Leadership in Action: Cultural Adaptability: It's About more than Using the Right Fork

FIGURE IT OUT

Global managers almost need to become anthropologists. They should develop a strategy for noticing how things are done in other cultures and why. When people observe people from other cultures behaving in ways that are difficult to comprehend, they typically respond in one of three ways—they attack, retreat, or try to figure it out. Global managers have a mandate to take the third option—and they can approach that option best by paying attention, gathering information, and suspending judgment.

One of the best road maps for global managers who seek to ground themselves in the cultural norms of other countries has come from Shalom Schwartz, a social psychologist and professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “The study of cultural ...