The Jordan Harbinger Show - 132: Andy Molinsky | How to Extend the Reach of Rapport Across Cultures

Episode Date: December 11, 2018

Andy Molinsky (@andymolinsky) is a professor of organizational behavior and psychology at Brandeis University’s International Business School and author of Global Dexterity: How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process. What We Discuss with Andy Molinsky: Common cross-cultural tripwires. How to diagnose our cultural differences and assess situations in cultural context to build rapport. Processes and practicals to avoid common miscommunications. 10 cultural codes around the world. Tips for leading an international team over cross-cultural hurdles and working together to realize its potential. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled

into far-right conspiracies. An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiruality podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspiruality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. One set of lessons I feel I've learned in my life over and over again is how to reinvent myself in a new place. I've lived in a double-digit number of countries, and in the United States, I've lived in Detroit, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and in each place, there's a different set of values, there's a different type of person there, and a different set of norms. In other words, there's a different culture. And I realize that many of us work on distributed teams. We manage and work with people from different countries or cultures,

or perhaps we're an expat living in another culture ourselves, even if we're an expat from Detroit living in L.A., as opposed to an American living in China. Today we're talking with my friend Andy Molinsky. He's a professor of international business and organizational behavior over at Brandeis Business School, and one of his many specialties is that he's a trainer for cross-eastern. cultural adaptation. In this episode, we'll hear about common intercultural tripwires. We'll learn how to diagnose our cultural differences and assess situations and cultural context so that we know how to generate rapport with people from other places and from other cultures. We'll also uncover some

processes and practicals to avoid common miscommunications or crossing the streams, as it were, when it comes to communication types. For example, do we tell someone directly what we're thinking, or do we need to ease into things a little? There's a whole lot of lot more in this episode. So if you're working internationally, you're working with people from another culture, moving to another country or even another town, this episode is worth a listen. All right, here's Andy Malinsky. Andy, you've been on the show before, and you've got kind of an interesting background for what we're going to discuss today. I would love to know how you got into becoming, so to speak, some kind of cultural adaptation expert, right? Because everybody works

globally now. You can't, it's hard to not work globally. I suppose if you're on a retail sales floor, that might be one thing. But how did you become interested in this area so early on? I was born and raised in Boston. I did not live a multicultural existence. I never went out of the country when I was a kid. I didn't, this is pre-internet. I didn't see pictures of different countries. I couldn't Google map another country. I lived a pretty fairly narrow American, you could say existence. When I went abroad for the very first time as a junior in college, my eyes widened. It was an incredible experience. I went to Spain. And that I caught the bug. I became really interested in foreign cultures. I then went back a couple years later to live and work in France.

That's where it really took off. And I became just fascinated about not just cultural differences, but about the challenges of adapting and sort of adjusting your behavior across cultures. When I came back to the States, I started a PhD program in organizational behavior and psychology at Harvard. And I sort of brought this deeper. And while I was doing the program, I was volunteering at a resettlement agency for immigrant professionals in Boston who are trying to adapt to the U.S., really the U.S. job search culture. These are folks who are pretty experienced in Russia and the former Soviet Union, but they were trying to get jobs in the U.S. And I just saw how much they, they struggled. They knew intellectually. They could, they could write out, they could tell you

exactly what they needed to do, but it was really hard for them to put it into practice. And so that that really solidified my interest in the idea that it's not just about learning about cultural differences, which is important, by the way, but it's also being able to take what you know and put it into practice, which sometimes is easier said than done. Yeah, I think that's, of course, true with pretty much everything, especially when it comes to dealing with people, because we are so complex, multifaceted, and, it's, and, it's, and emotional in a lot of ways. I want to dive into some of the multicultural management stuff, not necessarily managing it from a business perspective exclusively, but looking at having

conversations with people from other cultures, especially difficult conversations, because, of course, this is something that most of us don't enjoy at all with our culture, without our culture, outside our culture, whatever, but we at least have some sort of common ground when we have these conversations with people inside our own culture. We can rely on basic shared assumptions about what the interaction should look like. But when we have a difficult conversation with someone outside from a different culture, our task is harder. It's exponentially harder because we have this sort of Barbie thorny subject, but we also don't know exactly the context in which this person is going to perceive it. And you've got a great list of cultural

trip wires that I would love to have you present to us. They're present everywhere, whether we notice them or not. And I think they can often do a lot of insidious damage if we're unaware of what these are, especially at work or if we have our own business, we're managing a team, or even if we just have friends from other cultures as well. So can we go over these tripwires and be aware of these and figure out how to avoid them? Yeah, definitely. So the first one is kind of what you just said. It's sort of like the context and in certain cultures getting down to business cultures, whereas in other cultures, it's more about relationship building, just almost like the nature

of a conversation or the entry to a conversation. So in the U.S., oftentimes, and I'm going to paint with broad brushstrokes here, I understand that there's a lot of variability in the U.S., of course, in other countries too, but we'll just sort of talk about some general themes. But in the U.S., people often see conversations sort of as a very important. an opportunity to exchange information, you know, getting down to business fairly quickly. There might be a brief exchange as small talk often is, but you kind of get down to business. But in other cultures, maybe Latin American cultures, for example, conversations are really

about sort of enhancing and deepening the relationship. And if you kind of are seen as kind of getting down to business and cutting to the chase too quickly, the other person could be confused about why you're doing this, why, you know, they might start to attribute your actions, which, which for you might just be kind of being efficient, being appropriate. They might interpret it as not having interest in the conversation or not having interest in the relationship. And then they might be offended. They might then react and go into damage control or whatever it might be.

