Communicating
コミュニケーション
Whether good communication is explicit and literal, or layered and read between the lines.
Communicating: US −3, DE −2, NORD −2 (DK −2, SE −1, FI −1), NL −2, UK −1, BR 0, PL 0, IN +1, FR +1, KR +2, CN +2, JP +3.
No source: Israel, Ukraine
NORD is drawn as a span over its members: DK −2, SE −1, FI −1.
Source: Erin Meyer, The Culture Map (2014) and her country mapping charts. Positions are approximate, read off her charts onto a seven-step grid.
Positions as text
| Country or region | Step (−3 to +3) |
|---|---|
| United States US | −3 |
| Germany DE | −2 |
| The Nordics NORD | −2 (DK −2, SE −1, FI −1) |
| Netherlands NL | −2 |
| United Kingdom UK | −1 |
| Brazil BR | 0 |
| Poland PL | 0 |
| India IN | +1 |
| France FR | +1 |
| South Korea KR | +2 |
| China CN | +2 |
| Japan JP | +3 |
The two ends
- Left end Low-context
- Good communication is precise, simple and explicit. Messages are taken at face value, and repeating and writing things down is welcome.
- Right end High-context
- Good communication is subtle and layered. Messages are often implied rather than stated, and listeners are expected to read between the lines.
What it is built from
Whether a message is meant to be taken at face value. Meyer looks at how much people repeat and confirm in writing, whether they summarise what was agreed, and how much they expect the listener to read between the lines.
Eight scales from Erin Meyer's The Culture Map (2014), built from her interviews and teaching with international managers. She publishes charts, not numbers, so each country is read off her chart onto a coarse seven-step grid. The positions are relative: a country is direct or indirect compared with the others on the line.
Limits: the scales are not a validated survey instrument, the source population is mostly managers in multinational companies, and neighbouring steps are not meaningfully different. How to read these scales