Erin Meyer: Cross-cultural management, leadership and trust
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Hi, everybody, and welcome to podcast in good company. Now today, we have a special guess with us, a red mayor who is one of the world's leading specialists across cultural management. At a good thing, she's written one of my favorite books called culture map.

So everyone um want to inspire you to to write this book.

Yeah hey, so nice to be here with you today. Well, so I was raised in minnesota. A lot of norwegians in minnesota, you might know, which is in the midwest of the us.

And as that was a very monocultural environment, I was really surrounded by people who had only lived in the same culture as me. And then as, after graduating from university, I moved to boots one southern africa, and I was teaching school there. And I just saw how all of the techniques that I had learned in the U.

S. For how to motivate and how to create a good classroom environment were totally falling flat. And the things that they were encouraging me to do in the classroom were so different than anything we would ever do in the us. So I became very interested in that time to just see how in different cultures we um not only that we motivate children and differently, but that we motivate later on in life our employees differently and that we have a whole different psychology about how to communicate and how to build trust and be effective. So that was the first step on this journey for starting to study how different cultures interact in international environment, which is what I do now really great.

So um you um have kind of split culture into eight different dimensions. And if you don't want, I just love to talk through some of them because I think it's so interesting and really, really make me think about how we run you know our fund uh, when we are in in several different countries, know we are in in way london, new york, singapore, yet we kind of treated as as as one culture. And of course IT isn't. But you you kick off with communication and you uh have this differential between low and high context communication cultures.

yes. So maybe i'll just take a moment to explain the framework and then i'll jump into low and high. So I have a methodology that breaks culture down into eight behavioral al scale s. So we look at things like how do we build trust differently in different cultures, or how do we make differently in different parts of the world and then throw about one hundred and eighty thousand interviews that we've conducted in about sixty two countries.

We have these countries that are positioned up and down the scale so you could compare one culture to another in order to think about both the similarities and differences in how to be more strategic and empathetic. And of course, you've just highlighted one of my favorite dimensions is the the one I write and speak about the most, which is one that looks at what that means to be a good communicator in different parts of the world. And what we have, we call low context cultures.

These are cultures we were really to be very explicit in the way that we communicate. So the us, which is maybe the most low context or explicit culture in the world. And I was like taught as a child to tell them what i'm going to tell them, and then tell them and then tell them what i've told them.

The very focus, a strong focus on like spelling things out and what i've learned living in other parts of the world. I lived in france currently, i've lived in france for the last twenty three years, is that in many other cultures like france, for example, there's a lot more like a good communicator is really passing a lot more information between of the lines and picking up a lot of unspoken messages. So the the sophistication of the of the communication is much higher.

And i'm an example of that would be just even in the french language, like we have this word in french, Susan told you means, don't listen to what I said, listen to what I meant, right? We even have these words in english. So I think this is a great invention to help us start thinking about how effective communication is so different from one part of the world to another.

So when I go to, uh, new york differences, how should I communicate differently?

Well, I think i'm in in new york, which is of course, a place of immigration, right? Like when you go to new york, if you've got people from all over the world who are now living together under the umbrella of the american culture and in that highly diverse culture, we've learned that we really have to spell things out.

So if you don't say IT IT was an community IT, and maybe i'll just give like a brand new example that I have just from last week. But like, I had this this person from italy in my class who said to me, you know, iran in italy, like, if you make a joke and the other person thinks it's funny, they laugh. But in the us, if you make a joke and the other person thinks it's funny, they say, that's funny. And I, I had never thought about this.

Why do nobody? Why do nobody ever say that about .

my jokes and it's all between the lines. So in any case, i'm at the end of that situation with the, with the the italian was i'd never thought about this site. Oh yeah, you're right. We we laughed and we say that funny and he said, no year, and i've been observing this a lot in the us. The laughter is optional.

Do you think the world is moving towards a more american communication style, more punch lines, shorter sentences?

Well, I mean, I do believe that we have to be that we've become perhaps shorter in our communication, which happens with been more and more virtual. But I want to give you an example. So I had an example just a couple of of, well, maybe twelve months ago where I was giving a presentation in japan.

And at the end of the presentation, I asked if there were any questions. No one raised their hand. I went to sit down.

So one of my colleagues is japanese guy who was traveling with me. He came up to me and he said, iran, I think there were some questions. Would you like me to try? And I said, yes, please.

So he's stood up in front of this group of japanese and he said, you know, professor mayer has just spoken with you. Do you have any questions? No one raised their hand, but he he's talked and he he quietly looked around the room.