And so that could start and kickstart a negative spiral. So I guess the first tripwire is getting down to business versus relationship building from a cultural perspective. And I think this is important because what I lived in Mexico, for example, meetings were somehow all day long. and they involved, like, food and a lot of not talking about the business at hand at all. And this was a nonprofit, so maybe that was part of it. But I will tell you, I think we did in a week what most American companies probably did before lunch on any given weekday.

Maybe one in five days worth of time was spent doing what we would consider work or getting down to brass tax. But this, I'm not saying this to judge the Mexican work culture. Actually, it worked really well for them because what this company did have was super high levels of trust. Everybody treated each other like family. People weren't worried as much about their job security, I guess. And for better or for worse, that was the result of this type of culture. And I know that for me, when I was in there and I needed something, I would walk into someone's office and say, hey, do you have this? And I remember them saying, hey, we feel like you don't really like us or you don't like working here.

And I had problems with that for a while because I thought, why is everybody asking? me why I don't like working here when I'm fine. I just want to get my stuff done so I don't have eight hours of work done over 40 hours of work time. And that didn't jive well with the office. It didn't work at all. In fact, I ended up having to leave because it just never clicked. And it's interesting because what's unstated are sort of the cultural assumptions that are driving everything. But you know, you're thinking, why don't they like me? They're thinking, why doesn't he like us? You know, and it just stays at that level. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I think this getting down to business versus relationship building tripwire is pretty common. I think that it would pay for us to know what we're getting into. Is there a way that we can spot this? Like, do we know, okay, if I go to a company and this is what people are like, or if I go to a country and this is what people are like, I'm probably in a relationship building culture versus a get down to business culture.

You can come in with some guesses, right? Some hypotheses, some guesses. Like for instance, again, if you're in Latin America, Central America, I was thinking Brazil because I was speaking with some Brazilians the other day. That's a culture just like this where, you know, people at work are often sort of talking about their private lives with each other, the hallways, the mailroom during long lunches and so on. And, you know, you can you can have a guess, whereas like in Germany, for instance, a culture that really prioritizes efficiency in getting down to business, you're probably less likely to expect this.

But, you know, other things matter too. That's why it should sort of be a hypothesis. and you want to then confirm that hypothesis and see if it's really true. You want to maybe ask some questions and get to know what the culture is actually like. Maybe the people that you're interacting with aren't sort of consistent or characteristic with your general impression of the culture. Maybe there's a company culture. Maybe there's an industry culture, right?

So culture is a pretty multi-layered thing. But I think you can come in with some best guesses and then kind of take it from there. All right. Well, I like the idea of coming in and taking it. a guess and then trying to test the assumption. I think that's useful in every situation. And honestly, I think if you're working in an expat environment, you can always ask somebody else. But if we find that we're maybe working in the United States and we just happen to be a group of seven people on a team and you might be the odd man or woman out culturally, then we can

observe the culture and sort of play by those rules. And I think over time we can learn to observe this. I just want to give people a heads up when they go into it in the first place because I think it's the first couple of weeks or months where these gears start to really grind and you find that there's sand in the machine. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that does make sense. And I think what's really key is when you start having that cultural frame as an idea of like, huh, this is why they're doing this. Maybe it's a cultural thing as opposed to, and I think what people often go to immediately is, oh, they're these kinds of people are, gosh, I don't like that or they're inefficient or they're lazy or they're, whatever it might be when in fact it's really a cultural

explanation as opposed to a personal explanation. So it's good, I think, it's good to have that frame in your mind as a possibility. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Andy Malinsky. We'll be right back. Have you ever had a moment where you think, man, someone should really do something about this? Then you realize, maybe that someone is you. Well, with the help of GoFund Me, you can change someone's life. You could start a GoFund me to help a friend pay for school, fund that new community space, or help a local kid finally get to that national. competition. I've seen this myself. Last year, a friend of mine launched a GoFundMe to help with medical bills after an unexpected surgery. It was incredible how fast the support rolled in. People

want to help. They just need a way to do it. And GoFundMe makes it easy. So do you have a dream, a person, or a cause in your life that could use some support? Don't wait for someone else to bring change. You can be the one who makes a difference. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's gofundme.com. Gofundme.com. Back.

Thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. And now let's go get culturally relevant with Andy Malinski. And that leads us nicely into the second tripwire, which is this direct versus indirect communication. And I think this is something that shocked me a little when I moved to Germany in high school.

