What if the way you give feedback, run meetings, or make decisions was holding your global team back—without you even realising it?  

Cultural differences influence how we work in powerful ways, and understanding them is the key to unlocking better collaboration and leadership. 

So, in this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, host David Green sits down with Erin Meyer, professor at INSEAD and author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business, to explore how cultural differences shape the way we work, lead, and collaborate. 

Join them as they uncover: 

• The eight dimensions of culture and how they impact leadership and teamwork 

• How organisations can use The Culture Map to navigate cultural complexities 

• Strategies for bridging high-context and low-context communication styles 

• Practical approaches to giving and receiving feedback across cultures 

• Aligning hierarchical and egalitarian leadership styles in global teams 

• Navigating cultural differences in time management and decision-making 

If you’re leading a global team or working across cultures, this conversation is packed with actionable insights to help you sharpen your cultural intelligence and lead more effectively. 

This episode is sponsored by Amazing Workplace and Workhuman.  

Amazing Workplace helps companies grow and become more successful through their people. How? Through an AI-powered platform that delivers the most accurate picture of how employees feel and why they feel that way and provides powerful tools to meaningfully impact areas where there is room for improvement.  

With Amazing Workplace, companies have reduced turnover by up to 90%, have increased revenue by over 400%, and solved recruitment. Find out more at www.amazingworkplace.com  

Workhuman is the world’s number one employee recognition platform, helping the biggest companies drive engagement, improve retention and show tangible business value – all the while making work more human for millions of people every day. 

 

To find out more, join David Green at the Workhuman Live Forum in London on March 19th. Tickets are free but limited, grab them now at workhumanlive.com/forum.  

[0:00:00] David Green: Have you ever wondered why your meetings in France start 10 minutes late; why your calls with colleagues in Japan begin precisely on time; or why some teams embrace open disagreement while others see it as disrespectful?  Culture shapes the way we work in ways we often don't realise, but understanding these differences can be the key to building more effective teams and stronger organisations.  So, how can you decipher the invisible forces that shape how people work, lead, and interact across different cultures?   

I'm David Green, and today on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by the wonderful Erin Meyer, professor at INSEAD and author of The Culture Map, to discuss the very complex but fascinating topic.  Erin's work has helped leaders worldwide decode cultural differences and adapt their management styles to lead diverse teams successfully.  And in this episode, we have a unique opportunity to explore the eight dimensions of culture that Erin outlines in her book, understand the key challenges leaders face when managing across cultures, and uncover practical strategies for bridging these differences, whether it's in communication styles, decision-making, feedback, or leadership.  So, whether you're leading a global team, working across cultures, or simply looking to sharpen your cultural intelligence, this conversation is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss.  With that, let's get started by hearing from Erin Meyer. 

Erin, welcome to the show.  You've devoted much of your career to exploring corporate culture in all its intricacies.  Can you tell us a bit about yourself maybe, but also how you discovered your passion for culture?   

[0:01:59] Erin Meyer: Yeah, thank you.  Hi, David, nice to be here with you.  I am an expert in cultural differences in both national cultural differences and organisational culture.  And I was actually raised in a very monocultural place.  So, I was raised in the Midwest of the US 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.   

What I saw in my work was that people in different countries were observing the behaviours around them and having very different perceptions of those behaviours, 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 culture mapping system that I use for mapping out national cultural differences.  And then later on I went also on to studying organisational 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 Founder and Chairman of Netflix, Reed Hastings, is about organisational culture.  And I explore in that book especially how to develop an organisational culture that leads to innovation, looking specifically at the unusual Netflix culture.   

[0:03:54] David Green: Brilliant, and we're definitely going to be exploring both bits, but principally The Culture Map, I think.  Erin, I'm particularly excited about this conversation.  We've known each other for a few years, I think, since we met prior to the pandemic, when I think you headlined the UNLEASH Conference in Paris, when I was the main stage MC, and we were going to try and do this podcast around the time of the pandemic and we 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 we're doing this.  And you kindly recently spoke at our Insight222 Global Executive Retreat in Amsterdam on the eight 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.  For our listeners, Erin, can you share a synopsis of what The Culture Map is about? 

[0:04:52] Erin Meyer: Yeah, so we really look at the invisible intricacies that impact our effectiveness, and maybe I'll just give a simple example that I often share about my two cultures, so the US and France, where I 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 had 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 competencies in an American environment.   

I think what we do in the US, it was quite unusual actually in many countries, which is that we have this tendency of we learn to give three positives with every negative, or to catch people doing things right.  So, when we start that feedback, we start by saying, "I love this and this was fabulous", and after we go through all of that positive feedback, "This is something that you can do a little bit differently".  So, I have an example of a French woman moving to the US, she gets feedback from 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".  And 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, "She didn't do anything that I told her to do in the performance meeting".   

So, these kinds of things often are not even recognised as being cultural differences and that's what's so important, or that's what makes it so important, that we spend a little bit of time 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?   

