High-Context vs. Low-Context Cultures. Mind the Gap.
Think about that time you were traveling abroad, and you felt deeply annoyed by the non-stop questions on how you wanted your meal served. Or how suspiciously kind and friendly that waiter was.
But also, think when you were abroad, entered a coffee shop, and a waiter just smiled at you, waiting for you to give your order without saying a word. Not the politest, were they?
Enter high-context vs. low-context communication styles.
Are they just a restaurant matter, or should you be aware of them in your next assignment abroad? In this article, I will share what I learned as an Italian (a high-context culture) during my one-year appointment in Australia (a very low-context culture). Stay with me to find out why mastering this cultural dimension can dramatically improve your personal and professional success overseas.
High-Context
In high-context cultures, a lot is going on “in the air.” There is implicit content that doesn’t need to be spelled out. You choose that steak-house because you like how they grill their steaks, and with a few words, you’ll get what you came there for. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall initially developed the concept in his book “Beyond Culture” (1976). Fast forward forty years, and INSEAD professor Erin Meyer picks it up again as one of the eight fundamental cultural dimensions in her book “The Culture Map” (2014). In “The Culture Map,” she classifies each country with research data on each one of these eight dimensions. I read Erin Meyer’s book cover to cover, and I can’t recommend it enough for those in the frontlines of the global economy. Countries like Italy, Spain, France, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, according to Erin Meyer’s research, fall into the high-context category.
Low-Context
In low-context countries, things need to be spelled out a bit more. Your message needs to be clear and precise. If you want to appear polite, you need to be willing to greet strangers and thank bus drivers as you get off. A smile won’t do. Erin Meyer positions Australia, US, Canada, and to a lesser extent, the UK on the low-context side. The anthropological reason for the existence of these two opposite communication styles rests on how different populations evolved. Countries like Japan, (extreme high-context) or Italy, remained culturally homogenous as they developed, becoming accustomed to transfer or augment meaning also without language. In contrast, countries that were populated by waves of immigration (like the US or Australia) felt the need for a more precise communication to avoid misinterpretations.
During my time in Australia, I worked as a manager in the marketing and medical education team of one of the biggest Medical Technology companies in the world. Fresh out of my MBA, I felt ready to not only learn to catch waves at Manly beach but also to put to the test my cultural intelligence skills and how quickly I could adapt.
The Incident
During one of our weekly work-in-progress marketing meetings, we were reviewing a customer’s request for a grant. As I was looking after this request, I updated the team on where I landed. “The information the customer shared didn’t clarify what this money will be for,” I said with a puzzled expression hinting, “this is not leaving us much of a choice…”
The team went silent and then tried to push in favor of moving forward on a good-faith assumption. I was surprised by the team’s reaction as if they didn’t get what I meant, or if the legal implications of giving money to a public officer weren’t clear to everyone. I tried to clarify, actually making it worse: “Until we cannot write out that it is an illegitimate request, we can’t assume that it isn’t. We need to protect the company here.” The Australian senior team member jumped at my words, “why do we need to assume the worst? This is ridiculous, come on, we have to show collaboration with our clients!” He raced his fingers on his laptop to set up a meeting with the compliance team, “I don’t think this is right. Let’s see if we need to go through this nonsense!”
The meeting with the compliance officer took place immediately after, and he confirmed my cautionary position highlighting the legal implications behind a potentially illegitimate request.
Cultural Pitfall #1 — Me and the Client
When we did not receive the additional information we needed from the customer, even after repeated requests, my high-context communication style kicked in. Through that lens, I saw a malicious pattern in this customer behavior. It was “in the air” for me.
Is it possible that it was a matter of personal judgment rather than culture? Was I assuming too much? Difficult to say, but culture influences our perception and wires our brain in the way it is, so does it matter?
What should I have done? In hindsight, I should have worked with my team to reach out to the customer once again, until we obtained an explicit refusal to share the information, or eventually got it.
Cultural Pitfall #2 — Me and the Team
Coming from a high-context society, I thought my message was clear: “there is something wrong here, in a legally relevant way, let’s drop this and move on.” I carried out my part of due diligence on the matter, and these were my findings. Why was my team not seeing it in the same way?
In hindsight, in a low-context culture, it was on me to make my message more precise around all the steps that led me to that recommendation. For example, if we had reached out again to the customer, I could have mentioned that they eventually refused to provide the information, making the final recommendation more digestible. Secondly, I could have reminded the team what next approvers would have wanted to see to green-flag a grant request and show them that we didn’t have it.
One temptation is to make the argument that it would be reasonable to expect countries like Australia, with so many different cultures, to be more forgiving towards different styles. However, it turns out to be a rather weak argument. Although certain countries’ populations can include several ethnicities, it doesn’t mean that there is no one prevailing super-culture that all come to terms with.
Takeaways
So, at your next assignment abroad in a country with a different communication style than yours,
- distill the message you need to share with your audience;
- be aware of how your communication style is going to affect what you say and how you will say it. If you are excessively explicit in a low-context culture they might feel like being treated like a child; if you are too implicit with a low-context culture they may assume you don’t know what you are talking about;
- think about the consequences of not adapting your message;
- finally, adjust your message and get some feedback afterwards to help you fine-tune your communication style for that audience.
We are creatures of habit, and the more we engage in communicating with different cultures and keeping an open mind, the more we become naturals at minding these gaps.
