Working with the Anglosphere

Welcome to the fourth part of a series of business-cultural communication insights, which look at how we (struggle to) work together, around the world. Today I’m going to explore Anglosphere culture and take a look at the ‘disagreeing’ and? ‘evaluating’ dimensions of The Culture Map.

I’ve spent many years trying to wrap my head around the similarities and differences between the Anglosphere countries. I am British, I work for a New Zealand online business English school, my best friends live in Australia and Canada, I love South African English accents, and I’ve been dreaming about visiting the USA since I was a child, although I still haven’t done so.

Of course, there are many more countries which speak English as a primary or secondary language, but I need to keep this focused and relevant for ‘at work’ communication, so I’m going to stick to the traditional Anglosphere countries.

Let’s address a fundamental question.?

Are there more similarities or differences between Anglosphere communication styles?

In a nutshell: we are generally low context communicators who value clarity, explicitness, and written confirmation and clarification.

Job done!

How about we take a look at some regional and national sociocultural-communicative characteristics. This is not an extensive list, but rather some observations. Please bear in mind that these are broad brush generalisations of the people from these regions.

The three kinds of people who live in the USA (further reading)

USA (Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic): more reserved, irritable, not very agreeable, more liberal and temperamental (moody);

USA (Southern and Midwestern): friendly and conventional, welcoming, family orientated, extroverted, low openness, more conservative;

USA (West Coast): high openness, low agreeableness, culturally diverse, relaxed and creative, more liberal;

Canada: polite, tactful, peaceful, relatively casual, value personal space, both individualistic and community oriented;

Australia: welcoming, warm, extroverted, informal and casual, conversational, polite, direct;

New Zealand: friendly, inventive, outgoing, calm, informal and relaxed, more reserved than Australians, open-minded;

South Africa: passionate, independent, assertive, charismatic, creative, direct or indirect (depending on local culture), socially quite casual but formal at work;

England (Northern): friendly and outgoing, extroverted, direct, somewhat warmer and more direct;

England (Southern): more reserved and indirect, somewhat colder, polite, value personal space;

Wales: more touchy-feely, warmer, family-oriented, quite shy, patriotic and proud;

Scotland: agreeable, funny, warm, very friendly and polite, people from Glasgow are more extroverted and less formal than those from Edinburgh;

Ireland: gregarious, extroverted, charming, witty, temperamental and stubborn, very talkative (they have the gift of the gab), active, social butterflies, funny and good at having fun.

Ok, so now that we’ve got some differences out of the way, let’s take a look at our similarities in relation to professional communication preferences, starting with the disagreeing dimension of The Culture Map.

As you can see, the US and UK are in the middle of the scale. I will speculate here that this is because it really depends on the person’s upbringing and local/family culture.

Anglosphere countries tend to be quite ‘argument positive’, that is, we like a good debate and are comfortable in expressing disagreement with our family and friends. However, a lot of people don’t bring this attitude into the workplace. They have separate home and work personalities.?

There are too many individual differences to be able to determine clearly whether or not we generally enjoy or avoid professional confrontation. Those of us who are more aware of the language we use, especially the difference between indirect and direct questions, will lead with indirect questions but become more direct if we feel there is a need. Starting soft is always a good idea, but we won’t be offended if you need to get more serious and direct, as long as you are polite. Saying your ‘please and thanks yous’ is a big part of Anglosphere communication. Did you know that where to say please can affect your tone and meaning?

To stay on the safe side, professional confrontation is best done with a tried and tested technique:

Effective Confrontation (3-minute listening)?

FBI: Feelings - Behaviour - Impact

In short, when you confront somebody, be as specific as possible with these three things: 1) the feelings that the behaviour is creating; 2) the exact behaviour with specific examples; and 3) the impact that the behaviour has on the team, project, results, etc. (wherever the impact is being felt).

Evaluating/Feedback is another interesting dimension to look at with regards to the Anglosphere. Again, you will note that we fall between the two extremes, and again I will suppose that this is because there are no useful generalisations to be made here. Some of us prefer direct feedback, and others indirect. Some of us prefer it indirect on a Monday morning, but by Friday afternoon we’d prefer if you were more direct and to the point.

Like with the FBI model above, there are a number of excellent techniques which you can use when giving feedback. Here below is the ‘constructive criticism sandwich’. You may also have heard of it as the ‘feedback burger’.

One thing that we definitely share across the Anglosphere is our love of metaphors and food, even if English food leaves a lot to be desired.

(Start positive) > praise > compliment > criticise (this is the meat) > praise > thank and offer support (end positive)

This method works? across cultures within international work contexts, even for nationalities which traditionally value direct negative feedback. This is probably where corporate culture trumps national culture. If you are managing or working with people from various cultures, it isn’t really possible to take each and every cultural idiosyncrasy into account. Instead, we can do our best to relate to the human in front of us, and all humans appreciate positive feedback.

Let’s wrap up with a review of the key Anglosphere generalisations:

1. We are low context communicators. We value clarity and precision, and we don’t like to rely on subtexts or cultural understandings and knowledge. We like to use words explicitly and give/receive written confirmation and clarification.
2. Relationships are important to us, but getting the job done is most important. This is why written contracts and paper trails are so important to us. If a native English speaking colleague has ever asked you to ‘put it in an email’ or ‘put it in writing’, this is why. We value written evidence.
3. In the disagreeing and feedback cultural dimensions, we are very much in the middle between confrontational/direct and non-confrontational/indirect. Most likely it is impossible to draw useful conclusions here because different people are different, so we can use models and techniques which work across cultures.
4. We like metaphors (e.g. the feedback sandwich) and abbreviations/acronyms (e.g. FBI).

In the next edition of this newsletter we’re going to go to China to see if we can find some cultural insights that will make your work easier when dealing with Chinese people.

Have a great week.

Many thanks and kind regards,

Nadim

Please get in touch with me for lesson packages, here or at [email protected]

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For English language students

1. Wrap one’s head around (idiomatic expression) - understand; work out; figure out
2. Anglosphere (noun) - English speaking countries
3. How about… - 'why not...'; 'let's...'
4. Bear in mind (that…) (expression) - take into account; remember that
5. (To have) The gift of the gab (expression) - to have a gift with words (be able to speak carismatically)
6. Broad-brush generalisations (to paint with a broad brush) (idiomatic expression) - speak in general (not taking into account specific differences)
7. Gregarious (adjective) - outgoing; friendly; extroverted
8. Stay on the safe side (expression) - do/say something with caution
9. Tried and tested (expression) - recognised as reliable and useful
10. In short (expression) - in summary
11. (Get) to the point (expression) - be concise and clear (the opposite of beat around the bush)
12. Leave a lot to be desired (expression) - to be not as good as it should be
13. Trump (verb) - to beat
14. Idiosyncrasy (noun)?- unusual habits or characteristics
15. Subtext (noun) - an implied (not explicit) message or meaning