And everyone warned me, right? Oh, Germans are really blunt. They're really kind of, what do they call it, the coconut shell where they're hard on the outside but sweet on the inside. And you kind of go, okay, fine, no problem. And then the first time you experience this, you're just like, wow, everyone hates me, right? Yeah, exactly. It's funny. Yeah, so I'm glad you mentioned Germany. That's a sort of prototypical example of a very sort of direct culture where it's sort of culturally valued to speak clearly, not to leave room for misinterpretation, efficiency, again, as we talked about before, honesty and so on. You kind of say it like it is. And I think the U.S. is a little bit like this, too. Maybe not that, not as much as Germany. I think Israel, by the way, is another country that would be like that. And then on the other side of the you might get a country like Japan, for instance, which is where people, you know,

tend to communicate certainly from a Western standpoint indirectly. And there's a lot sort of between the lines and in reading the context or the emotions or the subtle signals. And if you don't have, if you, if you're not tuned to that frequency as an outsider, it can be very difficult to interpret the message. The danger here is that if you're from a direct culture and you're in an indirect culture, you are just throwing daggers around the office or in your email. And here's a funny example. It doesn't have to be business. It can be dating. I remember this friend of mine from

college, Yergan, back from the University of Michigan. One of the reasons that I got started in interpersonal skills coaching and things like that back in the day, almost 20 years ago now, he and I were talking at the gym and he was new. He didn't have any friends because he had just rolled in in some grad program. We met at the gym and we started talking in German because I noticed he had some German notes with him. So we started talking, we start talking. And then, you know, I'm lifting weights with him all the time because I'm one of his only friends. And he goes, dating here is so hard.

And I said, why? And he said, you know, I just don't understand what's going on with the men and the women. I said, well, story of everyone's life. No surprise there. And he tells me this story of, him taking a woman out to dinner. And I don't remember where they went to the equivalent of like the Olive Garden, right? No big deal.

You're in college. This is what happens. And since it wasn't a nice place, he didn't want to make it a formal-ish date. So what he did is he told her, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it basically is a quote. He said, I don't want to pay for this because this isn't a very nice place. And that's what he told her on his. date and of course so she's like fine so she pays for her share of the meal and then he's like yeah she's not answering my calls she doesn't want to go out again and i was like wait a minute you literally

told her that and i said explain this to me because i lived in germany at this point for a year before that and i don't get what what is wrong with you right what are you talking about and he said in germany if it's nice you can pull sort of the the chivalry card and pay for the meal and then it's a really nice, formal, fancy date. But if it's not, then you wouldn't want to pay for the date because the woman would think that you're being chauvinistic and you're kind of a macho guy trying to pay for everything and lead everything all the time, even in this informal situation. And I go, you're going to, I guarantee you, that's not what she was thinking when you said, I don't want to pay for this, because it's not a nice place. And he's like, so I explain it to him and he goes,

I mean, it was just the face palm was so hard. I thought he was going to give himself a concussion. It was just like, and he was like, I've done this a few times with women. here and I've never had a second date. And I was like, yeah, you're not ugly, man. That's not the problem. The problem is you're coming across like a complete weirdo. And it's this direct communication. Americans like to think we're direct, but we really aren't, especially when it comes to dating, right? And this kind of thing can really trip us up. And you can live in the country for a while and still not get it. That's really funny. And, you know, another example as you were talking, I was thinking is it's kind of like what you're talking about, but giving feedback. You know, Americans are

used to the feedback sandwich, right? The feedback sandwich approach where we kind of soften it up. You know, you've got the bread, the meat, and the bread. So the first part of bread is sort of the softer, sort of gentler comment. You know, Jordan, you're doing a great job at work. I really appreciate everything you're doing. However, there's one thing I want to mention. That's the meat. That's the critical piece. And then at the end, you have bread again. But in general, you're doing awesome. In Germany, there's no bread. It's just the meat. It's just the negative message. And I find that a real challenge in the workplace for people on both sides, actually, for Germans to kind of add in that bread to be a little bit softer, a little bit more indirect. And they feel sort of evasive and dishonest and inefficient.

Like, why am I doing all this stuff? And then for Americans to go to Germany, I had a actually for my book, Global Dexterity, I interviewed an American who went to Germany and he became a manager there. And he had to start adopting the German way. And he felt awful doing it. Like, he felt so harsh. So that's an interesting one. Yeah, of course. Whenever we think of German feedback, we often think, like,

your shirt is so ugly, which isn't really how it goes, but it can feel that way. When you give a presentation, you say, what did you guys think? And they went, yes, it was a little boring and probably you could have done better with the slides. And you're like, wow, that was right there in my face. Thought you were going to lead with something like interesting but, or, you know, Well, it was great aside from these two things, but in the end, everyone liked it. They don't do the sandwich. They're like, throw the bread away, meat only, and slap you across the face with it.

