Translating...
The impact of individuality in a cultural sense can be important in how a project structures its communication strategies for international undertakings. The concept of individuality and its opposite pole of collectivism was explored by Hofstede in his research along with power distance, masculinity, Uncertainty avoidance and the long term view. Each of these characteristics has an impact on how and how well a team will communicate, understanding the differences and varying the communication strategy between groups will make for a much more aligned project team.
Individualism manifests its self in the way individuals and groups see them selves in the community and consequently, in the context of this post, how they behave when communicating. People from high individualist cultures, exemplified most strongly in the research as the United States, Australia and Great Britain typically think of themselves as the most important component of a group, look for jobs that afford them time for themselves, deliver sense of achievement to the individual and like to develop their own ways of working. People from the countries at the opposite end of the scale such as the central american countries of Guatemala, Ecuador and Panama look more for training opportunities so that they can develop their skills to do their jobs better.
Collectivist cultures will look for communications that consider them as a group, they feel more comfortable having groups recognised for their contribution to the project, so individual rewards will not work well in team environments in these cultures, and equally, nor will singling anyone from the group out for any kind of special treatment, whether it is as a reward or a punishment, since that will disturb the collective conscience of the team.
Individualist cultures in contrast are all about the individual, individuals often seek recognition for their personal contribution to a project, often to the detriment of both their colleagues and the collective effort, personnel will expect to be treated individually in terms of their payments and employment conditions and are also more likely to leave a project for a perceived better opportunity elsewhere (though this particular facet is also highly dependant on the work and financial opportunities in the working environment).
So, how best to communicate with these different characteristics;
- Individualists cultures will expect you to speak to them as individuals, both in group conversations where the personnel should be named specifically where appropriate and in one on one discussions, they will expect to be recognised for their personal effort on the project and will be reasonably comfortable if one of their co workers gets singled out for either reprimand or compliment in a group discussion.
- Collectivists are typically most comfortable in environments where the team is discussed rather than the individual, so use terms like “so, how is the planning group going” rather than “so, Peter, how are you going” (where Peter is the fictional head of the planning team in a meeting), that allows the teams effort to be considered as a group effort rather than the perception of an individual taking credit for the work of the team.
It is very important for team members from cultures with different levels of individualism to recognise the characteristics and respect the differences between these views of the world, when a high individualist from, say, Australia is communicating with his collectivist South American colleagues must recognise the need for the collectivist to be treated as part of the group and likewise, the collectivist should respect the Australian’s need for individual attention.
One good way to tell where along the individual/collectivist dynamic a particular group may sit is to observe the way they interact socially, an individualistic group will all do their own things even in social groups, where a collectivist group will tend toward doing more together, this is very apparent in areas such as how they behave on beaches, collectivist cultures will form clusters on the beach, often bringing total strangers together to play beach sports etc, while individualists will look for their own piece of sand away from all everyone else.
As with all of the cultural characteristics, it is important to recognise that they are generic groupings and every group and team is made up a individuals with their own personal views of the world, so while these characterises will help in identifying broad strategies for communicating between cultures, these assumptions bust be continuously monitored and adjusted to ensure they really do fit with the particular group dynamic in your project.
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