Loved this Business Insider article on cultural communication patterns. As someone who grew up in Switzerland and then moved to the USA at 26, I can attest that there are clearly different communication styles at play.
British linguist Richard D. Lewis charted communication patterns as well as leadership styles and cultural identities in his book, “When Cultures Collide“.
I’ve observed a lot of truth in theses communication patterns, but I think they become less relevant as time moves on.
As the world has got smaller and we move from one country to another these patterns are being replaced with a hybrid of national and corporate cultures.
Unless there is a particular national dominance my observation is that that corporate rather than national communication patterns take over when sitting down to a negotiation today.
I left the UK and moved to Switzerland when I was 27.
Mar 31st, 2014 / 12:12 pm
The U.S. is a very large country and this chart leaves me wondering if the American Communication Pattern takes into account the differences in region to region. In the U.S. Midwest it appears that we follow a hybrid of the German/Swiss model more than the one presented here.
Mar 31st, 2014 / 1:18 pm
I would say the Chinese version is quite true…
Mar 31st, 2014 / 2:50 pm