Intercultural competence

The challenge

I am pretty sure that at some point in time and very likely more than once, you have let out a deep sigh of frustration because the behaviour of whoever you were working with seemed utterly abnormal, illogical, incomprehensible and maybe even downright weird.  For those of you who work with people from other nations, this probably is a common occurrence. International relationships, be it in B2B commercial negotiation, project management, after sales service, international project groups, etc. always have an additional layer of complexity and present extra challenges.   It is already not so easy to work harmoniously with people that grew up together and hence have the same frame of reference or the same ‘normal’.  It is clearly much harder if you add an additional layer and have to find a way to work effectively with people that come from different countries and probably have very different ‘normals’. It is really hard not to think in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.  After all, we feel that the way we do things is ‘normal’ and therefore ‘right’. The logical consequence of that is that the other must be ‘abnormal’ and therefore ‘wrong’. We are all human and have this same innate reaction. It is easy to see that this behaviour can be at the core of many challenges we face.    I’d like to introduce you to a system, developed by an engineer who later became a Professor in Sociology because he was interested in the human side of organisations. Prof Emeritus Geert Hofstede is very well known in the academic world as the father of comparative research in national as well as organizational culture. Although national and organizational cultures interact, the two are distinctly different but are often mixed up.  Before we can dive into the subject, we first need to define what we mean by culture. Prof. Hofstede defines culture as ‘The collective programming of the mind by which one group distinguishes itself from another’ [2] .   In his definition, culture can be represented as different layers of an onion (see figure 1) and national culture is at the level of our deepest, mostly unconscious values. We have learned those from our parents and our larger environment in the first 10 – 12 years of our life and they define our ‘normal’. You can look at it as the way we were programmed in our younger years.  It is part of our core programming, part of our operating system which is always there without us actually being aware of it just like the biggest and most important part of an iceberg is under water and invisible.    Organisational culture is situated in the outer 3 layers. It’s much more about how we agree to do things in an organisation, our practices, our rituals and our symbols.  You can look at it as the layer of programming we actually feel, see and work with just like the Windows Office programs you use every day.  This article relates to national culture only. It is about the unwritten rules of the game in each society.  Although we are aware of the rules in our own society often we are unable to accurately describe them. The question we face is how to discover and understand the unwritten rules of other societies. 

6D Model

Prof Hofstede’s 6D model is a tool that provides a common language and turns culture from something fluffy into something tangible, measurable and manageable. He used countries as a proxy for ‘groups’ because often (but not always) people within one country have a similar history and have developed a common culture. If you think of a country, France, Germany, USA, etc., I am pretty sure you have a picture in your mind about the stereotypical Frenchman, German or American. The 6D model expresses this ‘typical’ person in 6 numbers on 6 so-called ‘dimensions of culture’. Please read the inset for the descriptions of the dimensions of culture. Each dimension has a scale from 0 to 100.  It is critical to understand that neither 0 or 100 or any score in between means ‘good’ or ‘bad’.  It is just a way to create a language, which helps to express relative positions and creates the basis for understanding.

