The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

Overall a great book giving you invaluable insights into cross-cultural teams - that’s a mouthful - but it is that good. If you’ve ever worked or are currently working with people from different countries or different continents, for that matter, this book can be rated from mildly interesting to really “life-saving”. I would like to see this book promoted more into organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Erin analyzes a bunch of traits of people with different cultural backgrounds and how that affects not only the way they work and they interact with other persons at work, but the way they are outside work or how, for some, it’s all one big integrated whole.

The cultural traits are split up into 8 categories, and then methodically they are analyzed and presented with examples. At the end of each chapter there are always some suggestions on how to integrate and use them with your teams or colleagues in cases of possible clashes.

The 8 scales are:

1. Communicating: low-context vs. high-context
2. Evaluating: direct vs. indirect negative feedback
3. Persuading: principles vs. applications-first
4. Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical
5. Deciding: consensual vs top-down
6. Trusting: task-based vs. relationship-based
7. Disagreeing: confrontational vs avoiding confrontation
8. Scheduling: linear vs. flex-time

Clearly a 5-star book recommended for everyone.