Japan is the opposite of America when it comes to
communication.
Many people, perhaps especially Americans,
underestimate how differently people do things in other countries.
Examples and insights for avoiding this can be found
in "The Culture Map: Breaking
Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business," a 2014 bestseller by INSEAD professor Erin Meyer (also check out those global communication diagrams
from Richard Lewis).
Meyer claims you can improve relationships by
considering where you and international partners fall on each of these scales:
- Communicating: explicit vs. implicit.
- Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect
negative feedback.
- Persuading: deductive vs. inductive.
- Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical.
- Deciding: consensual vs. top down.
- Trusting: task vs. relationship.
- Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoid confrontation.
- Scheduling: structured vs. flexible.
Communicating
Americans
are the most explicit or low-context culture there is (low-context meaning
their conversation assumes relatively little intuitive understanding). This is
not surprising for a young country composed of immigrants that prides itself on
straight-talking.
Japan
and other East Asian countries represent the other extreme.
Meyer
offers strategies for negotiating these differences, but the most basic
solution, as with all scales discussed in the book, is simply to be aware. Thus
Americans in Japan should pay attention to what's not being said; while
Japanese in America should brace themselves for direct language.
Evaluating
Americans may be very explicit communicators, but they
are in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to giving negative feedback —
as anyone who as been to an American school knows.
Israelis, Russians, and Dutch are among the most
direct when it comes to negative feedback.
Japanese are among the most indirect.
Persuading
Some cultures, notably the French and Italians, tend
toward deductive arguments, focusing on theories and complex concepts before
presenting a fact, statement, or opinion.
Others, notably Anglo-Saxon cultures, tend toward
inductive arguments, starting with focusing first on practical application
before moving to theory.
This trait shows up in everything from how people give
presentations or lead meetings to how they write emails.
Leading
"In Denmark, it is understood that the managing
director is one of the guys, just two small steps up from the janitor," a
Danish executive told Meyer. This represents one extreme in attitudes
toward leadership.
On the other side of the spectrum in countries like
Japan and Korea, however, the ideal boss should stand far above the workers at
the top of a hierarchy.
America's outlook on leadership falls somewhere in the
middle.
Deciding
How organizations make decisions relates closely to
how they view leadership, but with some important differences.
Notably, while Japan has a very hierarchical
leadership system, it has a very consensual decision-making system. This
is the famous ringi system, which involves building consensus at a lower level before bringing a
proposal to a higher level, thus enabling broad corporate consensus.
Trusting
In some cultures, notably America, people don't worry
so much about trusting each other because they trust their legal system to
enforce contracts, and so business negotiations focus on what's practical.
In others, including many emerging market economies
but also to a lesser extent Western Europe, personal relationships are much more
important, in part because people don't trust their legal system to enforce
contracts.
Disagreeing
Some cultures embrace confrontation while others avoid
it. This scale looks a lot like the scale showing the directness of negative
feedback, though with some differences, such as Sweden being further to the
left (direct) on negative feedback and further to the right (avoiding confrontation)
on disagreeing.
Scheduling
That different cultures treat time
differently is one of the most common observations for
anyone working or even traveling abroad. On one extreme you've got the exceedingly
precise Germans and Swiss; Americans fall relatively close to this end of the
spectrum; Western Europeans and Latin Americans tend to be more flexible;
Africa, the Middle East, and India are extremely flexible.
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