The Culture Map, Erin Meyer
The Culture Map is a non-fiction book that attempts to explain cultural differences between societies (mostly countries) based on 8 separate measures. Meyer convincingly argues that every society falls somewhere on a continuum and how people interact and perceive each other is dependent on where they fall on the continuum relative to each other. For example, on the disagreeing scale, Americans tend to see Germans and Italians as confrontational, and Italians see Germans as also confrontational, however Germans would tend to see Italians as confrontation-avoiders. This is because their relative positions on the scale are:
[confrontational end] German —— Italian —– American [non-confrontational end]
The measures that Meyer explores are:
- Communication
- Performance evaluation and negative feedback
- Persuasion
- Leadership and Hierarachy
- Decision Making (Big D versus Little D)
- Trust
- Disagreeing
- Scheduling and Time Management
The book provides some good guidelines for “getting along” with people from various cultures, or at least understanding why they behave the way they do. It does presume a certain amount of desire to understand and work effectively with different people, which not everyone possesses. If you’ve ever heard someone say “why can’t they learn to just do things our way”, then you know someone who might not appreciate being given this book as a gift.
My one selfish complaint is that Canada doesn’t appear among the list of countries on enough of the measures. I can pretty much pretend that Canada falls somewhere between the UK and USA, is that really always the case? There is a surprising mismatch between countries that are emotionally expressive yet simultaneously non-confrontational (such as Mexico or India), so could a similar mismatch exist for some of the measures for Canada? Disappointingly, the book doesn’t say.
Rating: If you work in a multicultural environment of any kind, buy a copy.