feedback at face value, and he thinks there's just a few small things I could change if I wanted to. And, you know, maybe he does. Maybe he spends 5 minutes working on it, making those changes, and then finds out a little later that actually the British guy didn't like report. Right. And what does he think about that guy now? Well, he's a hypocrite. You can't trust that guy. The last time I'm going to ask that guy for feedback. So that dimension of how we provide criticism differently in different cultures is so important because we're so likely to take offense when people give feedback in a way that is considered to be lacking constructive in our own culture. So what I believe, like you asked me how to handle this, I really believe it's so important that we have some open discussions about these things. That I think that companies often are very wary of having open discussions about culture in general because they feel like, well, if we talk about cultural differences, then it signify that we don't understand that individuals are different. And of course, in our world of diversity, we want to make sure that we're recognizing the uniqueness of every individual in the organization. But that being said, if we don't take the time to talk about cultural differences, then we're always interpreting what's going on around us by our own cultural lens. Like, well, that guy was arrogant, and that person lied to me. So we really need to be sophisticated enough in organizations to recognize that on the one hand, of course, we are all human beings. So we all have similar psychological drivers. We experience jealousy, and we feel threatened. We have our amygdala that sends off an alarm when we are in positions of risk. We are all human, but we— and we are all different. Every one of us is unique, even if we come from the same family, have the same parents, we are all different. But that being said, we all come from somewhere, or maybe we call— come from many different cultures. And the cultures that we were raised in and that we have worked in influence how we perceive what's going on around So, on a global team, we need to take some time to maybe do our culture maps, to talk about our individual personality, but also the culture that we come from. And as we bring up those differences, we can start to better understand the reactions around us and also to adapt our own feedback style in order to manage our team members most effectively.

Yeah. So, thinking practically, Erin, so I know, Let's say you're a new manager. You've got limited— you've had previous— you've been working for a big organization in one country. So, maybe you're in a regional office. Most of your experience has been working with people of the same nationality to you. You get a promotion. You maybe go to a different country, maybe on a— for a 2 or 3-year period, and suddenly you're managing lots of different people from different countries. Now, I suppose the question is, what can the organization do to support that person? But what can that person also do for themselves, maybe with their team, to try and not annoy people, maybe by just doing what they think is the right thing?

Yeah. So, I believe that this is quite a complex dance, which is, of course, requires— it's an ongoing journey. We never master this. Sometimes organizations will say to me, like, oh, I don't think those people need this kind of— need to have this kind of discussion or training because they've lived in many different cultures. But you know what? Anybody who says that clearly does not have that cross-cultural experience themselves. Because for those, those of, you know, people who have lived in different cultures or spent time working internationally, we know that learning, that cultural learning is an is an ongoing journey. And I don't know about you, David, but I feel like, I mean, the more that I study this topic, the more I recognize we have to talk openly about it. Because if we don't, you know, we're gonna just— well, we don't— well, because we always have more to learn. And maybe I'll just give you an example that I have about this. So about how we're always learning. So my culture map That book came out a bunch of years ago, and when it came out, I went on book tour. And first I went to the US. Now, keep in mind, I've just written a book about cultural differences. So I went to the US, I spoke at a bookstore. At the end, I asked if there were any questions. A lot of people raised their hand. Then I came to Germany, across Europe. I would ask if there were questions. People would raised their hand. Then I was in Japan and I spoke at a gathering about the book. At the end, I asked if there were any questions. No one raised their hand. So, I went to sit down. I was a little disappointed. And though my contact, my counterpart, a Japanese woman from the publisher, she came up to me and she said, Erin, you know, we have some time left and I think there were some questions. Would you like me to try? And I said, yes, please, Tomoko. So Tomoko stood up and she said to the group, Professor Meyer has just spoken with you. Do you have any questions? No one raised their hand, but Tomoko stopped and she silently looked around the room, and then she gestured to someone who was sitting there, from my perspective, motionless. And she said, do you have a question? And this Japanese guy, he sat up And he said, oh, thank you, I do. He asked a fascinating question. Tomoko did that 3 more times. So afterwards I said to her, well, Tomoko, how did you know those people had questions? And she said it had to do with how bright their eyes were. So I thought that was puzzling. And then she clarified. She said, well, you know, Erin, in Japan we don't make as much direct eye contact. As you do in the West. So when you asked if there were any questions, most people were not looking right at you. They were kind of looking somewhere else, but a couple of the people in the room, they were looking right at you and their eyes were bright, signifying they would be happy to have you call on them if you would like to. Okay. So the next day I gave another presentation. Again, I asked if there were questions. No one raised their hand, but that time I thought, okay, I will do what Tomoko Modeled for me. So, I stopped and I silently looked around and I saw, okay, no one— most people were kind of looking at me but not looking directly in my eyes. And this one Japanese woman, she like, let's say she grabbed me with her eyes. So, like, she looked at me and when I looked at her, she held my gaze. So, were her eyes bright? I don't know. But I wanted to try, so I made a little gesture and she nodded her head. And I said, oh, do you have a question? And she said, thank you very much. And she asked a fascinating question. Okay, now the point of this story is not actually about Japan. The point is what happened afterwards. So afterwards, I came back to INSEAD. So I didn't say that at the beginning of the session, but I'm a professor at INSEAD, which is a business school outside of Paris. And I came back to INSEAD. I have these incredibly multicultural classrooms, and I now, with this idea in my mind, I started to see that there were all of these bright eyes in my classes, not just from the Japanese, and that my American assumption that if someone raised their hand, if someone had something to say, they would raise their hand, was blocking all of this discussion in the classroom. So I just want to give that example to show that Even, please remember, not only had I been studying cultural differences for decades, but I had just written a book on cultural differences. And it just goes to show that no matter how experienced we are, we continually need to be asking questions. And here, you know, I asked Tomoko for help understanding her culture, and she was able to give that to me. So I think we can all better, you know, take advantage of the multiculturalism around us by saying, hey, you know, you come from this culture. I don't understand what happened to me. Can you help me be more effective? And in doing so, we can really start to leverage those cultural differences that we have on the team.