Or at least that's how it can come across to somebody in our culture. And the opposite can also be true, like you mentioned, if you're in an indirect feedback country like maybe Asia, Japan, you can really, really come across as even somebody from the United States can come across as really blunt. And if we're getting feedback from someone in that area, and I've seen that. this happened with friends of mine that work for, say, Japanese or Chinese companies here in Silicon Valley, they'll have a meeting with their boss and, you know, we'll be having drinks after work or something like that or chatting about it. And they're like, yeah, you know, I got my boss, he loves me, you know, this is all great. And then they get fired like a month later. And the reason is we warned you multiple times about X, Y, and Z. And he's like, you didn't tell me,

they didn't tell me anything about this. But the one time when somebody said some random comment to him or gave when he was with his boss's boss and a couple of other people and they said something that seemed totally innocuous that would have been if you were Japanese a very clear and strong warning to knock it off but for an American it was like hey you know next time try adding some color to your sides you're like it will do Bob and then you leave and it's like you got fired for never adding color to the slides and you're going what how did that happen I really they could they never really let it on that this was a big problem and it's like it was to them it was clear as day and you ignored it. Yeah, that's exactly right. It reminds me of a story that I heard

recently from a manager, American who went to Japan, and he was new in Japan, and he was listening in on a proposal. So another company came in to give them a proposal. And so the American had a Japanese boss, and the boss was the one evaluating it. And the boss gave feedback to this outside group giving the proposal. And it was just like, sort of like what you're talking about, but like, oh, this is very interesting. We're going to have to really think about this. I really appreciate you for, you know, appreciate your coming. I'm fascinated by what you're talking about, something like that.

And then the American said afterwards, after the people left, the American said to his new Japanese boss. So did you really like this? And the Japanese boss said, no, it's terrible. You have to go tell them, though, I can't. So like, and like, and the guy was shot, the people were shocked for the same reason that they weren't, again, it's like a frequency thing. And they weren't sort of tuned to the right frequency.

And so I think you can, I mean, in all domains, from dating to business, you know, this, I think this is a big one. What about the third trip wire, this low versus high context? When I saw this, I'd never heard of this in my entire life. And I thought this was really fascinating that there are these low context and high context cultures. Bring us through this. It's similar. Actually, it's very similar what we're talking about in terms of directness and indirectness.

So it's the idea that in certain countries like Canada, the U.S., sort of the message, it's the literal words where the message is heard, similar to the directness that we talked about before. And those are called low context cultures. In other words, the context plays a low or small role in determining meaning. But in other countries like Japan, we've been talking about South Korea. That would be another example. It's high context where all these cues. And so conversational, you know, people in a conversation are going to scan the meaning and they're going to interpret the meaning and reinterpret the meeting based on all these cues in their sort of deep understanding of those cues to be able to interpret what's happening and going on. So it's like, it's like reading between

the lines on steroids in a sense. And so those are high context cultures. So you can see what might happen from our previous discussion when someone from a low context cultures is delivering or having a difficult conversation or delivering bad news with someone in a high context culture. It's a, it can create a lot of room for misinterpretation. Yeah, I see that the danger is that someone from the United States, for example, we might call someone into our office or call someone on the phone or send an email and say, hey, by the way, Andy, you know, when you're late all the time, it's kind of annoying for the whole group because we're standing out in the cold and, you know, I realize that things happen, but you're late all the time.

It'd be great if you could plan ahead a little more. And somebody in the U.S. who hears that from someone else in the U.S. is like, yep, they're right. I'm late a lot. You know, I didn't realize. I thought I was getting away with it. All right, I'll leave earlier next time. I got a set an earlier alarm. That's kind of the end of it.

But somebody in this high context culture, like you said, read between the lines on steroids. And it's like, oh, I'm failing as an employee of this company. My friends and colleagues don't respect me anymore. I'm known as a low performer generally. I'm disliked among my, just like all of these horrible things can come as a result of this because of the unspoken message, even if that wasn't intended or part of the message at all. Yeah, you can either read too much or read not enough in a sense into the context. Right. So how do we calibrate that? What can we even look for? Of course, if we live in that

culture for a while, we might get it, but how do we avoid the pitfalls of this? Because I think whether or not we work in another country or just with people from another country, we're going to run into this. So I think as a newcomer, it's very hard. I mean, I think just as you said, I think it comes from practice. It comes from sort of knowing ahead of time that that might be the case to, you know, looking at different scenarios ahead of time and sort of running them by a colleague who's got some experience in that culture. And that could be either a colleague from that new culture who's just a friend or is willing to talk to you. or it could be someone from your own culture who spent some time there. That's often really good because they have sort of the dual perspective. I also find that one of the most critical sort of antidotes to a lot of these tripwires and problems

is to develop relationships with people in a new culture, like to develop sort of a trusting, friendly, collaborative relationship with someone. And when you do that and when you misinterpret something in the context of a relationship, it's a lot easier. It's a much softer landing in a sense from sort of a, compared to doing that with people who you really don't know at all. So I can't say that there's any magic bullet. You can't snap your fingers and all of a sudden have this, you know,

perfect mastery of all the subtleties in a new culture. But I think there are things you can do to hedge your bets. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Andy Malinski. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers is what keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordan harbinger.com slash deals.

And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our interview with Andy Malinsky. This sort of slides us into home with the fourth tripwire, which is this informality versus formality. And I think that a lot of people, when I first read this, it was like, oh, yeah, of course, some people speak more formally, others don't. But you have a different take on it,

which I thought was kind of a unique spin. and something I'd also never heard of. Can you tell us about this? Because I do think for myself, I'm quite informal, and in business, that has often bitten me in the butt because I realize that if I try to make, for example, an informal warning to somebody, and they think, well, we were just doing that.

