The impact of the level of masculinity in a culture on international project communications is an interesting one to consider. Cultural Masculinity, along with Power Distance, Individuality, Uncertainty Avoidance and Long Term Orientation, all measurements documented in Hofstede’s research, is, in part at least, a reflection of the way the individuals in a society regard assertiveness as opposed to modesty, with the more masculine societies being the more assertive. Countries with the highest measured masculinity indexes are Slovakia, Japan, Hungary, Austria and Venezuela, with the lowest measurements being in the nordic countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark along with Holland and Slovenia.
Masculine societies are regarded as those with clear differences between the roles of men and women, with the men’s role seen as being assertive, tough and success focused while the women are modest and concerned with quality of life, Feminine societies are those where the roles of men and women are more equal with both genders being modest and concerned with quality of life.
Within every society, there are, of course, individuals who will exhibit higher levels of masculinity and those who will exhibit lower levels than the general societal norm, there are also roles within every society that are seen as more likely to either attract individuals with the more typical masculine traits of competitiveness and aggression or which will require these traits of members of the profession, typically these would be roles such as sales and marketing professionals, and the highly technical roles of engineers and scientists, with the less competitive roles such as management and general team related roles typically requiring the more nurturing and feminine traits.
From an international communications standpoint, the differences will manifest themselves as follows;
- Masculine societies and individuals will typically seem to be more aggressive and assertive in meetings, discussions and correspondence. Individuals will typically want to have more of their achievements recognised and rewarded and will have a tendency to over promise deliveries. To individuals with the more feminine traits, these masculine members of the project team may seem to be overly assertive, tough and posturing.
- Feminine societies and individuals on the other hand will seem, to the more masculine members like softies, they will be more inclined to deal with issues out of the public glare and will expect meeting to be forums for open and honest discussions where consensus decisions are reached and not a forum for self promotion.
As you can see from the above, these differences could easily lead to serious conflict within an international project team and as such, the management of meetings where individuals or groups with highly divergent masculinity profiles must be carefully structured, so that all parties achieve what they require from the meetings, without them becoming either a vehicle for conflict or a trigger for ongoing rivalry and disagreement between your project teams.
From my own experience, having been involved in several projects with teams from highly divergent masculinity levels and have seen several members of the teams from both sides struggle to maintain a business like relationship with their cultural opposite, in these instances, the best course of action is for someone with a real understanding of these cultural differences to spend time with the each of the waring parties and explain to them the drivers of the differences so that they each have an opportunity to understand that their assumptions that everyone should be like them are flawed and to see that the other party simply measures things differently. Done properly, these cultural alignment sessions can have immediate and generally long lasting benefits to the project, if issues are left unaddressed however, the situation can rapidly deteriorate into an irrevocable standoff that can only be resolved by removing some people from the project team.
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The subject is fully clear but why does the text lack clarity? But in general your blog is great.