That's a really, really good example. And, and it kind of— and I guess it's like anything, really everything in, in business, we've got to be continuous learners. We've got to keep learning. Even if you're an expert at a topic, You can— there's always new things that you can learn. I mean, a similar example, but maybe it's more a hierarchical one. When I've worked in the past with Scandinavian companies, particularly Swedish ones, and you've got multiple different levels of seniority in the room, and you ask for questions, no one usually asks a question. You actually have to go to the senior-most person in the room, I found, and ask them, have you got any questions? And they usually do. They ask a question and then everyone else feels they've got permission to ask a question. And I had to start to learn that. Whereas in the UK or the US, if I ask anyone's got a question, doesn't matter what seniority are, they put their hand up, you know, in most companies. In some companies they don't because they don't have the psychological safety perhaps.

But that's a very interesting example because actually, as you know, like when it— on my leading scale, when we look at egalitarian versus hierarchical cultures, that the Scandinavian cultures are the most egalitarian cultures in the world, right? So, it's interesting because I— you gave the example earlier about how French culture is so much more hierarchical than your own, but both your and my culture, the UK and the US, are much more hierarchical than Sweden or Denmark or Finland. And, I think maybe what was And what's happening in those— that example that you just gave is the comfort with silence. Because often when I'm working with Scandinavian cultures, like you ask a question or you ask people if they have a question and there's like a couple more beats of silence before people speak. So, you feel like, oh my gosh, no one dares talk. When actually— Actually, I find the best thing I can do in those situations is sometimes just keep my mouth shut and count to 10. And if I do, then finally people will start asking questions. So much complexity. I love it.

It's very complex. I mean, the next thing is kind of around reasoning, I guess. So, I know in the book, in the Culture Map book, you talk about principles first. or deductive, I think sometimes people call it, versus applications-first reasoning, or inductive, as sometimes people call it as well. Can you maybe explain to our listeners what the difference between the two is, and then maybe how leaders can align these two, what are quite very different approaches to reasoning, so it aligns with different cultures?