We just sort of talked about it over a burger. They don't take it very seriously. And that can lead to big problems. Yeah, so if you're in a formal culture, if someone acts, and by the way, I'm also pretty casual. If someone acts in a casual manner, it might, the person from the formal culture might interpret it as sort of like not serious, maybe that you lack respect, that you have a serious, that you don't really care.

You're reading all sorts of things into that level of informality versus formality. And when that might not be the case at all, I see this all the time. So I'm a professor and I see this all the time in terms of story. students coming to the United States. And a lot of our students are foreign-born students from countries like India or China, where the hierarchical relationship between a professor and a student is much stronger than in the United States, where it's a little bit flatter. You know, you can be a little bit more informal with professors. And I see them, you know, calling me, sir, being super hyper-polite. And I also see some of them trying to adapt and adjust and sometimes

missing the mark. They might come to my office, open up a soda, put their legs up on the couch, something like like that it doesn't happen that often but it definitely happens enough for me to notice where it's like oh my gosh you overshot there but i think that informality and formality is a big one and in their dangers on both sides so the danger could be that someone from an informal culture could sort of unintentionally appear that they don't care or someone from a formal culture if they're too formal and uber formal you might not you sort of someone from the more informal culture might just sort of feel that they're distant and cold and sort of unapproachable. Yeah, I think the idea that a country like Poland where people expect a certain degree of

formality, being too casual shows a lack of respect. Of course, that sort of goes without saying. But if you're from an informal culture and you don't add almost like, I don't want to say fake formality, but an additional level of formality that you otherwise wouldn't think you would need, somebody from that formal culture might be like, this isn't a big deal. Same with the direct and indirect communication that we just talked about, where they might call the person into the office and say, your presentation didn't have enough slides. And you're like, oh, okay, that was a weird, overly serious formal place to have that conversation. I guess I'll add more slides next time. And then it just kind of doesn't work because the appropriate gravitas isn't there for the communication.

Yeah. And this is also, what's interesting about this is also it's sort of embedded in situations. So, you know, the formal and formal might be a little bit different if you're with colleagues than you are with a boss, like with the hierarchical level. And then it might be amped up if it's given the sort of assumed importance of the situation, like some situations are more formal and so on. So, you know, it's not just like generic person one interacting with generic person two. It's also the, you know, you need to be able to read the situation in terms of what levels of formality or sort of informality are required. So when I get a student from a culture that's used to very formal interactions, and then they sort of like adjust inappropriately for interacting with me. What they're forgetting is that yes, in the United States, yeah, you interact a little bit less formally with a professor, but not to the extreme, not how you'd like, you know, interact with a fellow student. I don't mind.

I think it's kind of funny. But I also want to be able to prepare them to be able to function in the real world. So, but yeah, this is a tripwire. There's no question about it. So how can we connect better across cultures? Of course, find out what you have in common was the bit of advice that we'd sort of discussed pre-show, but that isn't really, that's not exactly what we're looking for, right? We're not just like, oh, find out what you have in common.

Thanks for coming on the show. I could have figured that out of my own, right? There are certain ways to do this that I think avoid running headfirst into some of these problems. And one is to examine emotional intelligence across cultures. Can we speak to that a little bit? Yeah, a lot of people, when you go to a new culture, you think you've got to learn the language, right? But there's also an emotional language.

And I think people often forget that in terms of norms and rules and expectations for, especially emotions in terms of how you express emotions. And I think that's really key to understand and know about and do your homework on when interacting across cultures. So I often, one that pops out for me a lot is the expression of enthusiasm. So you see this all the time in the United States, in addition to the informality we're talking about before, it's very culturally acceptable and actually appropriate to show enthusiasm, you know, to get psyched about something, to really, you know, express yourself passionately, to give a high five to whatever it might be, right? But in other cultures, you just don't do that. you know, in Japan, for instance, there's, there are really strict norms about when and where you're able to show that kind of emotion. In a lot of cultures like India, China, it's not sort of that spontaneous expressiveness of emotion that in a professional context that's important.

It's really actually the control of emotion, the ability to sort of self-control, that's really key. So I think that's a big one. So having the emotional intelligence to know sort of what your own default and comfort zone is in terms of expressing emotions, to understand what the zone of appropriateness would be in a new culture and to do that, you need to do a bit of homework. And then to see if there's a gap. In other words, if you're like a super emotional type, outgoing type, super friendly type, that's awesome. But it might not fly as you expect it will in a country where it's really restraint and self-control that's culturally valued. Emotions do vary a ton across cultures. I mean, you talked about this a little bit in some of

articles that I'd read pre-show as well, both in terms of expression and in terms of meaning. And can you give us an example of this? Because I think enthusiasm was something that came up quite a few times in the reading. Yeah. So, and by the way, you see this also not just, we've been talking about a lot of sort of extreme examples like Asia and the United States or Asia and Canada. Those are often very extreme examples. But even like take an example of like US and UK, like the United kingdom. You know, you'd think that there's not a big difference there. But that's another example where there are strong differences in terms of like the expression of enthusiasm and in the outward expression of emotion. So, you know, you're not going to see, we talked about high fives before.

