The Culture Map (non-fiction) by Erin Meyer

#cross-cultural communications

This book was a fun read for me, and I learned a lot from Erin as she did a great job at sharing stories and examples of how different countries have different cultures of communication, and it is quite interesting. I appreciate that she includes graphs often to show which countries are on which side of the communications spectrum (linear vs. flexible time, confrontational vs. avoids confrontation when it comes to how one handles disagreement, to name a few).

At first, I got a bit overwhelmed by thinking: if there are so many kinds of norms in communicating, how will I ever be a great communicator? I soon realized that this is not a great question to ask, and instead I started feeling curious to get to know people and learn new ways to communicate with them. I think we humans are pretty adaptable. So I'm excited to keep on asking and learning how to best communicate with the global team and friends.

This graph is from the book, and I think it is a great summary of how we can map out the communication style of the majority of people to make sure we can get our points across and get the answers/results that we would like from the conversations or meetings.

To more learning and stay curious. :)