Yeah. I mean, that's the most complicated of all of the dimensions to explain and maybe to understand. But one of the really ones. And so, I think, and I think I'll just start by giving an example which might highlight it a little bit. So, okay, I'm working with this guy from Spain, and he said to me, you know, Erin, in my culture, when we give a presentation, we have a method that we— that comes from our education system, right? Okay, so in Spain, we learn that first we learn introduction, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. So, first you introduce the topic, then you build up your point, then you, then you, you contradict the point. You think about the issues that might contradict the point and you address those, and then you come to conclusion. He said, but I've noticed that when I— he said, I gave a presentation in the US for the first time a few weeks ago, and I noticed that after a few minutes the Americans started looking bored. So I tried to be like more dynamic, to be more, you know, speak louder, but it didn't seem to help. He said, so at the end of the presentation, my new American boss said to me, you know, Javier— oh, sorry, I should be careful with this, it's a little bit racy, my example, but I think our audience can handle it. He said the American boss said to him, Javier, a presentation is not A striptease, where you take off one piece of clothing after another until you deliver the goods. But this is a great example of how in continental European countries, and especially in countries like Spain or Italy or France, but also in Germany, there's really this kind of method of analyzing information and presenting information, which comes from Latin and Germanic philosophers like Descartes and Hegel and Kant, which is that you can't get to the point until you've proven the principle, which is so different than what we learn, well, in the UK and then even more so in the US, which is get to the point and stick to the point. And that kind of like applications-first learning comes from British philosophers like Bacon, who taught empirical learning, like Francis Bacon, who taught us that we can, we can kind of start with the practical example, and then as we look at practical examples, we can pull learning out of it. So that dimension is particularly important when we need to be persuasive in a presentation. And yeah, I think I'll just stop there with it. It's much more complicated than that, but gives a little bit of a feel.

Yeah. And again, for listeners that want to find out more, I strongly recommend, you know, buying Erin's, if you haven't already, buying the Culture Map and digging into it there as well. So Erin, you know, obviously we live in a— well, maybe the period of globalization is a bit at risk at the moment, but we still have very much a globalization of organizations, and it's so important that leaders understand how to lead teams from various cultures, as we've talked about, really, especially when you have some cultures that have a high value on hierarchy, again, as we've talked about, whilst others are more egalitarian. What practical advice would you offer to HR leaders who are supporting or training, you know, leaders in their organization right up to the top, really? On how to lead global teams and strike the right balance between respecting hierarchy and encouraging open collaboration?

Yeah. So, I think I want to talk for a moment about the fact that when we come from many different cultures and we're in the same discussion together, that some cultures are going to talk a lot more than others. will. And that partially does have— like, if there's a boss in the room, clearly that partially does have to do with hierarchy. Mm-hmm. So, for example, I mean, if you come from an egalitarian culture like the Netherlands, or like Israel, or Denmark, clearly people are not worried about speaking without knowing what the boss is thinking, right? They're comfortable just speaking up. And if you come from a more— a culture where we show more deference to authority, like Korea or Nigeria, of course people are going to be much more like, okay, well, I don't know if I want to talk until I know what the boss thinks. But that's not the only reason that this happens. So, I mean, I spoke earlier just for a moment about comfort with silence. Mm-hmm. And, I mean, what we really see is that in some cultures, like my own, We, we become very uncomfortable with silence very quickly in a discussion. So like just 2 seconds of silence already in the US, we are nervous. You're not much different in the UK. And then if you come from a culture like Japan, you might feel like, okay, you know, I could go 8, 10 seconds of silence and it just seems completely normal. So that's a dimension we really have to think about, and we might find that cultures that have that discomfort with silence— some other examples would be like India or Italy— that people end up speaking a lot more in the meetings, whereas cultures who are waiting for that time to speak, they never get a chance. And I will say one other thing for those of our listeners who are from the US or working with Americans. I mean, Americans talk so much in meetings, and sometimes, like, even my French colleagues will say, you know, like, why do Americans talk so much in meetings? And I believe that's because we have a participation grade in our schooling system in the U.S., so we really learn as children that it's super important to say something or you're not going to get that extra credit, and it doesn't really matter what you say, but speak up. So we've got a lot of training on talking without preparing, and we don't feel that it's embarrassing or inappropriate to speak even if we don't have much to say. So if you're leading a global team, you have to really think about how to make sure that you're hearing the voice of diversity. And some different techniques that you can use. I mean, first of all, make sure that you tell the team in advance what questions you're going to be asking them, so people who come from cultures that are less comfortable speaking without preparing have an opportunity to get ready, and cultures who come from more— people who come from more group-oriented cultures have an opportunity to check and see what they're colleagues think before you call on them in the meeting. So those are a couple of things, but beyond that, you also want to make sure that you are, like, if you're working virtually, that you're giving people lots of different ways to speak up. Like maybe some of people, you know, use the chat box, raise your electronic hand, speak up openly if that's working, and then make sure that you're also looking Looking for bright eyes. We gave the— I gave the example about bright eyes earlier. Yeah. And you might think, well, how could you look for bright eyes on a virtual team? But you can. Bright eyes in a virtual team means that maybe the person will lean forward, maybe they will open up their mouth a little bit, maybe they will, well, maybe they'll chat a little comment into the chat box or unmute themselves. And if you're a leader who's really paying attention to those things, you might find that you can say, oh, hey, you know, do you have something to say? Oh, thank you. And in doing so, we all start to hear the voice of diversity better. Beyond that, explain the differences to the team and ask them to self-correct. Like, maybe I will, as an American, recognize that I don't have to fill up the silence. I can just sit there quietly and give someone else And