Example

Let’s look at an example. Throughout the world, the Dutch are generally considered to be unusually direct in their style of communication. Quite a few societies perceive this directness as offensive and sometimes even arrogant. However, amongst themselves, they don’t see it like that at all. For them, speaking up and saying what they think, regardless of who is in the room is normal and everyone is expected to do so, as it is considered the optimal route to the best end result. Let’s compare this with Belgium. Despite it being a country with different language groups, culturally it is actually quite homogenous when you look at it from a global perspective. Despite the fact that 60% of Belgians speak the same language as the Dutch, from the perspective of national culture, they are quite different.  This may seem strange but ask any Belgian or Dutch person and they will confirm it.    This difference can be described by 2 of the 6 dimensions (PDI & MAS) of Prof Hofstede’s model.  The graph in figure 2 illustrates the differences between the 2 countries.     As you can see, the differences in scores on some dimensions are quite pronounced. There is a 27-point gap in Power Distance (PDI), which means that on average, hierarchy is significantly more important in Belgium than in the Netherlands. Looking at it in different way, it means that the Dutch society is significantly more egalitarian than the Belgian society.    Translating the Dutch ‘directness’ in terms of PDI, a Dutchmen is much more likely to speak up in a meeting regardless of whether his boss or his boss’s boss is in the room. The average Belgian will become quieter the more ‘higher-level’ people are in the same room out of respect or maybe even fear for hierarchy.  The Netherlands score 40 points lower on the Masculinity (MAS) dimension which in a business context means they are very consensus-seeking. Belgium is significantly more masculine which means it tends more towards a competitive style of behaviour where it is more important to win than to find consensus. This helps to understand the Dutch behaviour because in order to achieve consensus, it is necessary and very much expected that each participant speaks up so that everyone’s input can be taken into account to achieve this consensus.   A word of caution; consensus is not to be mistaken for compromise. A compromise means each party concedes a bit and middle ground is somehow found. All parties tend to feel that they had to give something up and are only partly satisfied. In the case of consensus, very often, a new and more creative or innovative solution is found which suits the needs of ALL parties.  Now each party tends to be happy with the result and will support the outcome.  Understanding the difference between compromise and consensus and understanding which country works in which way is crucial in any international setting.   In this particular example, if each party understands the other’s cultural framework e.g. the Belgian understands that the Dutch guy is genuinely trying to work towards a consensus and the Dutch guy understands that in Belgium, hierarchy, status and winning are important, then with a little bit of goodwill, they can find a way to respect each-others ‘normal’ and establish sufficient common ground to work together productively.

Example

Let’s take a different example and look at teamwork. In a high PDI country, it is very important to have a clear team leader who has the power to make decisions. He will be expected to do so by his team members who will quite naturally defer to him.   Suppose you appoint someone from a low PDI egalitarian country as team leader, he will try his hardest to be ‘just one of the group’ as would be normal in his own environment. If he is running a team in a high PDI country, this will not work at all because his team members will expect him to assert himself. They will very naturally want to defer to him and expect him to make the decisions. It makes them very uncomfortable and they will not respect him if he tries to be ‘one of them’.   The opposite situation is just as challenging. A leader from a high PDI country will find it really hard to work in a low PDI country because he’s used to respect for hierarchy and for his status, which is an alien concept in a low PDI country.  Also in this example, awareness and understanding of the simple realities of the different cultural frameworks provide the information needed to be able to successfully adapt one’s natural way of working to this new environment.  You will have started to realize that common intercultural management issues can easily be described in the language of the 6D model. Once you do that, it becomes a lot easier to understand what is actually going on and positive action can be taken to manage the situation.     So far, we have explored 2 out of the 6 dimensions and you may begin to think that the possible combinations are too many to be able to manage effectively. Fortunately, it is possible to group countries in clusters, which have similar characteristics.  By doing this, one loses a bit of detail but for many aspects of business it is ‘good enough’ and one can always dive deeper into the details should the need arise.

Culture cluster

One of my colleagues at Itim International, Huib Wursten, developed the 6 culture clusters and gave them each a ‘mental image’ which helps to visualize their main characteristics. Each of the clusters are distinctly different but most people within them exhibit similar behaviours and have similar expectations on business matters such as leadership, teamwork, reward systems, B2B negotiation, etc.  Each country in the world can be classified in one of these culture clusters [3].  1. The Contest Cluster  2. The Network Cluster  3. The Well-oiled Machine Cluster  4. The Solar system  5. The Pyramid Cluster  6. The Family Cluster
One example, which illustrates the concept well is the MACHINE cluster. It encompasses countries such as Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and German-speaking Switzerland. I am sure you recognize the common characteristics of these countries. These countries are all very process-driven and intrinsically have a high respect for professional expertise. Using the language of the 6D model, they all score low on Power Distance (PDI), high on Individualism (IDV), high on Masculinity (MAS) and high on Uncertainty avoidance (UAI).