The Culture Map

by Erin Meyer

  Emperor (kindness) over Subject (loyalty)

  Father (protection) over Son (respect and obedience)

  Husband (obligation) over Wife (submission)

  Older Brother (care) over Younger Brother (model subject)

  Senior Friends (trust) over Junior Friends (trust)

  If Confucius were alive today and updated his model for today’s business leaders, he would likely add a sixth human relationship to his structure: Boss (kindness, protection, care) over Subordinate (loyalty, respect, obedience).

  To this day, perhaps because of their Confucian heritage, East Asian societies, from China to South Korea to Japan, have a paternalistic view of leadership that is puzzling to Westerners. In this kind of “father knows best” society, the patriarch sitting at the top of the pyramid rarely has his views or ideas challenged. And though Asian countries have begun to move past these narrowly defined roles in politics, business, and daily life, due in part to growing influence from the West, most Asians today are still used to thinking in terms of hierarchy. They tend to respect hierarchy and differences in status much more than Westerners.

  In egalitarian cultures, the down-to-earth CEO who chats with the janitor every morning on a first-name basis is often singled out for praise. You won’t see this in China or Korea.

  Some of the main points to remember about egalitarian versus hierarchical cultures are summarized in Figure 4.3.

  FIGURE 4.3.

  LEARNING TO MANAGE IN A HIERARCHICAL CULTURE

  Like any good American, I was raised to be quite uncomfortable with the idea of a fixed social hierarchy. When I thought of hierarchy, I thought of the lowest person’s responsibility to obey, which I felt suggested an inhumane situation, like a relationship between slave and owner. I saw this as being in direct contrast to individual freedom.

  However, in order to understand the Confucian concept of hierarchy, it is important to think not just about the lower level person’s responsibility to obey, but also about the heavy responsibility of the higher person to protect and care for those under him. The leader’s responsibility for caring and teaching is just as strong as the follower’s responsibility to defer and follow directions. Those from Confucian societies have believed for centuries that this type of dual responsibility is the backbone of a virtuous society.

  Recognizing and respecting this system of reciprocal obligations is important for the manager from an egalitarian society who finds himself working with a team from a hierarchical society, particularly one from Asia. Like a good Confucian, you must remember your obligations. Your team may follow your instructions to the letter, but in return, you must show a consistent paternalistic kindness. Protect your subordinates, mentor and coach them, behave as a kind father would to his children, and always look out for their interests. Play your role well, and you may find that leading a team in a hierarchical culture brings many rewards.

  After several years in China, Steve Henning, the Australian bike rider we met earlier in the chapter, summarized his own experience:

  What a pleasure to lead a Chinese team! When I was managing in Europe, every idea I tried to implement had to be hashed out at each level of the department. Hours and hours were lost trying to create buy-in. When I first started working here in China, I felt frustrated that my staff wouldn’t push back or challenge my ideas in the way I was used to. But I have developed a very close relationship with my team members over the past six years—almost a father-son connection. And I have come to love managing in China. There is great beauty in giving a clear instruction and watching your competent and enthusiastic team willingly attack the project without pushing back or challenging.

  As we’ve noted, symbolic gestures can send important signals about the style of leadership you practice. This is why the use of names is significant. Many Western managers, who tend to prefer informal, egalitarian relationships, try to get their Asian subordinates to call them by their first names. However, if the age and status gap is wide, most will be uncomfortable doing so. You’ll have better luck suggesting they call you by a hybrid name/title—something like “Mr. Mike.”

  Similarly, details of etiquette may prove critical to your success in China, Korea, or Japan. When you enter a room, you should know whose hand to shake first (the boss’s) and with whom to exchange pleasantries before sitting down to serious business (everyone in descending hierarchical order). When hosting a dinner, you should make seating arrangements according to the rankings of your guests, lest you offend someone. Get any of these details wrong, and you risk not making it to the next meeting, let alone closing the deal.

  LEVEL-HOPPING: LOOK BEFORE YOU JUMP

  No matter which country you work in, there is a PowerPoint slide buried somewhere in the human resources department that shows the organizational structure of your company. Your own name is located somewhere on the chart in a neat box, and if you follow the lines up from that box you will see the name of your boss, above that the name of your boss’s boss, and eventually the name of the chairman of the company. If you follow the lines down, you will see those who report to you listed in a neat line, and those who report to those people in neat lines below that one. This kind of on-paper hierarchy is common to every business culture—but the appropriate ways to navigate it in the real world differ widely, depending on how hierarchical or egalitarian that culture is.

  For example, what if you would like to speak to someone who is not just one level above you (your direct boss) but someone who is several levels above you? Can you simply pick up the phone and dial that person’s number, or drop in to the corner office for a quick meeting and a cup of coffee? If you do this, how will the boss of bosses respond—and what will your direct boss think?

  The answer may depend in part on the type of company you work for and the specific personalities involved. But cultural differences may play an even greater role.

