Cultural Values

East meets West and North meets South in today’s global workplace. And each worker brings their cultural values, norms and standards with them. This creates opportunities and challenges for both the associates and their managers who strive to get the best performance and results from each contributor.

 

Cultural values are learned in childhood. They are the standards for right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, good and bad that are learned in the family and other social structures of one’s society. 

 

Some Asian values are: the primacy of the group over the individual, humility and self effacement, respect and honor towards others especially those in authority and building relationships before focusing on tasks. These values manifest in the following behaviors at work: speaking of the accomplishments of the team or group without mentioning one’s own contributions, keeping your ideas to yourself during meetings instead of sharing them, taking time to refine one’s ideas before presenting them to the team so as not to waste the time of one’s colleagues by giving ideas in the rough, staying quiet during “brainstorming” sessions in order to show respect to others, or waiting to be asked their opinion before offering it, expecting one’s boss to recognize and reward contributions without asking for such, etc.

 

In contrast most Westerners value individualism over the group, taking charge of one’s career and life, self-promotion and self-marketing, expressing one’s ideas at meetings unrefined as in “brainstorming sessions, bringing one’s contributions to the attention of one’s boss and colleagues.

 

With the existence of diverse value systems in the global workplace managers from all cultures must learn to become culturally competent in creating environments where everyone can make their best contributions.  A simple gesture of inviting ideas and input from Eastern associates and letting them know their contributions are noticed and appreciated goes a long way to meeting them on culturally relevant ground. And asking Western associates to consider inviting input from their teammates from Eastern countries would go a long way to bridging the cultural terrain. 

 
This means both frames of reference can be understood and appreciated. A global economy creates a global workplace. Eastern and Western associates can learn from each other and embrace the best of both worldviews. For example, Western associates might invite their Asian colleagues to share their ideas so that the team might advance its collective thinking and make progress. Asian associates might offer ideas in a spirit of service to the team and the project, which would take a step forward towards letting colleagues know their ideas while not inflating the ego.