By Peter Post, Globe Correspondent, January 31, 2015
A seventh-grade boy taught me about the importance of understanding culture when his class from the middle school down the street from The Emily Post Institute came for a visit to learn about etiquette.
Kids will ask anything, and that’s what I enjoy about talking to them. One of them, I’ll call him John, asked this question.
“I have a friend, Tommy,” he began. “Sometimes we have sleepovers. When I go to Tommy’s house, we have to go to bed at 10 because that’s Tommy’s bedtime. My bedtime at home is 11. When I spend the night at Tommy’s, why can’t we stay up until 11?”
I explained that in Tommy’s house, it was important to play by Tommy’s family’s rules. And the same is true when Tommy visits you: He respects your house rules. That, in a nutshell, is at the heart of understanding how to interact with different cultures.
Cultures come in many forms and each has different norms. Something as simple as a greeting, for example, varies between US and Japanese cultures. In the United States, a handshake is expected, while in Japan, bowing is a standard form of greeting.
Although the specifics differ, the underlying concept behind the norm is universal: showing respect as you greet another person.
Cultures also come in many different forms beyond the obvious country-to-country ones. You can have cultural differences between:
■ Regions in a country. Think about the difference between the manners and expectations of the South and Northeast in the United States.
■ Companies. The dress code at a financial services firm on Wall Street may be business formal, while the dress code of a dot-com in Silicon Valley is more likely to be casual.
■ Offices in the same company. Think about a company with an office in Seattle and one in Dubai.
■ Offices in the same building. I once made a presentation to staff on the third floor of a company where dress was business casual. I asked what they would wear if they worked in the corporate office’s 23d floor. Answer: business formal.
You will build stronger, better, more positive relationships by making an effort to learn not just about the place, but also the culture you will visit. Then show respect by reflecting the norms of that culture in your actions.