I recently watched the movie Outsourced and despite being filled with cultural stereotypes and exaggerations, it highlights how a lack of understanding of another culture can create miscommunications and impact business results.  It also reminded me of my university course on intercultural communications where we looked at how different cultures influence people’s perceptions and interactions.

We did role-playing exercises where we were assigned specific countries and had to simulate business negotiations or casual conversations. I probably learned more practical and valuable lessons in that course than in most of my core business classes. Having now lived in three different countries, I am more aware of how the culture I grew up in shapes my communication style and what to be mindful of as I work with colleagues from diverse backgrounds.

We communicators need to build our own cultural awareness, as our companies become more global and are made up of more culturally diverse teams. In fact, CEC’s Competency Diagnostic found that building global perspective and cultural awareness is the biggest competency gap for communicators (Just only 13% of the communicators we surveyed excel in this area).

Cultural awareness is important in three scenarios:

1. Supporting leaders in business partners as they develop global strategies.  As one member told me, “As we expand in emerging markets, we really don’t have a good understanding of these cultures, and we have had to learn through painful mistakes.”
2. Collaborating with our globally dispersed teams:  Another member revealed, “We want to make sure everyone on the team has a voice, but this is not always easy—in some cultures, it is not acceptable to speak up, and we surface problems too late.”
3. Messaging to audiences around the world: How do we effectively customize messages so that we are sensitive to local culture and language limitations?

How can you as communicators increase your own awareness of other cultures? Of course you can’t possibly get to know every country in the world (and true, each individual is different), but you can start building the foundations of your own global acumen and cultural awareness through a couple of useful frameworks:

Hofstede’s Dimensions of National Culture: psychologist Geert Hofstede is the Sigmund Freud of intercultural communications. He identified five dimensions that characterize national cultures:

• Power Distance: some societies accept more hierarchy than others.
• Uncertainty Avoidance: some cultures tolerate constant change and ambiguity, others need rules and structure. This one’s particularly important when rolling out change initiatives.
• Individualism vs. Collectivism: relates to how close group ties are and whether individual achievement is publicly rewarded and encouraged or not.
• Masculinity vs. Femininity: this one is less obvious because it’s less about gender roles and more about attitudes towards quality of life and work-life balance (i.e. “live to work” vs “work to live” attitudes)
• Long-Term vs. Short-Term Orientation: long-term oriented cultures value respect for tradition and future rewards, but short-term cultures prioritize immediate results even if it means sacrificing tradition.

How to Spot These Differences? CEC Members: our new report on Building a Global Mindset will help you spot these dimensions in your interactions and give you some tips and tricks to apply to your messaging and collaboration with colleagues from these cultures.

World Value Survey Cultural Map: The World Values Survey found that cultures group together based on two dimensions: traditions vs. secular-rational values (influenced by religion), and survival vs. self expression values (influenced by political and economic history). I personally got excited looking at this map because it helps understand the world in a different way and beyond geographic boundaries. For example, Indonesia and Ethopia (who are nowhere near each other) have very similar values to each other.

We recognize that each country is unique in its own way, and while these frameworks are a starting point to build your understand of cultures, we’ll soon be sharing some individual country profiles with you for key markets: look out in the next few weeks for communicator guides to China, India, and Brazil.

I’d love to hear what other tools and frameworks you have found helpful in crafting your global communications? What’s difficult and challenging? How would you use Hofstede’s dimensions in improving your own cultural awareness?

Related CEC Resources:

• Building a Global Mindset
• Global Management

Related CEC Blogs:

• 3 Tips for Customizing Global Messages
• Managing a Truly Global Communications Function
• Who Will Translate Your Company’s Messages?