I guess another one is around time management and scheduling. So, again, being British, up until I moved to France, I was always very punctual and on time and expected the meeting to start on time and a bit perplexed when it didn't. Obviously, when I moved to France and lived and worked in France for a bit, I realized that the start time of meeting was just a guideline and they tend to start 10, 15 minutes afterwards. And actually, those first 15 minutes are very much for people to have an informal conversation before you actually get started with the the meeting. Other cultures are much more, even more punctual than I am as a Brit. So, how do we respect this? How do leaders like kind of, again, is it back to what you said? Let's talk as a team how we're going to look at meetings and try and get something that kind of respects everyone around this. How do leaders navigate this? Yeah. Whether your French colleagues are turning up a bit late, or in your example at the start, maybe your Indian colleagues are turning up even later for a start time.

Yeah. Now, this dimension is interesting because I believe now that we're working virtually, that, that kind of like the start time of the meeting when we're in virtual meetings has become more or less uniform, right? I mean, that's so like when we were like just a few years ago, mostly in face-to-face meetings, You might find that, like, of course, if you're in a face-to-face meeting and you're working in Cameroon, people might show up, you know, like 25— you show up at the time it's scheduled, no one is there, right? So people might show up, what, 20 minutes after the time? And people kind of know, well, things are flexible, a lot of different things are happening around us, so we are all just— we meet when we're all there, right? When we get together. And of course, in a Well, like the most punctual culture in the world is Japan. Okay, back to the Japanese, but also punctual cultures, Australia, Germany, Switzerland. In these cultures, if you show up a few minutes late for a meeting, people really take that as a sign of disrespect for my time. So it may be that when we're working virtually that we don't see this, the start of the meeting so differently anymore, but that dimension of flexible time versus, well, what we call monochronic cultures. Those are one-at-a-time cultures where we're very focused on being on time. That's what we'll call linear time cultures. And flexible or polychronic cultures, we can really see that like in just in how we might follow an agenda. So, in more monochronic linear time cultures, we like to have the agenda in advance and we follow one thing at a time in order versus more flexible time cultures, like, I don't know, maybe India or Brazil, where we feel like, you know, we go off of the agenda as necessary based on the moment in front of us. So I don't think we need to do anything specifically about that dimension. Just, we may set a team culture if this comes up on our own team. Just be very clear about what our team culture is so we know how to meet and how we work together on this team, and then model those behaviors as the leader. But beyond that, as individuals who may travel to other countries or need to work with different people in different parts of the world, I think just recognizing that what's respectful in one culture and what's considered important in one culture is very different from one part of the world to another. And with just a little bit of open-mindedness, we can kind of keep our own reactions in check and laugh at ourselves. That's always good too, right?

That is important. That is important. And I mean, would you say, Erin, so obviously if you're a leader running a team or manager running a team, obviously there are basics where always that you need to look at. How do we communicate? What are our ways of working? How do we keep an— how do we create an environment where people feel safe and able to speak up? That kind of psychological safety. We've got trust in each other. Those things are the basics, I guess, of— they're complex, of course. They're the kind of basics of effectively running a team. Are they accentuated when you've got a multicultural team, presumably?

