Important topic here. One I’ve been thinking about for years.
I have many friends and colleagues from India. Many but not all are in software development, mid-level management and up to officer and CxO/Owner level. Sometimes we struggle with the language and cultural differences. Online communication–email, video conference–compounds the difficulty.
Here’s one example, relevant to presentations–an observation: I believe Americans in corporate/organizational contexts make more use of ‘chunking’ of information, whereas my Indian colleagues seem to do less of this, and the information appears less chunked/categorized. Hard for me to follow this, and I make notes on my own, and often stop them for clarification/confirmation of my understanding.
Second example: Erin Meyer at INSEAD published the Culture Map, with a parameter on persuasion, that varies from ‘application first’ (the ‘how’) to ‘principles first’ (the ‘why’). US is toward the ‘application first’ side; India toward the ‘principle first’ side. Seems to roughly parallel inductive vs deductive?
Primary questions are: What steps/changes/general recommendations can we offer to help them while working in corporate/organizational settings the US? Conversely, how can we as Americans communicate more effectively with them?
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