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Автор Erin Meyer

THE CULTURE MAP

Copyright © 2014 by Erin Meyer.

Published in the United States by PublicAffairs™,

a Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

Book Design by Cynthia Young

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meyer, Erin.

The culture map : breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business / Erin Meyer.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-259-4 (e-book)1. Diversity in the workplace. 2. Psychology, Industrial. 3. Interpersonal relations. I. Title.

HF5549. 5. M5M494 2014

658’.

049--dc23

2013048509

First Edition

10987654321

This book is dedicated to my sons, Ethan and Logan, who show me daily what it means to grow up across cultures, and to my husband, Eric, who made this all possible.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Navigating Cultural Differences and the Wisdom of Mrs. Chen

1Listening to the Air

Communicating Across Cultures

2The Many Faces of Polite

Evaluating Performance and Providing Negative Feedback

3Why Versus How

The Art of Persuasion in a Multicultural World

4How Much Respect Do You Want?

Leadership, Hierarchy, and Power

5Big D or Little d

Who Decides, and How?

6The Head or the Heart

Two Types of Trust and How They Grow

7The Needle, Not the Knife

Disagreeing Productively

8How Late Is Late?

Scheduling and Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Time

Epilogue: Putting the Culture Map to Work

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

INTRODUCTION

Navigating Cultural Differences and the Wisdom of Mrs. Chen

When dawn broke that chilly November morning in Paris, I was driving to my office for a meeting with an important new client. I hadn’t slept well, but that was nothing unusual, since before an important training session I often have a restless night. But what made this night different were the dreams that disturbed my sleep.

I found myself shopping for groceries in a big American-style supermarket. As I worked my way through my list—fruit, Kleenex, more fruit, a loaf of bread, a container of milk, still more fruit—I was startled to discover that the items were somehow disappearing from my cart more quickly than I could find them and stack them in the basket. I raced down the aisle of the store, grabbing goods and tossing them into my cart, only to see them vanish without a trace. Horrified and frustrated, I realized that my shopping would never be complete.

After having this dream repeatedly throughout the night, I gave up trying to sleep. I got up, gulped a cup of coffee and got dressed in the predawn dark, and wound my way through the empty Paris streets to my office near the Champs Elysées to prepare for that day’s program. Reflecting that my nightmare of ineffectual shopping might reflect my anxiety about being completely ready for my clients, I poured my energy into arranging the conference room and reviewing my notes for the day ahead. I would be spending the day with one of the top executives at Peugeot Citroën, preparing him and his wife for the cultural adjustments they’d need to make in their upcoming move to Wuhan, China. If the program was successful, my firm would be hired to provide the same service for another fifty couples later in the year, so there was a lot at stake.