Working Across Cultures: How Cultural Differences Affect Collaboration
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Culture: “A set of conscious and subconscious values and behaviours that unite one group and distinguish it from another.” - Geert Hofstede
The effect of rapid globalization over the past decades means that working with people across borders is now commonplace. When handled well, cross-cultural collaboration broadens how problems are understood, improves decision quality, and helps organisations operate more effectively across markets.
However, culturally diverse environments can also be a source of struggle. Meetings feel productive, decisions appear agreed, and projects move forward, only for misunderstandings, delays, or friction to emerge later. When this happens, cultural clash is often cited as the cause, but rarely examined closely.
Many workplace challenges attributed to “culture” are not the result of poor intent or lack of competence.
Instead, they arise from different cultural perspectives shaping how people interpret the same situation.
Culture Shapes How Work Is Understood
Culture influences far more than social customs. It shapes how people think about authority, time, risk, relationships, and responsibility — all of which play a vital role in everyday workplace interactions.
Research in cross-cultural management has consistently shown that these differences affect how people:
Communicate ideas and concerns
Make and interpret decisions
Respond to hierarchy and authority
Approach uncertainty and risk
Build trust and working relationships
When these underlying perspectives are not recognised, misunderstandings can emerge even when people share the same goals and professional standards.
When Assumptions Go Unchecked
“Cultural differences are not obstacles—they are invitations to understand, adapt, and collaborate better.”
Cross-cultural misunderstandings in the workplace rarely appear as open conflict. More often, they show up in subtle and frustrating ways: decisions that need revisiting, misaligned expectations, or a lack of follow-through despite apparent agreement.
Example:
A team member shared direct feedback during a cross-regional meeting, intending to be clear and efficient. In their experience, addressing issues openly was a sign of professionalism and respect.
However, colleagues in another context experienced the same feedback as abrupt and public, leading to discomfort and reluctance to speak up in future discussions. The feedback itself was valid, but its delivery affected trust and engagement in ways the speaker had not anticipated.
Without a shared way to recognise and discuss these differences, teams may attribute problems to personality, competence, or attitude, rather than to differing assumptions about how work is meant to happen.
Framing Cultural Differences Productively
Addressing cultural differences at work requires more than individual effort. While many people make personal adjustments through trial and error, these workarounds are often inconsistent and hard to sustain, especially as teams change or work across multiple contexts.
Organisations that take this seriously focus on giving people a shared way to understand and talk about differences. This includes practical frameworks that help interpret behaviour, a common language for discussing misunderstandings, and opportunities to practise navigating real workplace situations. When expectations and assumptions are made explicit, collaboration becomes less dependent on guesswork and more resilient over time.
Debunking the elusive world of cultural expectations and behavior
Research in cross-cultural management, including the work of Hofstede, highlights how deeply held cultural values shape expectations around authority, uncertainty, and responsibility. These values influence how people interpret situations long before behaviour becomes visible.
Building on this foundation, Erin Meyer’s work focuses on how these differences show up in everyday professional interactions — such as how directly people communicate, how disagreement is expressed, and how decisions are reached.
Crucially, frameworks like these are not about applying rigid cultural rules or categorising individuals. Used well, these frameworks support reflection and judgement, helping people pause, test assumptions, and adapt thoughtfully to context.
Final Thought: Making invisible cultural perspectives visible
Cultural differences influence how people interpret work long before they appear in behaviour. When these influences remain invisible, teams rely on guesswork and personal coping strategies, that often produce more frustration and resentment.
Organizations that invest time in making cultural perspectives visible — and in building shared ways of understanding them — are better equipped to collaborate across boundaries. At the end of the day, it is not about prescribing behaviour, but about creating the conditions for clearer communication, better judgement, and more consistent ways of working.
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Image credit: Prostock-Studio at Getty Images Pro via Canva.com