And then, after several seconds of silence, he gestured to someone who was sitting there, from my perspective, motionless, and he said, you know, do you have a question? And this japanese guy set up straight, and he said, thank you very much. I do.

He gave a, he asked a fascinating question so afterwards, and then my colleague did that three more times, so afterwards I said to him, but how did you know that those people had questions? He said, a well, um IT had to do with how bright their eyes were. And I thought, wow, you know, for me coming from minnesota like I do, that's very chAllenging.

But then he clarified, he said, you know, iran, 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 weren't looking right at you. They were kind of looking somewhere else.

But I noticed that there were a couple of people in the room who really were looking right at you, and their eyes were bright. You suggesting they would be happy to have you call on them if you would like to. That was such an important learning experience for me.

And you might think, oh, well, that's japan. Japanese really like, different from the rest of the world. But I can tell you when I got back to insead, right, so i'm a professor at in seat outside of paris, and I teached these these like hugely international classrooms. And when I got back to in seau with this kind of lesson about looking for bright eyes and my glasses, I saw there were all of these people who were giving me this physical indication with their faces that they wanted to speak, that I was entirely missing. Because in the us, if you wanted speak, you always raise your hand right.

What's key? What's the key to this cultural sensitivity? The key to observe people in this a suit way is that you have to live a country and train, or people just have Better antenna.

So what is IT? Of course, if you go, when you live in another country, eventually you will really start kind of like a absorbing that culture in you. You have those experiences.

You learn to be more humble, you learn to be more curious. Hopefully you learn to be more curious and more. But I don't think you have to I mean, you don't have to devote your life to developing these skills by moving from country to country.

I do believe with a little bit of of systematic understanding, thinking about, you know, how do different cultures relate on this aspect that you can become more effective. Can I give you another example? Well, like let's just think about feedback. I mean, feedback is, of course, like something that we do so differently in different cultures.

This kind of is in with your with your second dimension, right? Evaluation and fee mark yeah that's IT right.

yeah. So that I mean, that is the second dimension. The second dimension looks at how we provide feedback in different countries. And I think that, that one is the most sensitive and in some ways mean the communicating dimension is perhaps the most the kind of interesting one.

But if you want to know if you want to if you want if if you're gonna cause a fence or you're going to break a relationship, it's because of the feedback dimension. And maybe i'll just give you an example. So of course, as I already said, I come from the us.

And in the us, we think of ourselves as being a very direct culture because we're so low context, because we're so explicit and we spell things out. But we actually have this tendency. In the us.

I learned IT as a child. Two, when I give feedback to give three positives with every negative, or to catch people doing things or right. And like, if you're from norway, where maybe you've learned that you know you if you have something that well, I think in norway, often you don't give the positive feedback.

The positive feedback may be just kind of assumed. So then you're giving me feedback and you start by telling me know what you think I could do differently. I may really take that as a sign of of disrespect, right? And then in the other way, that gets really confusing.

So so okay, you know, I live in, Frank said I was working. And in france, positive feedback is given a lot less frequently than in the us. And negative or corrective feedback is definitely giving more strongly than in the american context.

So i'm working with this french woman hears someone from the from the the book. This woman has been right and she's um she's a really excited about this move that she's making to chicago. So we spend a little time.

She's she's all energize. Then he moves to the us. And after she's been in chicago for four months, I do a press chew LED follow up call.

And before I call her, I call her new boss, this american named john. And I just say to john, you know, how are things going for saban? And he says, you know, iran not.

Well, it's so frustrated because i've spoken with to being a bunch of times about these things. SHE really needs to change if she's going to be successful. And SHE hasn't made any effort to make these changes.

I had my performance review with saban last week. Still no effort. So then I call saban, how are things going in the us? And SHE says, you know, here and they're going great. You know, I just had this fabulous feedback from my boss. IT was the best performance review i've ever received. So of course, when her american boss starts his feedback at his performance review by saying, you know, this was really this was really fantastic and this part was really thought out, and I really think you're making a huge impact here, she's thinking, wow, that's the best performance review, you know, anyone has ever given me. And by the time he gets to the real message, SHE isn't even listening.

And what do you think, what do you think this is the best way of doing IT?

What's the best way to give you back? Well, I do believe you ask me earlier whether you should adapt your style to the culture that you're working with. I mean, I do think when IT comes to feedback, of course, it's important to get the message out there. But if you give the message in away that's too direct for the culture that you're working with, you may break the relationship and that's not going to be good for your future. And if you give if you give the feedback and away, it's too interrex for the culture that you're working with, then they won't pick up the message and you may find that you need to come back and be clear the next time.

