Global Dexterity. Andy Molinsky

hard to muster the psychological resources necessary to adapt your behavior.

      So what can you do to overcome these challenges? How can you find a way of adapting behavior that does not feel so uncomfortable and inauthentic? It sounds impossible, but in fact, with the tools and frameworks that you will learn in this book, it’s really quite straightforward. The key is to realize that you have much more power than you think to craft behavior that fits the new culture and that also fits you.

      The first step is learning the new cultural rules, or what I refer to as the cultural code. Learning this code is key because it’s the first step in helping you devise a way to feel authentic and be effective at the same time. It provides you with insight into the particular set of challenges you face when adapting your behavior in a particular situation and how you might be able to adjust your behavior in order to respond to these challenges.

      What do I mean by the cultural code? You will learn that each situation you face—whether it’s learning to give constructive criticism, make small talk, negotiate, participate at a meeting, or ask a favor of your boss—has certain rules for appropriate behavior in a given cultural setting (see “On Diagnosing the Cultural Code”). Although there are undoubtedly many different ways to characterize these rules, I portray them in terms of six dimensions that capture the expectations that others have for our behavior in a foreign setting:

       Directness: How straightforwardly am I expected to communicate in this situation?

       Enthusiasm: How much positive emotion and energy am I expected to show to others in this situation?

       Formality: How much deference and respect am I expected to demonstrate in this situation?

       Assertiveness: How strongly am I expected to express my voice in this situation?

       Self-promotion: How positively am I expected to speak about my skills and accomplishments in this situation?

       Personal disclosure: How much can I reveal about myself in this situation?

      On Diagnosing the Cultural Code

      As you read through the book, you’ll notice that instead of providing you with the cultural code for every possible situation that you might face in a foreign culture, I instead provide you with a tool—the six-dimensional framework—that you can use to decipher the cultural code on your own.

      Why not just provide you with an encyclopedia of all the cultural codes that you could possibly encounter, detailing, for example, how exactly you need to adapt your behavior to act effectively in China, India, France, and so on? Such a resource would certainly be useful and convenient. The problem is that it would be impossible to create—at least in a way that would provide you with practical information for the particular situation you’re facing. That’s because cultural codes are not generic. People often mistakenly assume that there is an “American” or “Chinese” or “Indian” code for behavior, and that once you understand this country code, you’re set to interact successfully in any situation you encounter. But this is simply not true. Rather, these codes depend a great deal on so many other factors other than country-level differences.

      Regional differences, for example, often matter a great deal—such as the difference between the Midwest and Northeast of the United States, southern and northern Italy, or the urban cities and countryside of China. Company and industry cultures also greatly affect the cultural code for the particular situation you face in your work abroad. In China, for example, state-run enterprises tend to have more “classically” Chinese cultural norms—emphasizing indirectness and modesty, for example, than Western- or non-Chinese-owned companies. And of course, company norms vary tremendously and make their own contribution to the cultural code for any particular situation. Finally, the preferences and backgrounds of the particular people you interact with may change the cultural code in your situation. You may be in a culture that emphasizes assertiveness, but be interacting with people who are quite atypical. As a thought experiment, imagine trying to explain to someone how “directly” you are expected to communicate in the United States. In very general terms, you might say that communication norms in the United States are quite direct, compared with many other cultures, but does that hold in all cases? Would there be differences debating your case at a vigorous brainstorming session with investment bankers in downtown Manhattan, as opposed to a similar discussion with more mild-mannered colleagues at a small bank in central Illinois?

      The point is that cultural norms are not generic and that context matters a great deal. For that reason, it would be unadvisable to provide a list of cultural codes for you to simply slap on to your own circumstances, because such a list would likely be inaccurate and dangerously misleading, So, instead of a list, I provide a flexible tool (detailed in chapter 3) that, with the help of knowledgeable colleagues and mentors, you can apply to any situation you may face in your work abroad to get a valid and reliable portrait of the local cultural norms.

      Each situation you encounter in a foreign setting will have a specific cultural code for behavior along each of these dimensions. When motivating workers in India, there is a certain level or amount of assertiveness that you will be expected to show as a leader. When bonding with work colleagues after hours at a restaurant or bar in Japan, a certain level of enthusiasm is expected, which is quite different from how enthusiastically you are expected to behave in other situations that you might encounter in Japan.

      I call the range of appropriate behavior along each of these dimensions the zone of appropriateness. When adapting our behavior across cultures, we often mistakenly believe that there is one very specific way of acting in that new setting—as if the required behavior were like the center of an archery target, and you received no “points” unless you hit that very specific bull’s-eye. But that’s simply not true. Instead, there is a zone—a range—of appropriate behavior, and your job is to find a place within this zone that feels natural and comfortable for you: somewhere within your personal comfort zone.

      In an ideal world, this would be easy: your personal comfort zone would overlap nicely with the zone of appropriateness for behavior in the new culture and you could act appropriately and feel natural with little effort. Unfortunately, however, sometimes there is a gap rather than an overlap between the two—your personal comfort zone is quite distinct from the zone of appropriateness in the new culture. When attempting to act assertively with his Indian colleagues, Eric Rivers, for example, had a personal comfort zone that was well outside of the Indian zone of appropriateness, as illustrated in figure 1-1.

      To become effective in this new setting, Eric had two options. The unrealistic option was to try to change the Indian zone of appropriateness; that is, somehow change the rules in India to fit with his existing preferences. The only realistic option was to stretch his personal comfort zone: to find a way of somehow becoming comfortable with a wider range of behavior than he typically was used to. By stretching his personal comfort zone, Eric could create an overlap between what was comfortable and natural to him and what was demanded in terms of effective and appropriate behavior in the new cultural setting (see figure 1-2).

      FIGURE 1-1

      Eric’s original personal comfort zone

      FIGURE 1-2

      Eric’s personal comfort zone after adaptation

      In the pages ahead, you will have the opportunity to learn how to stretch your own personal comfort zone through a simple three-step process:

      1 Diagnosis: Diagnosis means identifying the particular aspect of the new cultural behavior that is the most challenging in your particular situation. In Eric’s case, it was assertiveness. Perhaps in another situation it might be directness or enthusiasm or personal disclosure. Using the six-dimensional approach highlighted above, you will learn how to diagnose the conflict you experience in any situation that you encounter and identify gaps between your personal comfort zone and the zone of appropriateness in the new