This is part 2 of a three-part article around producing in the international entertainment sector. If you would like to read the introduction of working in the as a producer in the field, read the part one first here.

Part three offers a case study and conclusion. You can read that one here.

The 8 scales of cultural differences according to The Culture Map

I hope I’ve made it clear why having cultural intelligence in international producing is important. In cultivating it, I’ve found Erin Meyer’s theory of scales of cultural difference to be very helpful. After reading the book, I planned to always consult the book in every international situation. Of course, I didn’t. However, I often think about it when I’m in the middle of a cultural misalignment as it’s a very nice guideline.

In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer outlines eight cultural scales that influence how people work across borders. Let’s have a look at them one by one:

1.      Communicating (low-context vs. high-context)

This scale is about how people within the same culture communicate with each other. Whether a culture is low or high context is based on how important contextual cues are in interpreting a message.

In low-context cultures, people are usually very straightforward and explicit in their communication. The actual words are important and the context in which they are said is less so. People with this communication style can be quite direct. In high-context cultures, this can be experienced as being blunt.

High-context cultures are less literal and more context-oriented. The meaning of a message is conveyed not only through words, but also through the situation in which it is said. The situation (context) can include the location in which the interaction takes place, the physical positioning and body language of the speaker relative to the listener and many other cues that exist outside the spoken or written word.

The listener must be attuned to these cues, as they are half the message and much is left unsaid. But if one doesn’t know what to pay attention to or what the meaning of specific cues is (as will be the case with many people from low-context cultures), it will be very difficult to understand what was communicated.  

My experience with the communication scale

Coming from the Netherlands, I was raised professionally to believe that directness is respectful. If something is not good, you say so. If something can be improved, you address it. The underlying rationale for this approach is that clear feedback saves time and prevents confusion. And as it’s been effective, I’m also partially biased that this is the best way to approach communication.

But internationally, directness is not always experienced as efficiency. Remember the anecdote about my conversation in London with the licensing director in part one? In many cultures (including the UK) extreme directness can feel harsh, rude, or even humiliating. The licensing director was 100% British and, most likely, I had crossed the invisible line between “clear” and “too blunt.”

My intention was neutral, but the impact was not, as evidenced by the licensing director’s emotional response. However, as he had had previous dealings with Dutch people, he understood that I did not mean anything rude by my statement and therefore he did not take it too personally. His cultural intelligence allowed him to understand the situation. But it taught me that in international collaboration, intention matters less than interpretation.

Leadership (in any sector, not just entertainment) in a global context requires adjusting one’s communication style without losing authenticity. It means adding context so that the intended meaning has the best chance of being understood. In my experience, it means explaining more.

Additionally, I also always try to match the other party’s communication style, in the hope of creating more understanding between us (even if I feel this is not the best approach according to my own bias). In 99% of the cases, this means that I need to lower my directness. Finally, it can be helpful to have a colleague by your side when dealing with someone with a different communication style than your own. The colleague can jump in when you fail to add enough context or can lessen the directness of a statement with a joke or clarification.

Language is a big part in all this as well. I’ve pitched for projects, where I lost the project because the creative preferred to work with a team in their native language. When working in their native language, they felt they could better express their wishes and feelings while keeping the nuance of the context.

2.      Evaluating (direct vs indirect feedback)

Part of working together is giving each other feedback. This part seems quite logical. In some cultures, the feedback is given very directly. Meaning that the feedback is very honest, transparent and explicit. For example: ‘This rapport is weak, please do it again’. When feedback is given indirectly, it’s often implicit, subtle and diplomatic. For example: ‘I see your point. Have you considered looking at this from another angle?’ This approach is often taken to avoid embarrassment.

It might not surprise you that direct feedback is often given by low-context cultures while indirect feedback is given by more high-context cultures.

My experience with the evaluation scale

One of my personal challenges as an international producer is giving and receiving feedback. In creative industries, feedback is a primary way of communicating. I’m responsible for guiding the creative team to create a product that surpasses the expectations of the client. If a client finds it difficult to give feedback or is very indirect, it can be a big challenge to achieve that.

If someone says, “Interesting approach” after I’ve proposed a creative concept, what do they mean? Do they think it’s brilliant? Acceptable? Or do they hate it, but are too polite to say it?

I learned that it’s about decoding the tone. When you work often with a specific culture, you learn the meaning  behind certain phrases and expressions they use, even when these differ from their literal meaning.