[0:07:18] David Green: That's really good, and I actually also lived and worked in France, not as long as you have Erin, for seven years, and my wife is English, so we were two English people living in the south of France.  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 two years.  But anyway, that's good.  So, I know that we'll talk about some of the cultural differences between maybe France and the US and the UK because I definitely recognised some of those when I was there.  So, if you think about, most of the people that listen to this podcast are working in HR roles.  They're either managing people themselves maybe, or being managed by people of different nationalities, particularly if they're working in a global company.  And increasingly, I guess, both with migration but also managing distributed teams now, as a leader, as a manager, you're always managing people from different places.  What are some of the things that organisations and those leaders should keep in mind when working with The Culture Map? 

[0:08:23] Erin Meyer: Yeah, so I think one of the most important things is to recognise that our experience of different cultures depends on the culture that we come from.  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, 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 organisation, and say, "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.   

[0:09:34] David Green: Yeah, one of my favourite things in France was, so I worked at this company for five years, a great company and I really enjoyed my time there.  But the hierarchical bit of this made me 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 four people that can meet at that table rather than two; 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, what level they were in the organisation. 

[0:10:15] Erin Meyer: 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 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 that.  You go into these meetings and you'll see people at all levels in the organisation 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.   

[0:11:00] David Green: Yeah, and that's ultimately relationships, whether it's at work or outside work, it's all about trust; trust is one of the most important elements of it, isn't it?  If you don't have trust, 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, I mean again, with my mindset being British, it's got better over the years because I've learned from experience, I think I'm being helpful by summarising the actions; whereas you said, if I would have been doing that to any Saudi Arabian colleagues that I'd been working with, they would actually think, "Well, David doesn't trust us, that's no good".   

[0:11:36] Erin Meyer: Yeah, but David, I do want to say that it's important to mention some of the differences, because of course the UK is really high context compared to the US, right?  And a big one of this is your sense of humour 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 making jokes, I guess.  Some 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, 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, "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".  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? 

[0:12:39] David Green: No, sometimes you have to say, "That's a joke", as you said, you label it for, "That's supposed to be a joke", yeah.   

[0:12:46] Erin Meyer: Otherwise, we miss it entirely!   

[0:12:49] David Green: How can companies train their managers and team members to give and receive feedback effectively, when some cultures lean heavily on giving heavy criticism and being direct, and others avoid it, particularly the British, I guess? 

[0:13:55] Erin Meyer: 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 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.  So, the UK clearly, of the European culture, 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 it to his Dutch colleague for feedback.  The Dutch guy gets it, he thinks, "Well, 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, "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 the opposite way, so let's say the Dutch guy writes the report and sends it to the British guy, again he thinks it's horrible.  But the British guy, before he calls up the Dutch guy, he thinks about, "Okay, how am I going to give the feedback?"  So, when he calls up the Dutch guy, he says, "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 about doing this a little bit differently, maybe, right?"  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 maybe he does.  Maybe he spends five minutes working on it, making those changes, and then finds out a little later that actually the British guy didn't like the report.  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 gonna 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 constructiveness 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.  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 will 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 recognising the uniqueness of every individual in the organisation.  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 organisations to recognise 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 in positions of risk.  We are all human 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 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 us.  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. 

[0:18:52] David Green: Yeah, so thinking practically, Erin, so let's say you're a new manager, you've been working for a big organisation 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 for a two- or three-year period, and suddenly you're managing lots of different people from different countries.  Now, I suppose the question is, what can the organisation 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? 

[0:19:39] Erin Meyer: Yeah, so I believe that this is quite a complex dance, which is of course an ongoing journey, we never master this.  Sometimes organisations will say to me like, "Oh, I don't think those people need to have this kind of discussion or training, because they've lived in many different cultures.  But anybody that says that clearly doesn't have that cross-cultural experience themselves, because for those of people who have lived in different cultures or spent time working internationally, we know that learning, that cultural learning is an ongoing journey.  My Culture Map 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, okay, keep in mind I've just written a book about cultural differences, right?  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, right?  Then I came to Germany, I crossed Europe.  I would ask if there were questions, people would raise 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 my contact, my counterpart, a Japanese woman from the publisher, she came up to me and she said, Erin 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 straight and he said, "Oh, thank you, I do".  He asked a fascinating question.  Tomoko did that three 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, 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 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 modelled for me".  So, I stopped and I silently looked around and I saw, okay, most people were looking at me, but not looking directly in my eyes.  And this one Japanese woman, let's say she grabbed me with her eyes.  So, 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 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 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, I asked Tomoko for help understanding her culture and she was able to give that to me.  So, I think we can all better take advantage of the multiculturalism around us by saying, "Hey, 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. 

[0:24:28] David Green: The next thing is around reasoning, I guess.  So, I know 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 that it aligns with different cultures? 

[0:26:05] Erin Meyer: Yeah.  I mean, that's the most complicated of all of the dimensions to explain and maybe to understand, but one of the really important ones.  And so, 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 comes from our education system, okay?  So, in Spain, we learn introduction, thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis.  So, first you introduce the topic, then you build up your point, then 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 when I gave a presentation in the US for the first time a few weeks ago, I noticed that after a few minutes, the Americans started looking bored.  So, I tried to be more dynamic, to 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, '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, well, continental European countries and especially in countries like Spain or Italy or France, but also in Germany, there's really this method of analysing 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 applications-first learning comes from British philosophers like Bacon, who taught empirical learning, like Francis Bacon, who taught us that we can 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.   