You're not going to see as many high fives in the UK in the office place as you will in the US. They're much more, people are much more under, you know, sort of understated and subdued. Like, you know, if you, if something was was really outstanding, you'll usually get a, yeah, it's not, it's Not bad. Not bad. In fact, I was just watching the, I don't know if anyone watches the British baking show on PBS, but it's really funny because the judges on that show, when you look at that reality TV show with those judges and then a reality TV show in the United States, you'll see in the United States the reality hosts are like, awesome job. That's so good. I love that. In the UK, it's like, well, it's not bad. You know, not bad old chap. And it's like, the winner is not terrible. Thank you. Exactly. But you can, I mean, it's funny. But then if you're in the situation, you can kind of feel bad about yourself. What, I'm just not bad, really? Yeah.

You know? Yeah, it seems like something that could be, that could weigh negatively, that's for sure. And also, there's an incongruence here because it's not just, oh, be more enthusiastic. Going back to the Mexico example, I remember they asked me to set up some sort of like event for the exchange students that were in Mexico

or in the city, sorry, like a meetup. So basically I called some restaurant was like, hi, do you have 12 seats available in a private room that it's quiet enough where we can talk? And they were like, sure, what time? Thursday, 8 p.m. No problem. And then I invited everyone and I confirmed with everyone. And then we met up and we went to this restaurant. And the next day, the boss and the boss's boss were like, spectacular. This was unbelievable. We never had anybody doing it. You're so great. And it was a little incongruent because I thought they're just blowing sunshine up my wazoo because all I did was make a reservation at a restaurant. And

kind of coordinate attendance. Right. And so I started to not trust things that they were telling me because I thought, well, you get a pat on the back for showing up, you know, less than an hour late. So who cares? Anything you do here is kind of meaningless. They're going to love it anyway.

And that actually damaged my work ethic at this nonprofit for sure. Retrospect. In the moment, I didn't think, oh, I can just do nothing and get away with it. But retrospect, 2020 hindsight, that was not good to be managed. like that at all. In global dexterity, you provide this six-dimensional approach that helps people essentially diagnose cultural differences in challenging situations. And I would love to go over these six dimensions because they really do seem to represent key aspects of communication that are, one, different across cultures and that a lot of psychology research

has consistently shown to predict important personal and professional outcomes. I think these are quite important. And it's great to have a framework for this. Otherwise, otherwise the takeaway is, okay, so when people say stuff, maybe think it's part of their culture

and then try not to get fired before you figure everything out, right? Exactly. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Yeah, so it's funny, this is the part of the book, Global Dexterity, that I get absolutely the most email about,

the most comments about. And so, yeah, I'd love to share it with you. So the dimensions are directness, enthusiasm, assertiveness, self-promotion, and personal expressiveness. And let me give you a sense of what those are. And the idea here is that these are the key areas that cultures and also specific situations in cultures can differ.

So directness, you know, how straightforwardly are you expected to communicate in a particular situation in that culture? Are you expected to say exactly what you want to say, as we talked about before? or are you expected more to hint at something in a more indirect manner? So that's directness. Enthusiasm, again, as we talked about previously, how much emotion and energy you expected to show when communicating? Can you express how you feel or is it more appropriate to hide your positive feelings? That would be enthusiasm.

Formality, the amount of deference and respect you're expected to display with your communication style in general or in this situation. Are you expected to show a high level of respect when communicating with someone or can you be more informal? So those are the first three. A fourth one is assertiveness. How strongly are you expected, you know, or allowed to voice your opinion and advocate your point of view in a particular culture or in a particular situation? Should you be forthright in, you know, expressing yourself or should you work at hiding your point of view in a sense? or minimizing it. A fifth is self-promotion. You know, in this culture, in this situation,

is it appropriate to speak positively about yourself and promote your positive qualifications, or is it more culturally appropriate to be self-effacing, you know, to minimize yourself, even maybe even poke fun at yourself? And then finally, personal disclosure. Can I, and am I expected to reveal personal information about myself to other people? details of my life and so on, or is it more appropriate to hide these personal details? And I find that that this six dimensions really captures the core differences between cultures like in a given situation in a new culture, or actually I have created a tool to help people understand it at a very broad cultural level. So for instance, in China, how do these six dimensions, generally speaking,

how are they laid out? How is that different from Brazil? How is it different from the UK and so on and so forth? Right. So directness, enthusiasm, formality, assertiveness, self-promotion, and personal disclosure. And not just in a business context, it's funny, the personal disclosure sort of triggered an example for me. When I was living in Germany, you know, I'm from Michigan.

I grew up in the suburbs. So when I would walk around the neighborhood and you see the neighbor outside raking leaves or blowing their lawn or whatever it is, you wave and you say, hi, how are you, or whatever. And I remember in Germany walking down my street where the family that I was living with had lived for their entire life, right, like at that point, just decades. And there was a neighbor that clearly knew that there was an American living as an exchange student down the road, or I would think would know this. And I waved and I said, hi, how you doing?

