If your project team is spread all over the globe, you will sometimes scare yourself with the amount of prejudice you have when dealing with people from different cultures. I know I do. Humans have a tendency to categorize everything, including people. Stereotyping can be dangerous, because it tries to say something about an entire group of people, and leaves individual differences out in the cold.
But it is quite convenient to believe that Hispanics always have a siesta, Chinese people always answer yes to every question, and Americans already start their day in a hurry. And then we have the French¦ ah, don’t get me started about the French.
You know I am kidding, don’t you?
Stereotyping is just to darn convenient¦ Let me provide you the following quote from Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn to show you what I mean:
“My early experience was with a consulting company in England, where the manager had set the project up single-handedly, developing the scope, objectives, strategy, plan, etc., and then get a team together and present the project to the team.
I tried to do this as a project manager in Italy. At the team briefing the message I got was: “That is your plan; you work to it. If you want us to work together, we plan together.” Powerful message. Then I went to Australia, where the prevailing corporate culture is that the managers make all the mistakes and everybody else just does as they are told.
I set up my first project the Italian way. I called the team together in a room with clean whiteboards, described the scope and objectives, and said, “Now let’s work out together how we are going to do this.”The response was: “You are the manager. You work it out, and we’ll just do whatever you say.”
These stories exists because they have some truth in them. Different cultures result in different behaviors of people. But before you try to draw conclusions about an entire continent, why not just start with the individual project team member instead. Take a mental spin, take a leap, perform a 360, try to assess a situation in a different cultural reference frame.
Here are six cultural assumptions you might give a flip (based upon this posting), and yes, they are written down as stereotypes:
1. Future “ Present “ Past Orientation
For some cultures history will determine the future, so the past is very important. Others, mainly South-American cultures, believe the past cannot be changed, the future cannot be predicted, only the present can be influenced. And then there are the Western cultures who believe that with hard planning, proper preparation and thorough analysis the future can be captured.
2. Time-Plentiful vs Time-Is-Money
There is a huge difference in life if you believe that time is an unlimited resource; the sun sets and will rise again, always, over and over again. Time is plentiful. Tomorrow the same amount of time is left as today. If you put this world view in contrast with the idea that time is passing and will never come back, you might see how the concept of deadlines can be confusing between some cultures.
3. Respect For The Man
In The Netherlands we have a problem with authority. We like to see our bosses as equals, and tend to treat them as such. Respect is something that should be earned, and hierarchy and upbringing has nothing to do with that. And even with respect, that doesn’t mean I have to treat someone differently. That is at least the opinion of the majority of the Dutch people.
In other parts of our planet, upbringing and hierarchy have a lot to do with getting respect. And disagreement with a respected person is unthinkable. This is the widely known yes from Indian people (yes, I know, the whole continent 
) that is misunderstood by their western colleagues.
4. Me vs Us
There is a world of difference if you behave from the idea that you operate as an individual or that you operate as a small part of a collective.
A market research firm conducted a survey of tourist agencies around the world. The questionnaires came back from most countries in less than a month. But the agencies in the Asian countries took months to do it. After many telexes, it was finally done. The reason was that, for example, American tourist agencies assigned the work to one person, while the Filipinos delegated the work to the entire department, which took longer. The researchers also noticed that the telexes from the Philippines always came from a different person. (from AnalyticTech.com)
5. Spelling Everything Out vs Its Only Natural
Even I learn something everyday. When researching for this post, I learned this difference: in some cultures it is normal that everything is expressed in detail, information is explicitly provided, everything is spelled out for you. And then there are the countries where they assume that you have some shared knowledge, some intelligence and a mind of your own. For this latter culture it is almost insulting to get everything spelled out like that.
6. Doing Everything At Once Or One Thing After The Other
This not entirely the old discussion that women are better in multi-tasking than men. This is about the fact that some cultures doing more than one thing at a time is just, well, normal. So if you are talking with someone and he is taking also phone calls at the same time, it might be insulting in one culture, but it can also be just plain normal behavior in another.
It is difficult to discuss cultural differences without stereotyping, as you might have noticed. Stereotypes are just easier in communication. When dealing with individuals, make up your mind based upon only the individual, and not his or her entire race.
