Translator: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Claudia Sander I've lived in the United States, Brazil, and the Netherlands. And if I had to summarize the culture of each country in one word, this word, for the United States would be "competition," for Brazil, it would be "hope," and for the Netherlands, it would be "respect. " The United States is a country of competition because the people there believe that life is a competition, and that you have to be a winner.
In the Netherlands, the important thing is respect - I'm different than you, but I respect your opinion, even if it's different. We agree to disagree. We see this respect often, even in traffic, where it's normal to stop and yield to another, even if you're in the preferential lane.
The pedestrian is always respected, not only in the crosswalk. Wherever they want to cross, the cars stop so the pedestrian can cross. Brazil is the country of hope.
We live from one crisis to another, but always with the hope it will all work out right. "Brazil is the country of the future! " "Look, the future's arriving, here we go!
" Some years ago, I moved with my family to Amsterdam, and when we got there, we searched for an apartment to rent. We saw an ad, put up by a lady who was renting an apartment in her same building. We went to look at the apartment, and she said, "The apartment's just down the hall on this floor, and it's being painted, but you can see it.
I'll take you there. " We went, knocked on the door, and a man greeted us, more or less the same age as her and covered in paint. He said, "Ah, please, be welcome.
Come in, make yourselves at home. I just made some coffee, would you like some? " My wife and I politely thanked him, "No, we only want to see the apartment, then we have to go.
" The owner said, "Sure, I'll have some. " They went into the kitchen, talking animatedly. We looked at the apartment, and when it was time to go, the painter came to the door to say goodbye, and as we were leaving, I asked the owner, "Is he your husband?
" She said, "No, he's a painter that I contracted. " We were stunned because they treated each other as equals. We thought, "In Brazil, we wouldn't do this.
" In Brazil, we tend to put the painter, the worker, into another social class. We don't treat them as equals, and they don't treat us as equals. The Netherlands is extremely egalitarian, and this awakened my interest in culture.
So I started to research this issue, culture, and discovered that different countries and different communities teach different versions of what is right and wrong, what is appropriate and what isn't. And in my search for culture, I discovered an iceberg - the iceberg of culture. I discovered that culture has a visible part at the iceberg's surface - rituals, symbols, cultural heroes, the way people dress, and food.
But there's a much more important part that stays below the surface and isn't seen. This part is values. The values of each culture determine how we communicate, what our style of work is, and our relationship style.
Researching this cultural iceberg, I discovered a Dutch researcher, Geert Hofstede. Hofstede did statistical research about values in different cultures. He concluded there are five basic dilemmas that all cultures must resolve, and they resolve them in one way or another.
These five basic dilemmas are: hierarchy vs. equality, individualism vs. collectivism, performance vs.
quality of life and caring for others, control of uncertainty vs. "let things flow," and flexibility vs. stability.
Then everything began to make more sense. With these five dilemmas, I started to understand culture. But let's see how this works in practice.
This person here, in white clothes, is the prime minister of Thailand. So why is he sitting on the ground? Because the person behind the little table is the king of Thailand.
Thailand has a very hierarchical culture, and, in hierarchical cultures, there is what is called "power distance. " The power distance is very large. Status symbols are very apparent.
Difference in status is very apparent, even between the two most important positions in the country. Here is the prime minister of Sweden. Sweden has an egalitarian culture.
The Swedish prime minister is in line for the ATM, waiting his turn like everyone else. In egalitarian cultures, there's also a hierarchy, but it's more subtle and more discrete. The power distance is less.
Here is the princess of Denmark. Denmark is also an egalitarian society with little power distance. So why is this princess getting the red carpet treatment with people throwing flower petals at her feet?
Because she's not in Denmark. She's visiting Thailand, and Thai people treat royalty from other countries just like they treat their own. This photo is very important because it demonstrates that who determines if a society is hierarchical or egalitarian isn't who's at the top of the pyramid, but who's at the base of the pyramid.
Who makes a dictatorship isn't the dictator, it's the people who accept the dictator, or who, sometimes, even desire a dictator or a strong government. The princess of Denmark never would be treated this way in Denmark. Maybe that's why she likes to visit Thailand.
(Laughter) This all starts in childhood. We learn the notion of right and wrong as it relates to people before we are 10 years old, and if there's a power distance or not. We learn this not from what people say, but from observation.
We see what our parents, neighbors, teachers, and colleagues are doing, and we learn by imitating. When I was a child, in Porto Alegre, when my parents were receiving visitors in the living room, and my sister and I entered the living room to play, they would say, "Go outside to play; we're having an adult conversation. " And out we'd go.
We learned that, in this world, there are some people who have more power - the adults - and other people who have less - the children. Today, I live in the Netherlands, and when I visit my neighbor's house, and his children enter into the living room to play, he stops talking with me and includes the children in the conversation. So these children learn that, in this world, everyone has more or less the same power.
The power is distributed in a more egalitarian way in this community. Eventually, in the Netherlands, we found a house and moved into it. One day, a person knocked on the door, and identified himself as being from the local government.
He said, "There's a playground at the end of the street, and the city's going to reform it. So we're doing research here on the street to know what kinds of play equipment are preferred by neighborhood children, so we can guarantee this equipment they prefer will be put into the renewed playground. Do you have young children at home?
