Cultural differences in the workplace— why should we care?

5 min readMar 10, 2020

In recent years, the Diversity and Inclusion movement contributed a lot to corporate cultures. There’s plenty of researches(source1, source2) proving that diversity in the workplace improves decision-making, productivity and chance to succeed in the business. The result of this trend is that companies put more and more pressure to create teams where D&I is embraced… but its only one side of the coin. Unfortunately, there’s very little education about how those differences among team members are affecting daily work. This means that while we’re pushing towards more diverse team composition, we are leaving employees with very little insight about how to function inside this kind of workplace.

Not cool bro, not cool… without being aware of the impact that our culture is having on a number of factors, like:

how we form relationships
the way we solve conflicts
work style we prefer

We are set up to fail from the very beginning!

What can we do?

Currently, working in an international environment is more often the default option than an exception — especially in industries like IT or finances, so we need to do something! The situation is not as bad as it sounds… cultural differences are nothing new, and we can use wisdom available in the literature and researches to raise awareness and teach our team members.

One of the options to reach this goal is to look at Geert Hofstede's work. This brilliant guy spent most of his scientific career researching how the cultural differences affecting basically everything in our lives. As an outcome from his research, he created six culture dimensions that help us understand what are those differences and from where are they coming from. Let’s briefly look at those dimensions with short definitions. If something is not clear at this time, don’t worry! I hope it will make more sense as we go through the content and examples. Here they are:

PDI (Power Distance Index) — A dimension that measures emotional space between an employee and its boss.
IDV (Individualism) — We can find high IDV in countries where bonds between people are rather loose. Low IDV countries, on the contrary, are the ones where family bonds are very strong and people value adherence to communities.
MAS (Masculinity) — High MAS cultures prefer achievement and material rewards in exchange for effort spent. Low MAS cultures lean more towards cooperation, humility, and care for the weak.
UAI (Uncertainty Avoidance Index) — Dimension which tells us how comfortable we are with uncertainty in our life.
LTO (Long Time Orientation) — As the name suggests, cultures with high LTO are focusing more on the future and are also willing to trade short-term material or social success in order to prepare for the future.
IVR(Indulgence) — It’s a dimension which shows the presence of strict social norms

Why shall we care?

The truth is that we could say “I don't care” or “It is not my problem”, but honestly I am not sure if we are in a position where we can show complete ignorance. In most cases being in the position of Team Leader/Manager/Scrum Master or having in mind self-organizing teams, even as a regular team member — means that we are co-responsible for the team’s success.

Showing that we respect and care about our differences, will help us build trust and a safe environment that is needed for the team to be successful (psychological safety, 5 dysfunctions of the team).

Unfortunately, it’s often the case that we are left alone with all the problems and lack of knowledge. The one thing we can do for sure here is to take control of the situation and make sure that your team is continuously increasing awareness and getting the necessary knowledge.

Have also in mind that if you’re in the environment where either:

people are not aware of the impact that diversity is having on the team, or
everyone is ignoring how those differences can impact you as a team.

You are basically on the way to destroy all the advantages you can get from a diverse workplace. Isn't that weird? Companies create diverse teams to boost the chances of success but often they get the exact opposite.

An example of importance — Diversity

Let’s bring up the first example based on the MAS dimension to illustrate how significant it might be — in this case, at perceiving diversity itself.

This dimension plays a significant role in understanding the differences. Countries with high MAS (like France, Poland) treats everything “different” as dangerous. On the other side, there are countries with low MAS(like Denmark or Sweden) which treats different as curious and interesting. Those are entirely different models of behavior.

What do you think could be the impact of the perception of diversity on your team?
Is there anything you can do, having this knowledge in mind, to mitigate possible biases/conflicts?

Consider that for yourself, but I will also try to provide some more information in a different article, stay tuned!

An example of importance — Trust

We can find plenty of data about “how to make a team successful”. If we look for example, at the famous The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, we find that the most important value is trust.

Can you imagine that team members trust each other when they do not understand each other's behaviors?

..or more specifically — imagine that someone openly confronts you each time there’s some problem (high MAS)while you prefer a more indirect way of resolving conflicts, probably by having conversation towards consensus (Low MAS). Would you trust such a person? Would you feel safe? Ye, I thought so. Probably, you would feel attacked and often unjustly blamed for the situation. Mutual understanding of our behaviors is crucial to obtain trust.

An example of importance — Real life

I’d like to share a fun fact with you. In Hofstede’s research low UAI was positively correlated with feeling happiness… so at the same time is means that high UAI equals more “sadness” in our lives.

It was very interesting for me because in my culture people are more often trying to be “not miserable” instead of being just happy. I was wondering for ages… why ?! It was the “wow” moment for me because of my country, Poland has in fact very high UAI! Gaining that knowledge gave me a whole new insight into my culture and helped me understand what was troubling me for years.

What’s next?

Just so you know, there are many relations similar to mentioned above. Stay tuned guys and definitely expect more in the following weeks!

In future articles, we will answer these questions:

Which country is considered as the most individual and what does it mean to us?
How collectivism might affect your work culture?
How IDV and COL play with Low/High context communication described by Erin Meyer?
.. and many, many more!

Stay tuned!