And this person like ignored me. First of all, was confused that I even said that. They were out in their lawn doing something or getting their mail, ignored me, then looked away. And my friend who I was walking with, another German guy, who also lived on the street, probably three houses away from that same person, maybe five houses away, said, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I said, I'm waving to the neighbor. And they said, you're too friendly, man. That is so strange.

You probably scared her. And I thought, how weird? Because how does she not know who you are? You grew up five houses away. She's known you since you were a baby, but she just completely ignored you. So odd. It is odd. I see the, or at least it's a difference.

I was just in Chicago this summer for vacation. And whenever I'm on vacation in a city like that where there are a lot of tourists, I always find it really interesting to eavesdrop on tourist conversations and watch them. And you see, like, for instance, the interactions in the United States between people who don't know each other, who might be on a, I don't know, like we took a boat tour of the architecture. of Chicago and people, you know, in the U.S. might see someone and start up a conversation, someone that they don't know at all. And very soon, you could be into very personal details about your life or at a restaurant, you know, the servers are like, hey, how are you guys doing?

That's sort of like, you know, do you guys come from, are you from around here? Oh my God, that's so cool. You know, whatever it might be. That's kind of a combination of like enthusiasm, informality and personal expressiveness. And in some other cultures, you just don't do that. It's just very, very odd. So, you know, you see this all the time. So directness has to do with how straightforwardly we're expected to communicate, enthusiasm, how much emotion we put into it, formality, the level of, I don't know, respect we show or the gravitas we put on these things, assertiveness, the level or the extent to which

we can speak our mind, self-promotion, whether or not we can tutor our own horn, and personal disclosure we just talked about. How do we utilize these? How do we take these six dimensions and plug whatever we're looking at our situation into these six dimensions? Yeah, again, it's trying to use this as your framework for understanding where the pain points are, where the tripwires are, and trying to become a cultural detective. So you can, you know, you can look around. So for directness, for instance, do people tend to be succinct in what they say and get right to the point, you know, often with as few words as possible? or do they kind of tend to use broader and more general, maybe more ambiguous language,

kind of hinting at what they say. So like you can watch, you know, enthusiasm. You can sort of see to, you know, when something positives happen, do people tend to express their feelings openly, you know, with their facial expressions and body language and so on? Or do they tend to hide and suppress it? And, you know, you can kind of become a detective and start to diagnose and understand the culture that you're in and where the key. differences are for you compared to your culture. And by the way, I should also mention that not everyone,

of course, is necessarily characteristic of the national culture that they come from. You know, you said you're from Michigan, from the suburbs. But what if you had a German parent and an American parent? Or what if you had a Brazilian parent and a, in a Korean parent, right? You're going to, but you happen to live in Michigan. So you might have more of a cosmopolitan upbringing. And maybe the other person you're interacting with isn't either characteristic of that culture. So I think the personal level matters too. But to answer your question more specifically, I think becoming a cultural detective, becoming really curious, using the resources that you have to try to understand those differences ahead of time as much as possible to come in with those hypotheses, to test them and to be

willing to adjust. I think that that's where you want to be. I love the idea of being a cultural detective because we can ask questions. We can sort of question the particular situation. And one thing that I find myself doing a lot when I go abroad and make friends, or especially when I was living abroad, was if I don't understand something, or if I were aware of these six sort of dimensions, I think I would have been better off.

But if I don't understand a situation or something seems vague or ambiguous or I'm not getting the results I want, I might actually ask a very direct question of a friend of mine or even the person in the situation that I'm in. So for example, when I worked in Serbia, I remember my boss was very direct.

And it started to kind of hurt my feelings a little bit after a while. I mean, it was not a long while. I was quite right away, in fact. And I started to say things like, and to my boss and to, it was a teacher. So to her and other teachers, I would say things like, okay, so when you say something like Americans are awful in America is an evil place and blah, all these things, you're not talking about me, right? And they started laughing.

And they're like, of course not. We love you. You're like our surrogate son. What are you talking about? I'm so sorry that you thought that. And I'm thinking, well, you did just spend like 10 minutes telling me how horrible this was. And she's like, we do that about our own country as well. It doesn't mean that I hate everyone here.

And I just thought, okay, this is just kind of a cultural thing. People in Serbia, especially, and Eastern Block in general, I think, they have a level of sort of frank. I don't want to say complaining because it's not just that. it's sort of a frank discourse about the state of affairs and a distrust of maybe government and authority and things like that. And so they talk about it very openly with people they trust. So rather than it being a sign that they don't like me and they're trying to scare me away by telling me how awful this cultural thing is or the American president was at the time or whatever, it was actually more of a sign of trust that I was in this inner circle and they felt safe

telling me these things because of course I would never misunderstand what they mean because we're such tight close friends slash family you know and I and I thought that was kind of funny that I really interpreted the exact opposite and I had to ask directly what do you mean when you say things like this because I'm starting to worry and then they found it highly comical and did you have a good relationship with the people you asked yeah they were it was my boss and a friend of hers who was another teacher yeah That's key. You know, they were saying things like that around me and I just thought, oh, this is a problem.

