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Comment by ghusto | Hacker News Reader

> The Dutch and Israelis are famously direct. They don’t mind confrontation, so usually speak their mind and take no offence. By contrast, East Asians are more likely to value collective harmony. This means that they avoid direct confrontation, so artfully use be more subtle and diplomatic language.

I don't see how speaking your mind is confrontational or at odds with "collective harmony". Intention is all that matters in my opinion. If you go in aiming to upset, then you're a dick and no amount of "diplomatic language" is going to make you not a dick. In fact, it will only make you more dickish, because now you're hiding behind word manipulation.

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In cultures where direct confrontation isn't accepted, intention does not matter , you simply can't do it - if someone believes that intention is all that matters, speaks their mind directly with e.g. some not-properly-veiled criticism (no matter how justified or needed), and justifies it with "I didn't aim to upset", even if they genuinely didn't aim that and everybody understands that they didn't aim to upset, they have still "been a dick" and behaved socially unacceptably. In the professional world in such cultures it can cause customers to break cont(r)acts, request that your company never ever send you to the customer, or if you speak your mind in public to (or about) the boss, firing you - it's behaving in an unacceptably insulting way that can't and won't be tolerated in the society.

I have limited experience with this, but have started to wonder whether the harmonious interaction culture tends to be paired with extremely hierarchical "just find a way to do exactly what you were told to do, even if you know it will destroy the company" worker mindset.

So that, if someone comes in and calls out nonsensical, self-destructive organizational behavior, not only are feathers ruffled up the hierarchy, but workers can get upset as well.

I wonder whether calling out a problem is a double offense towards the workers: (1) disrupting the workers' beliefs that doing what they're told is how they do a good job; (2) the upsetting fact that someone is behaving disharmoniously in calling out a problem.

There definitely is a practical organization need for a way to call out nonsense - but this article is about the widely used workaround process (namely, honest talks during after-work drinking) that does enable this valuable feedback to happen despite the "harmonious interaction culture" in the default environment.

It matters as in each culture the communication style is interpreted in some way, but not necessarily your way. I lived a while in the Middle East and being very direct was considered to be rude; it may be not rude at all for a Dutch, but it is for a Saudi.

People don't really understand diversity. Instead of understanding that diversity of cultures means different cultures view the world in different ways and in some cases they may be right, we transformed diversity into an internet meme.

So your direct way to speak your mind is fine for you and your culture, but it may be the other way around for other people.

I'm what you might call "multi-cultural". I've lived in a few different cultures for significant lengths of time, and co-incidentally, am middle-eastern.

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I think that qualifies me to make this statement more than some: I think there are objective rights and wrongs in cultures, and knowing that culture itself is subjective doesn't get you a free pass on objectively bad behaviour ("bad" here meaning something closer to "incorrect", and not a moral judgement).

My theory is that many white people feel they can't be critical of "ethnic" cultures, because that's racist. You absolutely can, and it's not!

Dawkins probably thought he couldn't say it as a white person when he said that religion shouldn't get special treatment from criticism, but I'm not white so here it is: Cultures also shouldn't get special treatment. It might be your culture, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong.

> I don't see how speaking your mind is confrontational or at odds with "collective harmony". Intention is all that matters in my opinion.

Even in Western cultures, if you try saying something at odds with the "room" or the current bandwagon, like here on HN for example, you will feel the frowns coming your way.

Meh, different life experiences then. I've never had any trouble with it. Then again I could be autistic and haven't noticed / cared.

In a business setting, the room should bend to facts, not group-think.

> In a business setting, the room should bend to facts, not group-think.

It should, sometimes, but ...

Different people often have different beliefs about the facts.

Sometimes there are higher priorities than the facts of the immediate issue.

And most of all, in reality it doesn't work that way. Someone who acts as if it does is as incompetent as a developer who insists there's no such thing as platform constraints. We're dealing with humans, which includes all the constructs of human nature, culture, and personality.

Your 'facts' may threaten someone's job, for example, or the CEO's reputation; do you expect they'll just go along with that?

> Sometimes there are higher priorities than the facts of the immediate issue

I'm with you! Of course there are many factors at play, but they are all part of "the facts" of which I'm speaking. I'm not talking about saying things like "No no, we have to do this the correct way, not with a shortcut". Sometimes a shortcut _is_ the correct way, given the circumstances.

> Your 'facts' may threaten someone's job, for example, or the CEO's reputation; do you expect they'll just go along with that?

It's not my job to hide other people's mistakes, even the CEO's. _However_ I'd like to emphasise that I don't think there's anything wrong with making mistakes. If you work in a culture where mistakes are seen as part of getting things done, it's not an issue. If you don't, I'd recommend finding somewhere where that's true, and you can call bullshit out without getting people fired, or hurting the CEO's feelings.

in a business setting 'who's the daddy' is often alot more important than the facts

I've noticed this is very much the case when working with Americans. There's a real weird vibe where dominance needs to be proven at every turn. Some European cultures have this a little too, but not to the extent it's evident with Americans.

America has a warrior culture even though we pretend to not be. Even though there are few times in our history we were not involved in a war.

A huge % of the population spends Sundays watching enormous men try to kill each other in American football play war.

If athletics aren't your thing then you probably are going to war in business or the arts.

If none of these are your things and American, there is a really good chance you are at war with yourself.

> America has a warrior culture

I've always felt this but didn't have a catchy enough to put it ^^

only those with sufficient power enough indifference can ignore the crowd

It is (or will be perceived as) a display of power, or a challenge to the powerful. So a challenge to the status quo, thus a challenge to the "collective harmony".

Diplomacy brings flexibility.

A well oiled team always has some level of diplomacy to keep everyone working shoulder to shoulder pointing in the same direction.

I don't think collective harmony aims to be a dick either.

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