It's just so difficult to give, to give and receive feedback, right? And is so easy to defend people, to offend people, and it's so easy to be offended. And I ve uh you know of course read your book and one of things you recommend is to give a you know a positive and a negative, uh, straight after the the action.

So I tried this today. I gave a presentation together with two of my colleagues straight after the presentation. I said, hey, no, what? Let's give each other one one positive and one thing we need to improve. And IT was just great, you know, really low stress. I felt really natural and easy to take aboard.

Yeah, thank you. So that's actually you're not pulling from my other book, right from my no rules rules book where we have a chapter on giving feedback in an organization and how to create an organizational culture around this. So I think the messages that if you're working with people outside of your own company or your own team, I mean, really, we wanted just try to watch how other people are doing that. Try to be a little bit less direct in general because we don't want to risk we don't want to risk breaking in the relationship and then gradually, kind of easy to be a little bit more direct.

But you made a ramework of over four rules. What what are they? They have to start with the night. Okay.

okay. yeah. Is my forests. I do believe it's really a really good strategy to say, okay, in this company. This is how we will give feed back, which is, of course, gives us a common platform for how we work with one another.

And the four years of feedback which you may implement throughout your organization are, number one, when you give feedback, you need to aim to, I mean, for remember, you need need to aim to help, aim to assist, right? So that's, of course, the first one, meaning that I don't give feedback just because i'm frustrated or i'm angry or I need to get something off my chest. If that's how you're feeling, don't give the feedback at all.

But if I see, oh gosh, you know, I think that I could be a Better interview or if he did X Y R, Z, and I have an idea for how that could help help you. Well, in that case, I have feedback that I could give you with the aim to to help you, with the aim to assist. That's your first day. The second a is the feedback must be actionable. And that's, of course, critical because if I have feedback for you, but there isn't anything you could do about that, I mean.

keep IT to yourself is kind of a persons attach yeah I mean.

then I get I think we come back to like what's even the point what's even the point of giving the feedback if the person can act on IT? So those are the two days of giving feedback. And then the two ages of receiving feedback are, number one, show appreciation.

So even if you doesn't feel good to receive that, even if you disagree with the person, don't defend yourself, just say, you know, what would I? Thank you very much. Thank you for having given me that feedback. I'm gonna think about IT.

But if you really get a feedback, a culture of feedback going in your organization, if you manage to get your employees giving a lot of feedback to one another, which can be hugely beneficial for the organization, you're gonna need a fourth a also. And that fourth a is that each person can accept or decline whatever feedback is given to them. I don't mean that I say explicit thank you, but I decline your feedback.

I mean that I um I think about the feedback you give me and then I decide what i'm going to take and what i'm not going to take. And we all know that that's part of a principle of culture of of developed in a culture of feedback. So then that brings me to what you've said earlier. And I think that in that case, if you that culture of feedback going, we can really do what you suggested, uh, Nicole, which is that at the end of a meeting, we can say, hey, let's just to sit down and give you one another a little bit of feedback so that we can be more successful at next time.

I guess the advantage of doing this straight after a meeting is that you can be pretty quick. And IT works is a bit like when you respond to email. If you really quick, IT can be one sentence.

If you take a little time, he needs to be much longer. So I guess you save some time time as well. But just moving on here.

So another dimension, you talk about trust. How do you build trust in different cultures? What what's the key here?

yeah. So I think that that's actually the the the most foundational of all of the dimensions. So of course, in every country in the world, we have to have trust in order to get work done, and that's culturally universal.

But when IT comes to how we feel trust for someone that's quite different from one country to another, and we can just keep IT simple, there's two kinds of trust. So there's cognitive trust that's like trust from my brain. That's like, I see you are on time, you do good work, you're reliable, I trust you.

And then we have a we call effective trust that's like trust from my heart, right? That's like I feel an emotional connection or a personal bond with you. I feel like i've seen who you are at, at a beyond your professional persona.

And because i've seen who you are inside, I trust. Now, if I ask you why you trust your mother IT doesn't matter where you come from, we'll talk in every country we will talk about effective trust. But if I ask you why you trust a business partner will see a lot more difference from one part of the world to another.

Mean some culture like like might actually both of our cultures, right, both the us and norway, which are both quite task gorie ted culture. So in these cultures we really try to separate like cognitive trust for work and effective trust for home. And then in many other world cultures, for example, every emerging market country in the world, just that started, we can release, see that kind of cognitive and effective trust, all woven together in a work environment.