" I said, "Yes. I have two girls, four and five years old. They like the slide, the merry-go-round .
. . " And he said, "No.
Please, are they at home? I want to talk with them. " (Laughter) You could have knocked me over with a feather.
This would never happen in Brazil. They didn't want to talk with me. They wanted to talk directly with my daughters.
Now, imagine what kind of society is created when this type of attitude is taken with children? Children are treated like people from when they're very small, not like our project as we sometimes like to say. The second cultural dilemma is individualism vs.
collectivism. In individualism, people assume more individual responsibility. They express their individual opinion, even if this can injure the other person, because the most important thing is to fulfill your responsibility to your own conscience, and a dissenting opinion is someone else's problem.
In these communities, the task is more important than the relationship. In collective societies, it's the opposite. The group is more important than the individual.
People belong to different groups, and inside each group, they avoid confrontation and expressing dissident opinions. There can be conflict between one group and another, but, inside the same group, conflict is avoided. The third dilemma I want to mention is between performance and quality of life.
The two things are important. All societies have performance, and have a need for quality of life and for taking care of others. But, if you have to choose between performance and quality of life in a situation, depending on which culture you're a part of, you may fall on the side of performance, or you may fall on the side of quality of life.
I'm not going to talk about the other two dilemmas because I'd never end this talk short of 18 minutes, but let's take a little look at some research data. This is Brazil's profile. Brazil is a culture of high power distance.
It's more collective than individualistic - individualism is relatively low. In terms of performance and quality of life, it's more or less balanced. We have high control of uncertainty and we have high flexibility.
Let's compare with the United States. It's quite different. The United States has low power distance, and is a more egalitarian society than Brazil.
The United States has high individualism; it's the world's most individualistic country. Also, the United States has a stronger orientation to performance over quality of life in comparison to Brazil, has less need to control uncertainty, and has less flexibility than Brazil. So let's look at the Netherlands, only to have another comparison.
Here you can see that the Netherlands is similar to the United States in terms of power distance, it's egalitarian. Also, it's sufficiently individualistic, almost as much as the Americans. Now, in terms of orientation for performance, it's much lower.
Clearly, the Dutch prefer quality of life over performance. In terms of control of uncertainty, they're a little higher than the Americans. In terms of flexibility, it's in the middle between Brazil and the United States.
What does all this mean in practice? Imagine a meeting at work. A work meeting in the United States is driven by action, discussion, and decision.
And the boss decides who will do what. In the Netherlands, the meeting is driven by discovering what are everyone's opinions. The result is secondary.
The important thing is that everybody be heard, and the boss is more like a coordinator who helps the whole group to decide. What is a typical work meeting like in Brazil? The meeting is a platform for the boss to announce the decision that he already made before the meeting.
And nobody discusses what the boss already decided. If you want to influence the decision, you have to talk with the boss prior to the meeting. In the meeting, there won't be a chance to object.
This results in different styles of work. Brazil is hierarchical and since it has a hierarchical culture, Brazil also tends to think that there is a hierarchy in all the countries. So we think that some countries are cooler than others.
We tend to admire the United States and Europe, and we tend to disregard Africa and the rest of Latin America. We like to imitate the Americans, the French, and the Germans. For example, when we study college administration, almost everything we study comes from the United States.
However, some of the concepts need to be adapted. Feedback, for example. We learn that feedback is a cool thing that everyone must practice.
In the United States, it works. In Brazil, feedback is different. You don't give feedback to your boss.
When your boss gives feedback to you, it's because of something you did that he didn't like. And you won't take the risk to give feedback to your boss because if he doesn't like the feedback, he boots you onto the street. So things like this need to be adapted before you do them in another culture.
Brazil doesn't need to imitate the others. There are many things we do better than the Americans and the Dutch. For example, this concept of "mutirão," joint effort.
If we want to mobilize people, it's much easier to mobilize people in Brazil. If I needed your help here to rearrange the stage, take this X from here and put it there in the back, I'd only have to ask, and three or four people would appear to help do this. If I asked the same in the Netherlands, people would look at me and say, "Are you sure this is a good idea?
But why do you want to do this? Let's discuss it. " (Laughter) And we would discuss it for two hours and not come to any conclusion.
So we have many things to learn from others, but we also have many things to teach. There isn't any culture that is better than the other. The important thing is that we keep an open mind.
What I learned, going from one culture to another, working in different countries, is that it's important to ask to learn. Listen more than talk. And your questions must be short.
Like: "Why? " and "How? " In this way, we can put ourselves in the place of the other, and really learn.
All this is imporant because we need to learn to look for the right problem. If we discuss problems of culture without looking at values, we can be looking in the wrong place. And if we want to change the culture, we need to reeducate adults, but we need, especially, to change the learning style of children.
At home and in school. As long as we continue educating children in an authoritative way, we'll continue creating a hierarchical society. If we want a more egalitarian society, we must change the education style to be more egalitarian.
For this, we need to tinker with our values. Values are the stone path along which we can change the culture. Deep down, we're all different, we're not all equal, but we have the same value - we're equivalent.
Thank you.
