The key ideas

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business

Erin Meyer, 2014

A Chinese expert sits silently for three hours in a training session with a notebook full of prepared examples. A Frenchwoman leaves with the best performance review of her career, while her boss thinks her work is terrible. Erin Meyer explains why this happens and offers a map of eight scales to anticipate where two people from different cultures may misunderstand each other.

Who it is for

For anyone who works with people from other countries, in an international team, or simply with colleagues who think and speak differently.

When communicating with someone from another culture, try to observe more, listen more, and speak less.

About the book

Erin Meyer is running cultural training for a French automotive executive relocating to Wuhan, China. She is assisted by Bo Chen, a journalist from Wuhan living in Paris. His role is to offer examples for each topic.

Meyer pauses and looks at Chen. He politely nods and remains silent. Three hours pass this way. Finally, she directly asks whether he has examples. Chen opens a notebook filled with notes and begins speaking. Why was he silent when everything was ready?

Erin Meyer is a professor at INSEAD business school. In The Culture Map, she proposes eight scales on which, in her observations, misunderstandings arise most often in international work. An important framework: this is the author’s model. It draws on other researchers’ ideas and interviews with executives, but is her own map rather than a unified scientific system. The scales compare average cultural tendencies and do not describe a particular person.

Idea 1. When to stay silent and when to speak

Chen explained his silence this way. Erin was the senior person in the room and was leading the meeting. He waited for her to address him, meanwhile showing that he knew how to listen. He also said that in China people leave several more seconds of silence before speaking, while Westerners almost talk over one another. The necessary pause never arrived.

Meyer admits she became the learner in her own training session. Since then, in mixed meetings she gives advance notice of what she will ask and allows a little more silence.

A new colleague stays silent throughout an hour-long call. The manager concludes they have nothing to say, although they may simply have been waiting to be addressed.

In one culture, silence may mean respect and attention; in another, it may be read as having no ideas. Before judging someone, consider the conversational rules they follow.

Read in Livria

About the author

Erin Meyer is an American researcher and professor at INSEAD business school. She studies how cultural differences affect international teams. She coauthored No Rules Rules, a book about Netflix’s culture.

All books by this author: Erin Meyer

Terms from the book

  • Power distance
  • Low-context culture: Anthropologist Edward Hall’s concept. A communication style that values precision and clarity, takes words literally, and readily puts agreements in writing.
  • High-context culture: Edward Hall’s concept. A communication style that conveys much between the lines, through context, pauses, and hints.
  • Ringi: A Japanese decision-making practice in which a proposal is agreed at lower levels before moving up to management.
  • Cognitive trust: Trust built through experience of reliable work together. In Meyer’s model, one pole of the trusting scale.
  • Affective trust: Trust growing from personal closeness and time spent together. In Meyer’s model, the other pole of the trusting scale.

All terms

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