  In more egalitarian cultures, it is often acceptable for communication to skip organizational levels. Carlos Gomez, the Mexican manager working in the Netherlands for Heineken, had this to say:

  I had two educational experiences shortly after my move. First, my new administrative assistant, Karl de Groot, was grabbing his coat to head out for lunch. I asked him if he wanted to get a sandwich with me, and he casually mentioned that he couldn’t because he was having lunch with Jan, who is incidentally the general manager of our operation and my boss’s boss. Apparently they had met in the elevator and Karl had suggested they have lunch. I was a little dumbfounded that an administrative assistant would set up a meeting with his boss’s boss’s boss without asking anyone’s okay or even informing his direct supervisor—me!

  Gomez asked his Dutch colleagues what they thought about this incident, and everyone seemed to think it was perfectly normal, so he shrugged it off. Then, during a staff meeting a couple of weeks later, a second incident occurred:

  One of my direct reports, a smart, ambitious manager who has really good people skills, mentioned casually that he had just e-mailed the CEO of the company with some criticism about a new initiative. He announced it to the entire team like it was the most normal thing in the world that he would e-mail someone who has over 64,000 employees and is five levels above him, without even telling me—his direct boss—or anyone else.

  Sometimes when I’m uncomfortable, I feel my smile spread and freeze across my face, and this was one of those times. I actively worked on keeping my lips firmly closed because I understood that, in a Dutch cultural environment, this was acceptable, but I wanted to say, “You did what?!” I felt my pulse racing just thinking about what kind of scolding I would be getting from the big boss the next time I was in a meeting with him about this loose cannon on my team.

  Of course, that never happened, as he is also . . . well, Dutch.

  The fact that all the people involved in these two stories lived and worked in the same environment made it a little easier for Gomez to process the cultural challenge involved. Over time, Gomez had be
come increasingly aware of what was appropriate in a Dutch cultural environment, so he was able to wrestle with his reactions in order to respond appropriately. The challenge of level-hopping can be even more complicated when the individuals involved are living and working in different countries, as may happen when long-distance communication via phone, e-mail, or another electronic medium is used.

  I was once asked to help improve the collaboration between two teams, one in Vancouver and one in Bangalore. Sarah Peterson, the manager of the Vancouver team, had eight Canadians working for her. “We develop the specifications for the software our clients need, and we send it to Bangalore where Rishi Rangan’s team of about twenty-five programmers complete the work,” she explained.

  “The problem began a few months ago when I needed information from one of the programmers on Rishi’s staff, and I e-mailed that person asking for information. No response. Three follow-up e-mails. Still no answer. Later, I needed something from another person on Rishi’s team, but again when I e-mailed her, no reply.”

  Peterson was fed up. “We pay these guys good money to do this work for us. So I called Rishi to complain about the lack of communication from his team.” But the situation did not improve. “It’s an incredible waste of time!”

  In hopes of diagnosing the cause of the problem, I phoned Rangan. “I honestly don’t know what I have done to break trust with Sarah,” he sighed. “But things have become so bad between us now that she is unwilling to work with me.”

  I asked the soft-spoken Rangan to explain what had happened. And what I heard was a very different interpretation of the situation than the one I had heard from Sarah Peterson:

  Sarah e-mails my staff directly. She seems to purposefully circumnavigate me. I am the manager: she should e-mail me, not my staff. Of course, when my team members receive these e-mails, they are paralyzed by the fact that someone at her level would e-mail them directly. They certainly don’t want to be brought into this issue between her and me. And then she complains that we are poor communicators!

  As this story illustrates, although e-mail is a relatively recent technological tool, different societies have already developed radically different patterns for using it. Because the two software teams in this case had misunderstood one another so badly, it was necessary to convene an in-person meeting between the groups to iron out their differences. “The trip was expensive. It’s not cheap to fly nine people from Vancouver to Bangalore for a three-day meeting,” Peterson later reflected. “But while together, we discussed our perceptions, cultural differences, and expectations, and we were able to improve the situation—to get back to page one.”

  When all is said and done, humans are flexible. Most of the time, if managers take extra pains up front to discuss how they are going to communicate, many painful and costly faux pas can be avoided entirely. The problem comes when both parties proceed, as Rangan and Peterson did, as if their style was normal and the other party was wrong. Once they understood the other’s behavior, things moved along well. Peterson readily agreed to copy Rangan on all her e-mails in the future. And Rangan agreed that it would be fine for her to go straight to his staff with urgent requests: He would let them know the new protocol immediately.

  Here are some simple strategies for cross-cultural level-skipping that can help you avoid the kinds of problems that Rangan and Peterson encountered. If you are working with people from a hierarchical society:

  •Communicate with the person at your level. If you are the boss, go through the boss with equivalent status, or get explicit permission to hop from one level to another.

  •If you do e-mail someone at a lower hierarchical level than your own, copy the boss.

  •If you need to approach your boss’s boss or your subordinate’s subordinate, get permission from the person at the level in between first.

