Beyond the stereotype

Linking culture and personality to improve communication in the

multi-cultural workplace

Copyright applied for : Christine MARSAN – John RICHARDS

 

25 may 2000

Executive Summary

 

Based on our experiences when working with groups of managers from different nationalities, we wish to propose an approach to cross-cultural understanding that builds on current thinking about culture difference, and avoids the pitfalls associated with the use of  stereotypes.

The workshop explores the use of three established models which help us understand differences in personality, and what underlies effective communication between people [‘Insights’, Transactional Analysis ‘Ego States’ and TA ‘Drivers’]. We intend to show how, in many circumstances, improved communication between people from different cultures results from many of the same behaviours that lead to improved communication within a single culture.

Further, we intend to show clear links between personality type, organisational culture and national culture. We will overlay the personality models listed above onto established models which explain differences in organisational culture [Harrison, Handy], and match both of these with established models of national culture [Hall, Hofstede, Trompenaars].

Why is this important? Our experience has shown that the traditional focus on explaining culture stereotypes, while highlighting key differences, has been largely rejected by managers as too simplistic, failing to provide the tools for them to improve multi-cultural working relationships. In many cases, they have given examples where their working relationships with colleagues from the same culture are less good than with those from another country. Our approach in linking the three levels of

¨        Personality

¨        Organisational Culture, and

¨        National Culture

provides both diagnostic tools to identify the critical aspects affecting working relationships in a particular organisation, and development tools to enable people within these organisations to create effective working relationships within and between cultural groups.

Introduction

Comparing culture and personality is not new, but observations we have made in various companies suggest it still seems to be relevant.

Our approach here is to link a well-known model of personal behaviour, which enables us to understand each person’s personality, with two tools from the theory of Transactional Analysis. Following this, we will suggest how we believe this links with corporate culture and with national culture. From this we will develop a grid which can be used to interpret the characteristics of new cultures we may encounter, and to diagnose the fit between an individual, the culture of their organisation and the national culture in which they operate.

The increase of globalisation, the reduced impact of national boundaries, and the possibility for an individual to work, for a short or long period, in another country, is increasingly becoming the business reality for many people. Most large companies now develop much of their business outside their local market. This means that many employees in commercial roles, negotiation and contract management, customer service and technical support, for example, need to work for much of their time in different countries, often in a different language and with people of various nationalities and cultures.

Thus the issue of how well each person adapts to the local situation becomes critical to the organisation’s success.

The Background

 

The problems of intercultural business are mainly treated by researchers in the field of intercultural communication (Hall, 1966, 1976, 1987; Watzlawick, 1978 & 1980; Barzini, 1983; Kohls & Howard, 1983; Demorgon, Lipianski Lewis, 1987; Trompenaars, Carroll, 1987; Casmir & Asuncion Lande, 1989; Bosche 1993; Stenou, 1997). Indeed, it is the most crucial and at the same time the most obvious field of disagreement, and if communication is not effective nothing else can get through.

What is fascinating is that the concern about cultural variation has been a relatively new one, because historically the research on multicultural issues has been developed by the USA essentially for business reasons.

At the end of World War II, the United States appeared as strongest amongst the industrialised nations, with the Europeans too concerned in dealing with their own reconstruction to have enough resources and strength to help the others. Therefore, the USA contributed intensively to the European reconstruction (Marshall Plan), and with funds and men came the culture and the American model.

The subsequent economic expansion which facilitated the spread of American companies into various nations around the globe marked the beginning of their transformation into multinational organisations. The main aim at that time, in order to manage successfully in each region, was to develop a solid and consistent American culture on a worldwide basis. This coincided with the spread of management models through organisations, when various theories were developed (among the best known are Taylor, Mayo, Maslow, McGregor to Drucker, Peters, Handy, and Mintzberg).

However, this concept of spreading one culture throughout the world faced some difficulties. These were most apparent with Japan which, having its own strong culture, remained very protective and defensive to any intrusion. In addition, some management theories, particularly relating to Quality, were developed in Japan, and posed difficulties in their direct translation to the USA. This prompted work on the comparison of both of these cultures (Hall 1959; Ouchi 1985; Gerlach 1987; Lincoln and McBride 1987; Ohmae 1987).

At that time, we were still some way from a full understanding of what culture means and of real consideration of the impact of different cultures on global organisations.

A great evolution has taken place thanks to the works of Hofstede (1987, 1991) who was the first to undertake a major inquiry in 40 different nations and in 20 languages for the IBM organisation. With 116,000 interviews, he collected the most important database ever created in this field, and was the impetus to further consideration of culture differences. Even if he has been criticised (Camilleri, 1996) afterwards on both the method and the conclusion, he really opened the window to a new perspective in research into intercultural management.

Since this time another Dutchman has become quite famous in the field of intercultural research, when Trompenaars (1993) proposed additional dimensions to those of Hofstede and Hall. However, we must recognise that, by focusing on the various dimensions proposed to understand different cultures, we are in danger of creating stereotypes.

Personality and Culture

 

Before developing our hypothesis, we recognise that the correspondence between culture and personality is not very new and appears recurrently as a field of investigation.

The first people to raise this question, to develop models and make proposals in this area were the culturalists, from the initial discipline of anthropology; for example, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and above all Ralph Linton (1959) and Abram Kardiner with The Individual in his Society (1939). Kardiner proposed to mix anthropology and psychoanalysis to better understand what happens between the individual and his culture. From these works came the relativism concept in intercultural research, and the focus of interest on the fact that nothing is universal in the field of intercultural and that it is vital to examine the various components in any intercultural situation before making any kind of diagnosis.

Now, theories and disciplines have evolved, and the closest field to culturalism is intercultural psychology for European researchers, and cross-cultural psychology for Americans.

