Knowing yourself Know then thyself, presume not God fo scan; The proper study of mankind is man (Alexander Pope, English poet, 1688-1744) There will always be a culture gap of one kind or another between you and your international business partners. Most of the misunderstandings we've described arose because the people involved assumed that their own beliefs, attitudes and behaviour were normal. In many cases, it didn’t even occur to them that the people they were dealing with looked at the world from a completely different perspective. As a result, negative stereotypes were reinforced, motives were misinterpreted, goodwill was damaged and, on some occasions, communications broke down altogether. We believe that knowing yourself is the first and most important step towards bridging the culture gap. The second is to acknowledge that the way you and your compatriots look at the world is not universal. The third is to find out as much as you can about what other cultures value and what lies behind their beliefs. That’s why, in the previous chapters, we've asked you to place yourself and people from differing cultures on a series of preference scales. In this chapter, we invite you to look at all those scales again. To help you focus your mind on the key issues, we've grouped them under five main headings: relationships, communication, time, truth, and the meaning of life. What people expect of presenters is informed by their atti- tudes towards these key issues. But, for ease of reference, we’ve grouped the presentation style scales together at the end. After each set of scales, you'll find some simple tips ~ most of which have already appeared in theRelationships Individualist ‘Group-criented My first duty should be oo myuelf, My fest duty should be to che groups Thelong mn, 30 ao MI 20 mM of Ip i] ei) 4000 50 Flat hierarchy ‘Vertical bierarchy Leaders should share power. Leaders should hold power, so 4 40 aul mo 08 1 ab a0 S50 Acquired stones Given states Feuple should be judged of what they Oither factors — such as family, do. not whe shey an, chist, nationality, race, educanon, ape, oem, religion ~ sould alsa be taken into account, 40 40 a 9 60 610 a0 30 40 50 Fonctiomal Perma We need to focus an besiness first We need co build a personal and personal relationships later welidiomship first in order ey dio | in odes co do siecesstul business. suceessfull business, sar 30 20 mo 0 20 a0 a0 50 Physically distane Physically close I peefer people mor to come to Think physical closeness aed rauck chore to me physcally, ame reassuring. 2 4006 ae $n