{"id":28778,"date":"2022-09-08T21:35:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-09T04:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=28778"},"modified":"2022-09-08T21:35:22","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T04:35:22","slug":"good-neighboring-and-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/good-neighboring-and-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Neighboring and Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all know the story of the religious legal expert wanting to test Jesus regarding the correct pathway to eternal life. It ends up that loving God with one\u2019s whole being and one\u2019s neighbor as oneself is what it all, in Jesus\u2019 estimation, boils down to. But the legal expert wanted to press things further, to hear a more exact answer, asking Jesus to be more specific about who he should love as himself. And Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, turns the question around and puts the emphasis on the action<\/em> of good neighboring, the one who is called to the act of good neighboring, not the one receiving the good neighboring (Luke 10:25-37).<\/p>\n

As I read Erin Meyer\u2019s \u201cThe Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures,\u201d I found myself drawn back to Jesus\u2019 call to good neighboring. Meyer\u2019s book can be classified as a sociological\/anthropological history and a cultural guidebook. Her longitudinal research and writing are for the purpose of providing business leaders in particular, but anyone who lives in proximity to people different from themselves, with \u201c\u2026a systematic, step-by-step approach to understanding the most common business communication challenges that arise from cultural differences, and offer steps for dealing with them more effectively.\u201d[1]<\/a> She continues several pages later, \u201cCultural patterns of behavior and belief frequently impact our perceptions (what we see), cognitions (what we think), and actions (what we do). The goal of this book is to help you improve your ability to decode these three facets of culture and to enhance your effectiveness in dealing with them.\u201d[2]<\/a> In a world where we are more and more often interacting with people from cultures different from our own, the skills Meyer teaches are essential to the work of good neighboring, for how else can we discern if what we see, think, and do will actually be received as good neighboring.<\/p>\n

Meyer has developed eight key scales that allow one to map one\u2019s own cultural practices (and one\u2019s own particular practices) alongside the cultural practices of one\u2019s neighbor. These maps allow one to better determine what adjustments can be made to truly communicate and be a good neighbor, let alone be effective in one\u2019s other roles. Each scale is detailed in a dedicated chapter. These eight chapters address the art of communicating across cultures, evaluating performance and in particular the giving of negative feedback, how persuasion is understood in different cultural contexts, how respect on the scale of hierarchy to egalitarian is practiced, how decisions are made (collaborative vs. directive), how trust is established and nourished, how productive disagreement is perceived, and how issues of time and scheduling are handled. In the epilogue Meyer demonstrates how to utilize these eight different maps as part of a holistic approach to working with others and discerning the impact of cultural versus personality differences.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

I found her examples both humorous and helpful. I frequently found myself say, \u201cYes, I recognize that!\u201d For example, in her chapter on communication she discusses the distinction between high and low context cultures and the capacity of those from high context cultures to \u201creading the air\u201d in a conversation or interaction.[4]<\/a> The Middle East in general is a much higher context culture than the USA. Many times, I have had this experience of being in a room full of Middle East colleagues, with everyone engaged in conversation with others\u2014multiple conversations happening at the same time. On one such occasion, I was needing a glass of water. I had barely realized that for myself, when a colleague clear across the room stood up, continued in conversation with the person he was talking to, and brought me a glass of water. He truly was \u201creading the air\u201d of my non-verbals in a way I was not aware of. Understanding the spectrum of high to low context has been extremely helpful in my work of bridging between partners in the Middle East and partners in the USA. With USA teams I need to be much more explicit because, overall, this is the communication expectation. My Middle East partners \u201cread the air\u201d and I have learned to do the same, so we more easily track in the same direction and adjust as needed. But my Middle East partners know that Americans tend to be lower context, so they have adapted their communication style to account for this when in the presence of a USA group. It is truly fascinating to observe.<\/p>\n

We have now, as a cohort, taken the \u201cIntercultural Development Inventory (IDI).\u201d This Inventory will give us some language for understanding our starting points for working with cultural difference and the direction we want to move in order to work more effectively with difference. Meyer\u2019s culture maps provide some of the tangible skills that one can integrate into a deliberate personal development plan to increase one\u2019s effectiveness of working with cultural differences. Or, to say it another way, to lean more deeply into the art and practice of good neighboring. I will be integrating Meyer\u2019s culture maps into the MVP I am developing this year, in concert with using the IDI. I am looking forward to how my MVP will emerge as I work with these two effective tools.<\/p>\n

One dimension of Meyer\u2019s work I would like to spend more time on is how her culture maps can be better utilized with the cultural complexity that makes up more and more of the USA. I found her reasoning of why the USA has developed into the most extreme example of a low context culture very interesting\u2014because of the immigrant history of the USA, there have been fewer shared points of reference or what Meyer calls \u201cimplicit knowledge\u201d between people groups. So, Americans have had to become very explicit in their communication for the sake of getting things accomplished.[5]<\/a> I increasingly work with US-based colleagues who come from many different cultural backgrounds and often high-context backgrounds. Some of our organizational challenges are because of the spectrum of high to low context cultural communication assumptions on our team. It leads to me think that we have absorbed the generally low context of the USA to differing degrees, depending on how recently we have immigrated to the USA (never mind the other seven dimensions she discusses). I would love to hear Jonathan\u2019s experience in the Korean American community on my wondering.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Meyer, Erin. 2015. The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done across Cultures<\/em>. International edition, First edition. New York: Public Affairs, 6.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 14.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 252.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 33+<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 34+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know the story of the religious legal expert wanting to test Jesus regarding the correct pathway to eternal life. It ends up that loving God with one\u2019s whole being and one\u2019s neighbor as oneself is what it all, in Jesus\u2019 estimation, boils down to. But the legal expert wanted to press things further, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2264,1431,2346,1429],"class_list":["post-28778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cultural-competency","tag-culture-map","tag-idi","tag-meyer","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28780,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28778\/revisions\/28780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}