Our observations and work in organisations like AIRBUS INDUSTRIE and SIEMENS demonstrate that nothing is black and white. The traditional culture dimensions facilitate understanding and access to intercultural awareness, but afterwards more detailed and specific questions arise like “why does this person react in this way this in this particular situation?”  It becomes clear that the impact of personality in the business context is real and we began to develop some hypotheses such as : perhaps personality is more the determinant factor than culture in difficulties or misunderstanding between individuals?

In order to support to our intuition, we will outline the three main models to which we refer, which facilitate the diagnosis of both the individual and of culture.

Three models to explain Personality

 

The first one is called Insights (Target Training Inc) and it is based on some of the dimensions of Carl Gustav Jung’s work (Psychological types), such as introversion-extroversion, feeling – thinking, intuition-sensation. Initially, best known in the USA and UK was the DiSC model proposing an overall distinction of four main quadrants each of which could be subdivided into 4 more detailed quadrants. This was very similar to the MBTI questionnaire but used a different vocabulary to describe the personality styles and was much easier to remember. DiSC was extended into the Insights model, based on four colours (blue, green, yellow and red) and using the common representations of these colours to describe personality. We use this model, because it is quickly understood and simplifies the ability to look in depth into the details and diversity of each profile.

A description of the Insights wheel and the main characteristics of each colour can be found in Annex 1.

The second and third references and are two well-known parts of Transactional Analysis, the ego state and the drivers. By linking Insights with TA ego states (Parent – Adult – Child) and the drivers (be strong, be perfect, please others, hurry up and try harder), our approach  provides a solid grid for the observation of behaviours and attitudes

A description of both Transactional Analysis references can be found in Annex 2.

Applications

 

These models allow us to do two things :-

·        From the models it is possible to characterise the individual, the company culture or the national culture.

·        In addition, these elements provide the opportunity to explore more in depth, in order to understand one’s behaviour, to adapt our communication to other people’s needs and expectations, and essentially to understand better the differences between people. Used with a working group this gives us the understanding and tools to optimise teamwork.

When we want to identify the company culture, we link these tools with the traditional methods of organisational audit. We identify the core values, we study the characteristics of working methods, we observe typical interactions etc. Then we can show how this  information links to our three references defining personality, and to the model of Harrison or Handy (Managers of Olympus), which describes four main distinctions in corporate culture.

A summary of these models can be found in Annex 3.

The ‘Personality’ of an Organisation and Nation 

 

The importance of making these links is to explain why, while we can observe many different personalities in any group of people, when a group from a single nation works together, they behave according to a normative scheme of common references relating to their national culture, as described by researchers on the subject (the best known being Hall, Hofstede and Trompenaars). By combining our three models (Insights and the two TA models) we can create a sophisticated approach which shows how, when individuals interact in groups which reflect national or corporate cultures, we can consider this as a single organism or system which could be said to have its own ‘personality’.

For the individual, this approach provides a very specific analysis, with a detailed description of the nuances which make up their character; for the national or corporate culture it will define the key issues which lead to the behaviours and responses of the overall national or corporate group.

Linking Culture and Personality to improve Communication in the Multi-cultural Workplace

The originality of our approach is that it provides a new grid to understand the three dimensions : the individual (character) in interaction with the organisation (company culture) and the nation (culture). From this, it is possible to predict, depending on the person, company or national culture, the behaviours and the optimum channel of communication which will lead to enhanced performance in the management of the organisation.

In conclusion, we consider this approach as a very helpful one to understand the interactions between the individual and the group. It provides tools and methods for people to better understand their own behaviour, and to increase their awareness of other people and of the situation (personal, organisational and/or national characteristics). This promotes tolerance, respect for individual differences, and an understanding of unfamiliar cultures. As a result, responses can be more accurate and appropriate to each situation, thus avoiding misunderstandings and conflict because of communication difficulties or more general relationship issues.

In a management situation this approach clearly has value in areas such as conflict resolution, facilitation, communication, negotiation, team working, sales etc.

References :

Bridges, W. The character of organisations. Davies-Black Publishing. Palo Alto. 1992.

Harrison, R. Understanding your organization’s character. Harvard Business Review, 50 (30). 1972.

Harrison, R. Questionnaire on the culture of organizations, Gods of Management, Handy, C. Gods of Management. London : Souvenir Press. 1978.

Hofstede, G. Culture’s consequences : International Differences in World-Related Values. London. Sage. 1980.

HALL, E. T. The hidden dimension. Doubleday & Compagnie. New-York. 1966.

HALL, E. T. Titre original : The silent language. Doubleday & Compagnie. New-York. 1959.

HALL, E. T. Titre original : The danse of Life  Anchor Press / Doubleday, New-York. 1983.

TROMPENAARS, F. Riding the waves of culture. Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business . N.B. Publishing Limited. London. 1993.

Kales, H.S, Barnes, J.W.  Understanding the domain of cross-national buyer-seller interactions. In Cross-cultural management. Terrence Jackson. Butterworth Heinemann. UK. 1995.

Stewart, I,  Joines, V. TA today. A new introduction to Transactional Analysis. Russels Press Ltd. UK. 1987.

Annex One

THE INSIGHTS WHEEL

THE INSIGHTS WHEEL

In order to be able to read the Insights wheel and discover one’s own profile, some explanations are needed. The wheel was based on the works of Jung, then enriched with Jacobi’s wheel and Martson’s colours, and finally divided into eight families called ‘types’ and into 48 profiles. The individual Action Plan details the theoretical basis that underlies the Insights model.

Three main variables characterise the Insights Wheel: the introversion-extroversion variable, the thought-feeling variable, and the sensation-intuition variable.

Introversion - extroversion :

Thought - Feeling :