And then of course when they would give me feedback about work and whether they were sort of just hinting at something or where they were often very direct, I would say, okay, but you're not angry with me, right? You're just trying to make me better at this or are you angry and I owe someone an apology? And they would tell me like, oh no, we're not angry. This is just you need to do this differently next time. Or they would say, yeah, we're a little annoyed by this because she's outside for a long time because you miscommunicated and it was cold. So you should call her and tell

her that you're sorry. And I would go, okay, great. And I had to ask a lot about these kind of manual, it was sort of a manual process for me. Yeah, that makes sense. And you know, it's also, I think probably in your questions too, is sort of the meta message that, hey, I want to fit in, I want to do well here. I care about your culture. I respect your culture, but I'm kind of confused. You know, that's the meta message. And so I think that that's important to show that you're, you know, show that you're genuinely trying, that you're interested in so on and so forth. And I think people, when people pick that up, I think they're more tolerant of mistakes and they're also more apt to sort of help you in your cultural detective work. Yeah, good point.

I never thought about that. But you're right. If you just go through and you feel like, oh, I shouldn't say anything about not understanding, people don't necessarily know. They might even interpret that as you get it, but you just, you're. foreign and you're pushing your weight around or maybe you don't get it and you're kind of bumbling. But if you say, all right, explain this to me because like Yergen did, so when I take a girl out and it's not a nice place, I should still pay. Yes, especially if you made the invite or definitely, at the very least, don't say I'm not going to pay for this because this isn't a nice place.

You know, and he just didn't know that. And I think if he had called her or at the, even in the moment, said, hey, I don't really date a lot in America because I'm new here. This is probably one of the first times I've been out. What's the proper protocol here? She might have been like, oh, this is a little awkward, but it would certainly have been less awkward than what he did, right? Yeah, because she, because she would have sensed, I mean, who knows how it went down, but she would have sensed, hey, this guy's trying. You know, she might have been, she might have been more sympathetic than attracted to him, but still, I probably would have been a better interaction. Yeah, I mean, she could have said, well, it doesn't matter. We can just both pay our own way. And then she might have been a little

disappointed at it, but she might not have just completely ghosted him, which is what happened, right? And I don't even know if she completely ghosted him. I think she actually wrote him something like, you're super rude. I can't believe you did that. I never want to see you again. I think it was a pretty harsh ending to that particular date. I don't think it worked out very well. I mean, it literally, that was like all the nails were in the coffin at the same time on that one. Right. You know, probably not a love match for Yergan, but hopefully his confidence wasn't, wasn't damaged. Exactly. Well, I think that these are super useful.

And for those of you that want to go through the cheat sheet to 10 cultural codes around the world to deepen your understanding of this, we will link to a cheat sheet. In addition to the worksheets we usually have for this. In fact, we might even try to blend the two. We'll link to it in the show notes because we have a good little PDF here from Andy. there's so much more in the book global dexterity. How to adapt your behavior across cultures without losing yourself in the process. Happy to scratch the surface with you here today, Andy. And I really appreciate you coming on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me on again. I really enjoyed it. So I love this because a lot of what he was talking about here is maybe I sort of knew intuitively some of these things were happening when I lived abroad. And maybe after a year or so, I figured out some of these other things. But it's great to see things codified, right? It's always so interesting when we see things like body language or personality archetypes codified because it makes it easier for us to spot next time and then have a framework to actually use it.

So Andy's gotten some pretty brilliant work done here. And this stuff would have been so useful when I was younger. Oh, same here, man. I backpacked around Europe for like two and a half months when I was 20, 21 and had so many different countries. And if I would have just at least been cognizant of all of the different cultural norms instead of just being a dumb American walking around in a Renan Stimpy shirt thinking that I was the bomb.

It would have been a much better trip, I think. Yeah, Ren and Stimpy, though, I can dig that. But that whole go to McDonald's and as the center of your cultural education when you're in another country, I mean, I played that game for a while. And look, when I say this stuff would have been useful when I was younger,

I don't mean that this stuff is only useful for young folks. I think this is useful primarily in business. I just think it took me way too long to learn it. even though I'd lived abroad for so long, this isn't something that most of us will naturally sort of adopt or internalize. You really do need to look at it through the sort of the framework that Andy taught us here today. It'll cut the learning curve down so quickly. So a great big thank you to Andy Malinsky. The book title is Global Dexterity, How to Adapt Your Behavior Across Cultures Without Losing Yourself in the process.

Very useful stuff in there. Of course, there's a lot more than what we were able to discuss today. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Andy Malinsky. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. This show is produced in association with Podcast One, and this episode was co-produced by Jason Don't Cross the Streams, DePhilippo, and Jen Harbinger. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty, worksheets by Caleb Bacon. And I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which is hopefully in every single episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got a lot more in the pipeline. Very, very excited to bring it to you. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast.

Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the

through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people on the world really work itch search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening you can thank me later