[0:28:55] David Green: Yeah, and again, for listeners that want to find out more, I'd strongly recommend buying, if you haven't already, buying The Culture Map and digging into it there as well.  So, Erin, obviously we live in a, well, maybe the period of globalisation is a bit at risk at the moment, but we still have very much a globalisation of organisations, 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 a 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 leaders in their organisation right up to the top really, on how to lead global teams and strike the right balance between respecting hierarchy and encouraging open collaboration?   

[0:29:53] Erin Meyer: 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 if there's a boss in the room, clearly that partially does have to do with hierarchy.  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.  They're comfortable just speaking up.  And if you come from 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 spoke earlier just for a moment about comfort with silence.  And I mean, what we really see is that in some cultures, like my own, we become very uncomfortable with silence very quickly in a discussion.  So, just a two 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, I could go eight, ten 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, the 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.   

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, even my French colleagues will say, "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 US.  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 people who come from more group-oriented cultures have an opportunity to check and see what their 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 if you're working virtually, that you're giving people lots of different ways to speak up.  Like, maybe some people use the chat box, raise your electronic hand, speak up openly if that's working, and then make sure that you're also looking for bright eyes.  And if you're a leader who's really paying attention to those things, you might find that you can say, "Oh, hey, 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, recognise that I don't have to fill up the silence.  I can just sit there quietly and give someone else an opportunity. 

[0:34:06] David Green: So, if you're a leader running a team or manager running a team, obviously there are basics always that you need to look at, how do we communicate?  What are our ways of working?  How do we create an environment where people feel safe and able to speak up, that psychological safety?  Have we got trust in each other?  Those things are the basics, I guess, they're complex of course, they're the basics of effectively running a team.  They're accentuated when you've got a multicultural team, presumably? 

[0:34:37] Erin Meyer: 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 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 recognise that 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 recognising 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. 

[0:35:30] David Green: Yeah, very good.  So, again, if we start to look towards the future or the way work is evolving, 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 organisational dynamics? 

[0:35:49] Erin Meyer: 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 amounts of time building emotional bonds.  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, 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 talk about work to some degree during the lunch, 6.00 in the evening comes around, "Okay, 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 show 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; two hours, the Americans are thinking, "With all of this wasted time, how are we going to accomplish what we've come here to accomplish?"  But what they don't recognise is that for those Brazilians, this lunch really symbolises 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 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 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 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. 

[0:38:52] David Green: So, maybe the penultimate question, Erin, before we go to the question of the series, so as I said, most of the people listening to this will be working in HR, they might be a Chief People Officer, they might be a senior HR leader, might be just 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?   

[0:39:21] Erin Meyer: 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 eight behavioural scales which breaks down culture.  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 two cultures are quite similar; and in this other way, 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, take the time to really learn, understand the eight scales, and learn where the different countries that are important to your organisation fall on those scales.  If you go to my website, erinmeyer.com, to the resources page, I have a bunch of articles out there where you can 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 the 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, "Then, 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, 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.  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 don't dare bring it up".   

It also helps us if we're working with clients or suppliers in other countries to recognise, "Oh, 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 really encourage everybody to get the conversation started and use these tools and methodology in order to move beyond the worries of stereotyping to think about what we can do in a practical concrete way.   

[0:41:58] David Green: 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, I still go 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, like queuing, for example.  The Brits will queue for anything, the French don't always want to queue.  I'm a bit more like the French on that now, much to my shame, but anyway…!  Erin, moving to the 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? 

[0:42:53] Erin Meyer: Yeah, so I think maybe I'll take a moment now to speak about organisational culture.  So, just to the word 'culture', just very simply, I generally define culture as the personality of a group, right?  So, in the same way that as I get to know you, I can define your individual personality, okay, "This is David's personality", groups also develop personalities over time.  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 cultures around the world.  But organisations also have personalities and those personalities are of course what we call corporate or organisational cultures. 

Quite often, corporate cultures are largely linked, have many similarities to the national culture that they were, let's say, born and raised in.  But of course, every company is different, and based on your industry and your products but also your leaders and the desire of that company to form people to behave in different ways, each company may have a very different way of working.  And what I generally say when you're thinking about organisational culture is that your organisational 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 behaviours 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 of coming from different countries and different locales.   

So, I'd really encourage the HR managers to think about leveraging that organisational culture as a point where we can meet on, but never using it as something to wipe out national cultural differences. 

[0:45:16] David Green: Yeah, it's that ability to blend the two, isn't it? 

[0:45:20] Erin Meyer: That's right. 

[0:45:21] David Green: Yeah.  Erin, as ever, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you.  I always learn a lot listening to you and actually, certainly some of the content I've heard from you over  the years has actually made me think, "Okay, that's why that happened", and I'm sure many of our listeners will think the same as well.  Before we part ways 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 organisational culture, I think.  And again, definitely recommend for listeners. 

[0:46:03] Erin Meyer: Yeah, thank you so much, David.  Yeah, so 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.