So the importance of winning and dining is bigger.

Uh, yeah I mean, yes, clearly, but I think that we could take IT to A A different level by saying that the the goal in a task oriented society is to be friendly and enjoy working together, but to really minimize well, minimize distractions in order to stay focused on getting as much done as we can in a short period of time versus in a relationship oriented culture.

We really won our initial goal to be to do whatever we can virtually, if necessary, or if we can go there again. I mean, whining and dining, definitely, but really exposing who we are inside laughing together. Spending time developing some kind of a friendship together. And then if we start like that, we'll find that the rest of the work will and have all fall into place at a later after we get that in place.

Now um one of the implications for uh leadership, so uh in particular the difference between an egalitarian society and and a country with more heroic so you know no way totally that you know a society， a very little hierarchy, things are anchored left, right and center uh so that everybody participates in the decision making. Uh verse other country is where is different so you know how do how do you do get these different things?

Yeah so I think that leading scale is quite an interesting one because it's true like you come from one of the most egalitarian cultures in the world, right? So in your culture in norway, there's this very like I think strong belief that the best boss is almost like a facilitator or among equals. So we like our boss to like look like everybody else and we want our boss, instead of telling us what to do.

We want our boss to be their kind of like facilitator discussion. And then, of course, and more, well, we will call IT higher or article. But I hesitate with higher or article at the word I call IT low power distance versus high power distance because I know like in your and my country in norway, in the us, we think of the word hierarchy is something negative.

But if you think about this idea of power distance, so norway a very low power distance culture um very low low respect shown to the the status of the person that we're working with versus in a higher power distance culture. Maybe we're in india or maybe we're in china. Um well, you work in singapore clearly. Uh higher power distance culture where people really learned from a Young age to show a lot more respect for the position of the person that they're working for. And then this gets, I think, really complicated as a boss because that means we have to really know how to kind of adapt our leadership style to the position to the the culture that we're working with.

But how do how do these differences actually happen? So you if you just move from denmark across the border to germany, right, very, very different. And france, very different is how does how do this that happen?

Yeah well, that specific. What I think is very interesting because if we look at kay.

let's talk about you. You are on your first name with your boss, right? In germany, you are your surname and you put the doctor in front, right?

Yeah well, that's actually it's interesting because if you look at a culture map, like if we look at a culture map of dead mark up to germany, in many ways those cultures are quite similar right on my culture map, right? So like both of them are pretty direct with with with negative feedback. Germans a little bit more direct, but both of them pretty direct.

Both of those are rather task oriented societies, not very different on that scale. But when IT comes, both of them rather low context, although dead mark a little bit more high context than than germany. But when IT comes to hierarchy, that's where you've got a big difference.

So delmar's, actually, on my map, and my research is the most egalitarian an country in the world. Then I know in skin the nav, you talk a lot about sweet. And I think maybe you say sweets are more realitas, but sweets are more consensual, right? Cosway ds are clearly like a lot more consensual than other skin avian cultures, but gains the most of galilee.

Ian, the least difference to authority, and of course, in germany, that difference to authority is in comparison to denmark, quite a bit stronger. And if you, just like you ask me why I do so, get just do my professorial thing for a moment. But if we think about what's LED to these differences across the europe, you can see, like in scandinavia, the culture.

Well, across europe, the cultures that fell under the influence of the vikings tend to be some of the most egalitarian and consensual cultures in the world. And the vikings, of course, they LED by consensus. So there are all, all of these stories about southern europeans historically coming to scan and navia to negotiate and having to come home early because they couldn't figure out who was in charge.

And then, of course, the cultures that fell under the influence of the roman empire tend to be a little bit more higher article. So you go to italy, you go to spain. Definitely of a stronger, higher article structure in comparison to scanning area. And then I think the most interesting one is actually religion, because the culture that, well, when the when the protestant religion came to europe in a way in the sixteen hundreds, in a way that removed the hierarchy from the church. So now I talked directly to god, instead of talking to the priest, the bishop, the pope, before speaking to god.

I am actually, like, even in the netherlands s, if you move from the protestant part of the netherlands s to the catholic part of the netherlands, you can see a movement from a little bit well, from a super galitch arian to like slightly less egalitarian an as you move to the catholic part. So I mean, I don't talk too much about like a history, but I do think that is interesting to think about when I imagine to lie when you come to work in the morning that you're not thinking about the vikings or the roman empire. Maybe maybe you should be there.