Yeah. So again, going back to the fact that at one level we are all the same, right? We are all humans. And of course, because we are all humans, the ideas of psychological safety is— I mean, the importance of psychological safety for example, is the same around the world. I mean, yeah, it's equally important in every country. However, what makes me feel psychologically safe, that may be very different from one country to another. So, we can recognize that we are all this— we all have these same human drivers. But we also have to get to the place that we're hoping to by using different methods. And by recognizing not just the uniqueness of each individual, but also the differentiation of how we feel comfortable or ready to speak up based on the environment that we come from.

Yeah, very good. So, again, if we start to look towards the future or the way work is evolving, you know, and as teams become more dispersed and distributed, we talked about it a little bit, what trends or shifts do you see shaping the future of work when it comes to navigating cultural and organizational downturns? Yeah.

So, I think I want to talk about one dimension that we have not spoken about yet, which is the trusting scale. And that looks at task versus relationship-oriented trust. So, what we can see is that in different cultures, we spend different, like, different amounts of time building emotional bonds. Well, maybe I'll give you an example. I was working with a team in Brazil. They were going through a possible merger with a group in New York. So the Brazilians come to New York. Morning one, they— the Americans are very friendly but very tight in their scheduling. So morning one, they get down to business, start going through these items. It gets to be lunchtime. The Americans have sandwiches ordered in. They continue to kind of like talk about work to some degree during the lunch. 6 o'clock in the evening comes around. Okay, we've accomplished We've accomplished so much. We're exhausted. Let's take a break. They do the same thing the next day. So at the end of the meeting, the Americans are feeling like that has been a great meeting. They've accomplished so much and used everyone's time so wisely. But the Brazilians are not feeling sure about whether they can trust these individuals. So they request another meeting in Rio. The Americans come to Brazil. Morning one, they get down to business. But this time, when it gets to be lunchtime, they take a break. They go to a good restaurant, they share good food, they stop talking about work. For an hour, the Americans start moving around in their seats. An hour and a half, the Americans are looking at their watches. 2 hours, the Americans are thinking, with all of this wasted time, how are we going to accomplish what we're coming to— what we've come here to accomplish? But what they don't recognize is that for those Brazilians, this lunch really symbolizes something important. Hey, dear colleagues who have come across the world to work with us, we would like to show you that we respect you. And if nothing else happens now but we build that emotional bond, that would be a very good use of this time together. So, that dimension— you asked me about how the world of work is changing. And what I found is that it's not that we have become more task-oriented in our in our work. It's just that the— let me say that differently. Relationship-oriented cultures like those in Latin America or those in Africa or in most parts of Asia, they are still as relationship-oriented as ever. The issue is that now that we are working virtually, often it's just much harder Harder to build those emotional bonds because we don't have the opportunity to meet face-to-face. So that means that as team leaders, we really need to be thinking carefully about, are we doing what we need to, to get to know one another at a deeper level? And how can we find the time to bring the team together? Or if we can't bring the team together, think creatively about how to— How to get to know one another personally when we're working at a distance. And of course, I believe that's true even when you're working with a bunch of task-oriented people from, for example, Germany. But when you bring people together from different parts of the world, it becomes so much more important.

So maybe the penultimate question, Erin, before we go to the question of the series. So most of the— as I said, most of the people listening to this will be working in HR. They might be chief people There might be a senior HR leader, might be an HR professional supporting the business themselves. How can HR professionals maybe listening to this structure some of the insights that you've offered into a clear plan of action?

Yeah. So, I think maybe at the beginning I talked a little bit about it, but I'm going to talk about it a little bit more, right? So, I have 8 behavioral scales which breaks down So we've got, like, the low and high context, the direct and indirect feedback, all of these elements that we've been talking about. And then you can map out one culture up to another on the scale, and you can see, oh, in this way, these 2 cultures are quite similar, and in this other way, like, both of them are relationship-oriented, but they're very different when it comes to feedback. This one here is much more direct than that. So that's one thing. So, the first answer is that I would say, you know, to take the time to really learn, understand the 8 scales, and learn where the different countries that are important to your organization fall on those scales. And if you go to my website, erinmeyer.com, to the resources page, I have like a bunch of articles out there where you can kind of see some of the positions and you can start to look at them. But beyond that, of course, as human resource professionals, we also always need to remember that individuals are different. And that's where I encourage people to do a personal assessment. So, if you go to ErinMeyer.com, there's also a tools page. And there, people can go to the personal assessment. They can respond to 24 questions about themselves, get their personal map. And I always joke that you can find out if you are living in the right country or not. But I think actually on a more serious note, then it allows us as a team to sit down and say, okay, well, like, I'm from the US, I've been living in France a long time. Here's the US map, here's the French map, here's my individual map. Here's how the American culture is still in me. These are the ways I've become rather French. Yeah. And then this is the way that I'm actually different than both of my cultures. And if as a team we go through that process together, then it helps us to have open discussions about these things, to not feel like, well, I can't— don't dare bring it up. And it also helps us if we're working with clients or suppliers in other countries to recognize, oh, you know, I can ask her about this because I know she lived in India and she has insights, and we're working with Indians and having issues, right? So I just So I just really encourage everybody to get the conversation started and use these tools and methodology in order to move beyond kind of the worries of stereotyping to think about what we can do in a practical, concrete way.

