The Culture You Cannot See Is Your Own

Cross-cultural experience can make us better at recognising other people's conventions. We learn that directness need not be hostility, that silence can have several meanings, and that trust is built in different ways.

The harder task is applying the same attention to our own assumptions. We tend to experience our way of communicating as ordinary, while another person's approach arrives carrying a cultural explanation.

That asymmetry is the starting point for the practice I call the Cultural Locator.

Every judgment has a point of comparison

They are being indirect. They are too casual. This process is slow. Each judgment contains an unstated expectation about the appropriate way to behave.

The expectation may be reasonable. It is still useful to locate it. How direct do you expect a request to be? Who should speak first? How much relational time belongs before a decision? When does consultation become delay?

A national label cannot answer these questions for a person. Professional background, organisation, generation, role and individual experience also shape the approach someone brings.

Cultural frameworks can provide possibilities to investigate. They work less well as instructions for predicting everyone in a country.

Several expectations can interact

A communication adjustment may address one difference while missing another. You soften feedback but deliver it in public. You invest in relationship-building but assume everyone is ready to decide at the same time.

The difficulty lies partly in the interaction. The words, setting, hierarchy and decision process travel together.

Instead of asking whether you adapted correctly to a culture, ask what the particular person and situation require. You may need to check rather than infer. The answer can differ from what a framework led you to expect.

This becomes especially useful in a mixed professional environment. Shared geography does not mean a shared working history, and similar English does not guarantee similar expectations.

Three questions in the Cultural Locator

First: which default am I bringing to this moment? Describe it concretely. I expect a clear objection in the meeting. I tend to build trust by getting the task right. I hear a softened request as optional.

Second: what might the other person's default be, and what do I actually know? Keep a distinction between observation and hypothesis. Silence is visible; agreement is an interpretation.

Third: what adjustment or question would help the intended message arrive? You might explain how serious a concern is, offer a private channel for objections, or ask how decisions are normally confirmed.

The point is to make the gap discussable. You are not required to become someone else, and you cannot do all the translation privately on another person's behalf.

Check the channel as well as the words

Remote communication can remove some of the context you would receive in a room. A summary may preserve the decision while losing hesitation, disagreement or uncertainty.

AI can make wording smoother without resolving the assumptions beneath it. Before treating a polished message as shared understanding, ask whether the participants agree on what happens next and who has authority to do it.

Pressure can also make it harder to notice your own default. A small question prepared in advance may be more useful than expecting yourself to interpret every cue perfectly in a difficult moment.

The next time you label a colleague's behaviour, pause over the comparison inside the label. What were you expecting, where did that expectation come from, and have you checked whether it was shared? That inquiry gives cultural knowledge somewhere practical to begin.