Personally, it helps me to read body language as well. Someone who was hanging on every word during a presentation is more likely to be interested than someone who hangs back in their chair and looks at their phone. But this approach is also not foolproof. I once had an American who looked at his phone in every single meeting and I wondered why he even bothered showing up. That is, until I asked a colleague of his and she told me that he does that in every meeting, independent of the other party.

This taught me to be open to being vulnerable. Sometimes, you must ask the other party to clarify. To ask further or deeper questions to understand them better. And I noticed it’s never bad to acknowledge cultural differences in a meeting as a reason why you need more information or to explain why you are uncertain. Being vulnerable can save you weeks of misunderstanding.

3.      Leading (egalitarian vs hierarchical)

This scale is about the power distance between people in a culture and how power is distributed between people.

In an egalitarian culture, the power distance is low. People are assumed to be equal and organisations tend to have a flat organisational structure. Even if you’re a low-ranking employee it isn’t impossible to speak to the CEO or even argue with them.

In hierarchical cultures, the power distance is high. Ranks matter and organisations have clearly defined levels in hierarchy. People also respect this hierarchy and adhere to it. If you would like to talk to the CEO, you would need permissions from all the levels in between you and that CEO. If an order comes from a higher level, you accept the order, independent of your own opinion.

My experience with the leading scale

I’m used to the more egalitarian context, so my challenge is working with hierarchical cultures. Mostly, because it sometimes feels as if it hinders the process.

A good example is a project I did with medical professionals. Here, the culture is less based in a country, but more within a professional field, as the medical field has a culture of its own. It is steeped in hierarchy, between specialisations and between people. My main contact for this project was the production team: non-medical people hired to set the project up. Behind them was an editorial team: a team of medical specialists who would feed us the content for the project. The hierarchy became crystal clear once we got to the feedback phase. Every member of the editorial team gave feedback, but if two people gave comments on the same piece, we always had to follow the highest-ranking person. Independent of whether his comment was the best one or not.

This experience has taught me that I need to tread carefully when working in cultures that are fundamentally different from my own. I found it quite difficult to follow up on the highest-ranking comment and not argue back about what it meant for the quality of the event. As I’m not a medical person, my rank is seen as far lower than the members of the editorial team, so my opinion was not favoured. In the end, we followed what the client wanted. But internally I did discuss where the fine line exists between being responsible for the product that we deliver and keeping our reputation, and keeping the client happy and earning an income from it. The discussion about where to draw that fine line continues to this day.

4.      Deciding (consensual vs top-down)

Making decisions is done by every person and organisation. However, how it is done and accepted by others differs per culture.

When a culture makes decisions consensually, the decision is often made through discussions with the aim of reaching a unanimous agreement. This approach allows valuing input from all, seeking harmony. Doing it this way does slow down the decision-making process. However, it has the advantage that the final decision is carried by the whole group and the decision is often made with all information available, so there’s less arguing afterwards.

In a top-down culture, decisions are often made by individuals or leaders and then imposed upon the group. Advantages of this approach are that decisions can be made efficiently (less deliberation is necessary with fewer people deciding) and are clear. Implementation of decisions is also often swift as the group is meant to do so without ever challenging the decision. Finally, this approach can in a way be more flexible, as leaders can change decisions without consulting others once new information has come in. It’s very important to find out who will make the final call and sign off on certain decisions and try to

My experience with the deciding scale

The example of the medial project described to illustrate the hierarchy scale can also be used here. Remember that I had both a production team and an editorial team? The culture of the production team was very top-down, meaning that the manager made the decisions and the other producers followed them. I’ve had many online meetings where the manager could not be present, so I made agreements with the producers. However, as long as the manager had not signed off on it, I could not count on them as they could change if he disagreed.

It taught me to get in touch with that person as soon as possible. If I speak with someone a few levels lower (note the hierarchical context here as well) and they need to go through three layers for final approval, my argument often gets lost and it slows the process down.

It’s like the whisper game where children have to pass a sentence on by whispering it from one to the other. With each passing, the sentence changes and by the time it reaches the last child, it is unrecognisable from what it started as. The same happens when a decision or project needs to be explained person to person. I’ve found it best to tell the original story to the person who has the final say myself, instead of relying on go-betweens. And if that is not possible, to prepare a document that can be passed along and gives the right information in my exact words.

