Although marketed as a business book, The Culture Map by Erin Meyer sheds much light on the complexities of cross-cultural relations for anyone living or heading overseas.
The communicating scale
An American professor at INSEAD business school in Paris, Meyer uses eight dimensions to explain how people think, behave, and get things done across the world. One of these dimensions is her ‘communicating’ scale which ranks countries from ‘low context’ to ‘high context’.
Between the lines
In low context countries, such as the US, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands, good communication is precise, simple and clear. What you see is what you get. In high context cultures – e.g. India, China, Japan; to a lesser degree France and Brazil – communication is nuanced, layered and implicit. Messages are both spoken and read between the lines; they are often implied but not expressed.
Asking the right questions
So what advice can expat partners glean from The Culture Map? Before you go, or right after you arrive, talk to a lot of people, read books, and follow a course so that you can “start asking the right questions.”