But it's really, really interesting. It's great trend. You know there was a time um a little while back where seem to be a trend towards more sanny y leadership sales across europe certainly right. So very important companies in switzerland uh in the U K. And so on had either CEO to cheer uh people from chair persons from you know from Sandy is to see the trend to worst energy .

style on yeah so I do believe in the world。 I mean, we not we can see with research that every country in the world is generation ally becoming a little bit more regale therion. So in india, the Younger generation is more egalitarian an than the older generation.

In korea, the Younger generation a little more glittering than the actually, and even in norway, the Younger generation a little more egalitarian than the older generation. And I think that's happened actually because of the internet. I mean, like when I was a child, okay, i'm fifty two.

When I was a child, clearly there was no internet, which means that the people who had more expertise and more experience, we're the source of knowledge. So what my teacher tells me or my father tells me, I mean, I have to put faith in what in in that experience. But of course, with the internet, we started, let's say, in a galilean ism of information.

So now the Young person can look something up on the internet, and whether i'm in india, korea or nor way I can say to the teacher, hey, but that's not what I read on the internet yesterday. Or doctor, hey, I looked IT up. I don't think you're right.

So I do believe that that that created this kind of notion of, wow, it's great that we can all have the power, but I want I think it's important when you ask about this about this kind of leaning towards scanner avian leadership because we talked about a galley arianism. But one of the other big aspects that you have in scandinavia is this consensual decision making. And that's where I would say, I mean, people generally lump those two things together.

Like galata. Ia means consensual decision making. I have two separate dimensions for those because like in the U S, where we are, well, okay, we're rather a gala attarian, although much more hierarchical than you .

are in norway. Both decides.

but the boss decides, right? Or at least the individual decides, and usually that's the boss. We don't really like this thing that you tend to do in sanna avia, which is like take a long time to make decisions by groups right?

Um uh I mean I like okay in norway and even more so in sweden, but clearly the the tendency is that over A A period of time we we share our ideas, we come to some kind of group agreement. And then once we implement that that that idea we don't go back is because IT took us a long time to get to IT. So in what what I referred to was consensual cultures, decisions tend to be slowed and made to be made, but then they're definitely as much as possible fix, right? And interestingly, like, okay, in norway you are a galilean and consensual.

But we talked about japan earlier. Mean, japan is, I think your listeners will know a very hierarchical society, okay a lot of deference to the of the person that you're working with, but it's also the most consensual culture in the world which more so than sweden, which means decisions are made slowly by the group um and then once they are made, they are fix so so I think it's just like what's the let's say, what's the most modern approach? I mean, depends on what kind of work you're trying to do.

So like japanese people, they're really good at automobiles, right? okay. Well, if you are developing a product where you want very little risk of of a mistake that a consensual decision making is great, it's good to take a really long time to make the decision.

And in those in those like, let's say, a look at more manufacturing environment, a hierarchical higher archa leadership methods also can be very fast. But if we're in an agile environment, we need creativity. Egalitarian ism generally leads to a lot of creativity throughout the organization.

So you have so you've seen all these different companies and all these different copal culture. So now we're going to make a company here arian and equal ink. You know what? What do we want the culture to look like? What is the perfect culture if you can take a little bit of each? Yeah.

what is what is a great company? okay. So I mean, as I said, IT has to start with what you are going to do are your listeners, mostly entrepreneurs?

Is they're all over the place?

Okay, right? So.

but they all very, very clever, otherwise they wouldn't have listened to the program.

There are the smart st.

people. okay.

But let's say, let's say that you and I are doing an IT start up. I mean, if if we're doing an IT start up, then we want the gala italian ism of scanner avia, right? okay.

So we want very low levels of hierarchy throughout the organization, but we want super fast and flexible decisions like in india. We want decisions to be made quickly and we want them to be able to be changed quickly. And that's because, of course, and the start up environment, I mean, everything's changing around us like in india, everything's changing around, around us.

We may need to change our product quickly. We might need to reinvent ourselves again and again. So often a more top down a decision making approach would be more effective.

And I actually think gonna a start up environment. We want to be as direct as possible when we're giving communication the most direct cultures in the world, the netherlands and israel. So let's be dutch or israeli in the way that we give feedback.

Um but let's also invest time in getting to know one another. And I actually think that's true across industry and across work that you're doing. If you have any international component in your work, you want to spend a lot more time in building personal relationships. Because once we have that fundamental trust, then if you speak to directly to me, I will forgive you. If we don't have that trust and you speak to directly to me, that's really going to be the the last time that I want to work with you.