5.      Trusting (task-based vs relationship-based)

Trust is essential in any collaboration or teamwork. When working internationally, it becomes clear that trust is built differently depending on where someone comes from. Meyer distinguishes task-based trust and relationship-based trust.

Task-based trust is also known as cognitive trust. It is based on how one feels about another person’s accomplishments, skills en reliability. It’s trust earned through performance. Trust in team member’s reliability to perform certain tasks allows for a team’s workload to easily be distributed based on who is known to be good at what.

Relationship-based trust is also known as affective trust. It comes from feelings of emotional closeness, empathy or friendship. It’s trust earned through emotional bonds. It takes time and lots of social interactions to establish.

My experience with the trusting scale

I have a nice example illustrating the difference between myself and a few Americans. On Meyer’s scale, both the US and the Netherlands primarily rely on task-based trust, with the US more on the outside and the Netherlands slightly more towards relationship-based trust. You would think that being so close to each other results in little practical difference, but it felt like a wide gap.

So in the United States, trust is often built through reliability, deliverables, and legal clarity. Therefore, Americans also rely more on law and legal agreements. They focus on the task ahead and create safety through legal pursuits (contracts). The American producers I worked with wanted everything formalised early. They require legal certainty before moving forward.

My Dutch team is used to assume mutual understanding first between ourselves and the clients/suppliers, so here you see that it’s more relationship-oriented. In the Netherlands, trust is often built through transparency (low-context communication) within the process to create an event. If we align on the vision and the intention, we move forward. We do, of course, have terms and conditions in our offers, but drafting a separate legal contract for each project is not common. In the Netherlands, it would be seen as a sign of distrust by our clients and suppliers if we were to send out detailed contracts to all involved as a first step.

Honestly, I have to admit that the Dutch way has caused me some trouble in the past, so in a sense, the American way might be smarter. Still, cultural programming prevents us from doing so. But if you don’t recognise that difference, you risk mislabelling professionalism as distrust. If I had not known that the US was so task-based, I would have been asking questions like: “Do they not trust us?” And from their side, they would ask themselves: “Why are they being so informal?”

For this project, I moved along with the American producers and worked with them on a contract that worked for both parties. And it’s lucky I did, because over time my team changed. And once the producers were no longer certain of our skills, they decided to cancel the collaboration. The fact that I still believed in my team did not matter; that’s relationship-based and they were looking at their portfolio and reputation.

6.      Disagreeing (confrontational vs avoiding confrontation)

On every workfloor, there are conflicts and disagreements. However, one’s culture decides how these disagreements are handled.

When someone comes from a confrontational culture, they challenge ideas directly and openly. They are fine with public debate. It’s important to note here that people in these cultures make a distinction between the idea and the person debating that idea. In this culture, people know that it is not personal, it’s purely about an idea that can be improved.

When someone comes from a culture that avoids confrontation, they see debate as harmful because it has the potential to damage relationships (if people end up disagreeing). Open disagreement is therefore seen as rude and group harmony is prioritised. Feedback is given indirectly and privately. If it is necessary to show disagreement, this is often done through hints or other indirect language.

My experience with the disagreeing scale

The confrontational approach comes easily to me, so my challenge is always to handle people from the more conflict-avoidant culture. I often realise that they’re avoidant by the way they speak. Finding the right way to let such people know you’re disagreeing without offending them can be difficult. However, it is sometimes necessary to steer a project in the right direction.

When I know in advance that I will need to re-direct a project, my solution is to take a moment before the meeting and prepare how I can say or handle certain things. I sometimes need time to reorganise my thoughts and think about how to be less confrontational (and direct). I don’t see it as a weakness, but rather as a possibility to discover new routes towards the same goal. And yet, I still often mess up this aspect. When I’m in the heat of a meeting, it’s easy to slip into my ‘default’ approach, rather than the preplanned one that feels less intuitive.

On the other side, it’s happened a couple of times where I did a project where my team and I thought we were doing really well. The client seemed happy and the process went relatively smoothly. Only to hear after the fact that the client was not satisfied, but didn’t dare to tell us that. And if subtle hints were given, we didn’t catch them. This has always made me wonder what I missed, but sometimes it has really stayed a mystery. You can do your best, but sometimes you still get surprised.

7.      Scheduling (linear time vs flexible time)

We all know that friend who never seems to be on time. And another friend who shows up 15 minutes early. The scheduling scale is similar to this notion, but instead of the actual time, it looks at the priority behind it.