  •When e-mailing, address the recipient by the last name unless they have indicated otherwise—for example, by signing their e-mail to you with their first name only.

  If you are working with people from an egalitarian society:

  •Go directly to the source. No need to bother the boss.

  •Think twice before copying the boss. Doing so could suggest to the recipient that you don’t trust them or are trying to get them in trouble.

  •Skipping hierarchical levels probably won’t be a problem.

  •In Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Australia, use first names when writing e-mails. This is also largely true for the United States and the United Kingdom, although regional and circumstantial differences may arise.

  If you aren’t sure about where the culture you’re working with falls on this scale, follow the hierarchical recommendations, which are generally safer and unlikely to get you into trouble accidentally. And if you are leading a global team, with members of various cultures with different positions on the Leading scale, define team protocols up front. When do we skip levels? Whom do we copy and when? Most misunderstandings can be avoided by defining a clear team culture that everyone agrees to apply.

  WHEN INTERNATIONAL STAFFERS SHOW TOO MUCH RESPECT—OR TOO LITTLE

  “In China, the boss is always right,” says Steve Henning, reflecting on his years of managing in Beijing. “And even when the boss is very wrong, he is still right.”

  If, like Henning, you find yourself managing staff in a culture that is more hierarchical than your own, you may be surprised and uncomfortable to see how much importance is placed on what you say and how difficult it is to hear the opinions of those in positions below you. “When I would ask my staff members for their thoughts, advice, or opinions, they would sit quietly staring at their shoelaces,” Henning remembers. “I later learned that this type of questioning suggested to them that I was trying to test them to see whether they knew what I wanted them to say. And since they didn’t know, they felt it was safer to remain quiet.”

  For Henning this situation was initially perplexing. “How can I make good decisions if I don’t know what my group really thinks about an issue?” he used to wonder. If you are managing a group that respects your authority so much that you are unable to get the input you need to make informed decisions, there are a few steps you can take without completely compromising the authority of your position. These strategies include:

  •Ask your team to meet without you in order to brainstorm as a group—and then to report the group’s ideas back to you. Removing “the boss” from the meeting removes their need to defer, allowing people to feel more comfortable sharing ideas.

  •When you call a meeting, give clear instructions a few days beforehand about how you would like the meeting to work and what questions you plan to ask. Tell your team members explicitly that you will call on them for their input. In this way, they can show you respect by preparing and sharing their ideas. It also gives the team members time to organize their thoughts carefully and to check with one another before the meeting.

  •If you are the boss, remember that your role is to chair the meeting. Don’t expect people to jump in randomly without an invitation. Instead, invite people to speak up. Even if team members have prepared well and are ready to share their ideas, they may not volunteer unless you call on them individually. When you do so, you may be surprised to see how much they have to contribute.

  On the other hand, you may find yourself in the same situation as Carlos Gomez, managing a group from a culture that is more egalitarian than your own. As Gomez explains, “I sometimes feel as if I have no idea what my staff is doing, because they rarely ask for feedback. For me, it has been a short step from feeling ‘hands off’ to feeling ‘out of control.’”

  Gomez began poring over management books recommended by his Dutch colleagues to learn their preferred leadership systems. He found that the management-by-objective system he had used in Mexico could easily be adapted to the egalitarian Dutch environment. His suggestions include the following:

  •Introduce management by objectives, starting by speaking with each e
mployee about the department’s vision for the coming year and then asking them to propose their best personal annual objectives subject to negotiation and final agreement with you. In this way, you become a facilitator rather than a supervisor while still keeping a handle on what is being accomplished.

  •Make sure the objectives are concrete and specific and consider linking them to bonuses or other rewards.

  •Set objectives for a twelve-month period and check on progress periodically—perhaps once a month. If progress is satisfactory, you can give your subordinate more space for self-management; if progress lags, you can get more involved.

  In addition, consider taking some simple symbolic steps to send appropriate signals about the leadership style you plan to employ. Dress as your team members dress—if they go without ties, do the same (except, of course, when a client visit or a presentation to the board of directors calls for a special “dress-up” protocol). Minimize the use of titles, addressing your team members by their first names—and encouraging them to do the same with you. And consider rotating the leadership role during staff meetings rather than retaining personal control of the discussion.

  Actions like these will demonstrate your flexibility and allow your team members to feel comfortable working with you. After all, you are the one in the cultural minority, so it’s up to you to adapt—if you are the boss.

  * * *

  After three years in the hierarchical, high-power-distance culture of Russia, Ulrich Jepsen had this to say:

  I’ve finally learned to lead well in this different environment, although it’s taken a major shift in the way I look at my role as the boss. I can be friendly, as friendly as I would be in Denmark, but I have to maintain a greater distance with my staff and fulfill a type of paternalistic role that was new to me. Otherwise, my staff simply would not respect me or, worse, be embarrassed by me. And, as I quickly learned, without respect it is difficult to get anything done.