So I think you can really think about like what's my goal? What industry am I working in? What do I want to accomplish? And then you can kind of map out like even in which type of cut, which type of country would be best for you, for your organization. Based started to mention.

you're looking at I can already I can already see that this is going to be a huge success. This company hours .

on our way, absolutely.

How much time I should. How much time I should a CEO spend on global culture?

I wanted just transition for a moment. So we were talking a lot about my cultural mapping book, right? But I wrote this at the second book, as you know, with with read hastens, who's the the founder and chairman of netflix.

So what I saw with with when I was doing this work with read, because he leads his team and he's really trying to move away from this pyramid model where the the leader is at the top of the at the top of the prayed and instead kind of put the leader like a tree down at the roots of the tree and with a very gillerman an korean structure. So um what I think we can think about that and is a traditional company, uh the decision making model has the the chairman at the top and the lower level employees at the bottom of the pure mid right. And the lower level employees can make small and important decisions.

But for anything important or expensive, we have to push the decision making up in the organization and of course, in in a traditional like manufacturing environment, that's a great method. But in these like newer companies and today's aggie world, where we have to be faster and more flexible and more of I do believe that the best decision making method is a lot more like a tree. And with that tree, we've got the leader, okay, who's down there in the judge at the roots of the tree, not making the big decisions, but instead leading with context, not control, or something they say at netflix s that I love.

Don't seek to please your boss, seek to do what's best for the company. And with that model, of course, now i'm coming to the answers to your question with that model where the boss is not the chief decision maker, but instead setting all of the context for the decision making through out of the organization. And with that model, you have um the the lower level employees that are often there at the top of the tree, making the often the biggest, most expensive decisions for the organization.

And in that kind of model, I believe that a leader should be spending fifty percent of his or her time working with the individuals in the company, coaching them on how we make decisions in this organization. So what is our organization culture here? How do we what kind of decision will we make in the face of this dilema? What is our north star? And how are we running towards that north star and we become more of more of a coach than a decision maker? Or as you, we could say, a little bit norway, more norwegian in the way that we're leading, a little bit more of a facilitator .

or among I think we sure i'm the region enough. And we have a um tens of thousands of Young people listening to the backers. And i'd love to ask you, what is your advice to Young people?

Yeah so of course, Young people today, they wake up in the morning, they open up their computers, they have people from all over the world who are joining them. Maybe you've, god, I don't know, a team you're working within brazil, someone else in nigeria, and it's very easy to underestimate the impact of of culture on your communication.

So I think an example a great example of that would be that maybe you noticed that like these guys from the us. On your team, they're talking all the time and maybe you've got this guy from china and he doesn't seem to speak very much, but you just think, oh well, that guy from china, he doesn't have much to say. And those guys from the us, they clearly have a lot that you'd like to contribute.

But so it's easy to slip in to this kind of assumption that culture isn't impacting us. So the advice to Young people is don't underestimate how much culture impacts our communication, even when we are working in virtual environments, and even when the people that we are communicating with seem to be just like us, and then take some time to learn. So, you know, what I do with my culture map methodology is I give people an opportunity to kind of look at one culture and say, oh, I see that culture is a little bit more direct than mine.

So maybe that guy wasn't angry with me. Maybe he was just showing me respect. And in that culture, they build trust in a little bit more relationship oriented way than they do in my culture.

So maybe the reason that that guy didn't respond my email is because I dived right in in the material and I didn't really give him. I didn't really share anything about myself or even share IT show interest and getting to know him personally. So when I get him on the phone, the next time, i'm gonna take a different approach. And of course, the mapping IT doesn't give you a recipe. We are all individuals, but IT does help you to kind of tease out like what's cultural and what's personal so that we can be more strategic and more impatient.

嗯， really great advice. I perhaps wanna add one thing, spend all your savings on traveling and backpacking and see the world.

That's right. And of course, the more we see the world, the more we recognize how strange our own culture is. And I think that that own celt, that self reflection is one of the most important types of of cultural learning because otherwise we just think that everyone else is strange and doing IT wrong when we we realize actually, uh, seems that i'm just as strong as everyone else.

Definitely to think more about how to adapt to the various countries where we have offices when IT comes to feedback and getting people on board and so on. This been um just uh tremendously uh uh interesting. Uh would recommend everybody to read a book, the culture map. It's been uh, really changing the way I look at culture. So a big signs of being on air.

And good luck with your work. Thank you. Such a pleasure to be here with you.