Yeah, I mean, that was a hypothesis. I mean, I became more French having lived and worked in France. And even though we moved back in 2011, still had a house down there for a while, still going on holiday a lot. I'm still far more French than I was before, and there's certain traits which people would associate with French which I'm definitely stronger than I am in my old British ways. So like queuing, for example, the Brits will queue for anything, whereas the French don't always want to queue. I'm a bit more like the French on that now, which much to my shame. But anyway, um, Erin, moving to the, uh, question of the series. So this is something we're asking all the guests on this series of the podcast, and I think it talks a little bit to what we've been talking about so far. How do you align HR and business strategies to ensure employee experience and culture directly contributes to company success?

Yeah, so I think maybe I'll take a moment now to speak about organizational culture. So just kind of like the word culture, just very simply, I generally define culture as the personality of a group, right? So, in the same way that like we can— well, that like if as I get to know you, I can define, you know, your individual personality. Okay, this is David's personality. Groups also develop personalities over time. Mm-hmm. And of course, we've been talking in this podcast a lot about the personality of nations and about how to understand those personality differences when we're looking at different different cultures around the world. But organizations also have personalities. And those personalities are, of course, what we call corporate or organizational cultures. And quite often corporate cultures are largely linked, have many similarities to the culture that— to the national culture that they were, let's say, born and raised in. Mm-hmm. But of course, every company is different, and based on your industry and your products, but also your leaders and, and the desire of that company to, to form people to behave in different ways, each company may have a different, a very different way of working. And what I generally say when you're thinking about organizational culture is that your organizational culture is the glue that creates some kind of commonality for people to work together when you come from all over the world. And it doesn't mean that people from other countries then need to abandon their own cultural way of working, but instead that we can have some guidelines about behaviors that we adopt across the globe, no matter where we come from as a company. And we can also talk about and understand and celebrate the diversity When we come from, let's say, the diversity of coming from different countries and different locales. So, I'd really encourage the HR managers to think about leveraging the organizational culture as a point where we can meet on, but never using it as something to kind of wipe out national cultural differences.

It's that ability to blend the two, isn't it?

That's right.

Erin, it's as, as ever, it's an absolute— it's been an absolute pleasure to speak, speak, speak with you. I always learn a lot, um, listening to you. And, and, and actually, you know, certainly some of the, some of the, the content I've heard from you over the years has actually made me think, oh, okay, that's why that happened. Um, and I'm sure many of our listeners will, will think the same as well. Um, before we part ways, um, for, for the day and end the episode, could you let listeners know how they can find you on social media? and follow your great work. I will do. I've already done for The Culture Map. The other book is No Rules Rules, which is all about Netflix's organizational culture, I think. And again, definitely recommend for listeners.

Yeah, thank you so much, David. Yeah, so, um, please join me on LinkedIn where I post frequently. Erin Meyer, you'll find me. And as I said, my website erinmeyer.com. I have lots of resources For people who would like to learn more about the Culture Map or the No Rules Rules content. And David, it's been a great pleasure to be with you again, and I always enjoy working with your group and hope we can continue the discussion at another time.

I hope so too as well, Erin. So thank you very much.

Take care.

And we'll go back to the studio. In this series, we will be speaking to a range of senior leaders who are pushing a data-driven And digital HR agenda. Make sure that you subscribe via your podcast app of choice and also via our YouTube channel for free and regular interviews with the digital HR leaders of the future. Thank you.