If a culture favours linear time, people will probably work on one thing at a time. Finishing the first task before getting started on the second. It’s very organised, focused on deadlines and strictly adheres to schedules. Planning is focused on the long-term and on details.

If a culture prefers flexible time, then people favour relationships over time. Projects are seen as fluid and people multitask more. A meeting can easily be moved to another time and being late is not a problem. Planning is often short-term and flexible. Adaptability is considered key to building relationships and seizing opportunities.

My experience with the scheduling scale

In general, producers work and think in very linear ways. We are responsible for the project and for the deadlines. Therefore, we often make schedules at the beginning and we expect people to follow them. However, I can’t always expect the other party to stick to a plan. This goes for both long-term schedules as well as short-term meetings. I have countless stories that illustrate this, but my favourite is of a few French people who make it a rule to be at least 15 minutes late for every meeting. I laugh at it now, but I quickly learned during that project that I should either schedule more time or make sure I could get through the whole agenda in half the original time I had allotted to it.

For long-term schedules, I always send my schedule to my client. This includes the dates I expect to receive something from them. I also know I should always send them a reminder of this. Yet sometimes I can still expect to get nothing. This can be stressful, especially if I only have a short amount of time for an event.

Say a client calls me to say that they have a project that needs to be done in only three weeks. With so little time left, I need the client to respond within a day if I ask them something. If they don’t and even get annoyed when I start chasing after them (even though they agreed upon the initial schedule), it’s time to back out and go for plan B: set up a more flexible schedule and get my team on board with this new schedule (which they usually don’t exactly appreciate). The good news is I’ve always made the deadline so far. However, the issue of planning and time management stubbornly remains a recurring topic during evaluations.

8.      Persuading (principles-first vs applications-first)

Do you sometimes get a long mail and while you’re reading it, you wonder: what’s the point to this? To then find the point mentioned in the very last sentence? If so, you’re probably applications-first orientated and you just got a mail from someone who’s more principle-first based.

People who are principles-first reason by way of deduction. They begin with a theory or concept, then they present their proof or facts and end with a conclusion. They focus on the ‘why’ before they take action.

People who are applications-first orientated are inductive. They start with the practical examples and data. Conclusions come first and the focus is on the ‘how’. The ‘why’ is of secondary importance and comes later, if at all.

My experience with the persuading scale

To illustrate this, I’m going back to my experience of working with Americans, because it’s such a clear case study. According to Meyer’s scale, both the Netherlands and the US are applications-first cultures, with the US more on the outer border and the Dutch more in the middle. So we’re a bit apart, but not by much.

I’m academically trained and I’ve always been taught to begin with an introduction, then provide my reasoning and end with a conclusion. I guess I’m a bit more principles-first than average in my culture. So my emails to the Americans were written in exactly that way: Introducing why I was writing to them, then explaining what we were going to do, finishing with when we would send them something or telling them what I needed from them. Their reaction when I got on the call: ‘Thank you for the very meticulously written mail, can it be shorter next time?’

I really had to change how I wrote my emails to them. The mails needed to be shorter, but I also had to open with what I needed from them. I soon realised that these Americans would only read the first few sentences and would skip the rest. If it were important, I would mention it in the next meeting I had with them.

I find it well worth the small effort to change the sequence in which I present information if that helps me build rapport with the client or supplier. Therefore, I will always adapt to who I have across from me. And if I need to explain things first, I will literally say so, so they understand why I’m doing it. Usually, mentioning it is enough for them to have the patience to wait until I get to the point.

Conclusion

Looking at the eight scales, every country has its own unique combination. Let’s look at a figure from The Culture Map:

Every country can be plotted on all scales and show how the differ and align with other countries. It can be really good to know in advance what to take into account. Usually, the elements in which you align are easier to find common ground with. The elements in which you differ take more work. And some scales are easier to come together then others. My experience is that differences in the scheduling scale are easier to overcome than the evaluating scale.

As a producer, it’s not always possible to plot your clients/suppliers/team members cultural background if you don’t have all the information available. So you need to rely on what you see and hear and adjust accordingly. Trust your instinct as well.

I dive deeper into your role as a producer in a project in the next part of this article. Continue this article in part 3, where I offer a case study and conclusion.

Missed part 1 or want to read it again? You can read it here.