Be unaware of cultural differences at your own peril

Most attempts to teach others about the culture of the UAE fail to scratch the surface, writes Justin Thomas.

The culture of the UAE reflects both the Emiratis and the expatriate workforce. Nicole Hill / The National

A Dutch colleague of mine recounts a business trip to the US. After a long day of meetings, someone from the American side suggested that they should all hit the sauna. My Dutch friend, a lover of steam, was the first man in. He was also the first to turn bright red, not from the sauna’s heat, but from the realisation that his American hosts all wore bathing suits, while he sat there naked, wet and apologetic. He had broken an unwritten rule, and discovered cultural differences the hard way.

The UAE, with its impressive cultural diversity, is also a great place to discover cultural differences. And many organisations offer newly hired expatriates “cultural awareness” programmes of some sort.

That said, my experience of such programmes has been disappointing. The sessions I’ve attended have basically advised me not to shake hands with Emirati ladies and not to eat in public during Ramadan. While undoubtedly useful to know, such programmes ignore the UAE’s cultural diversity. How, for example, should I avoid offending an Australian lady or an Afghan man? Ultimately these sessions lacked depth; they simply presented a long list of don’t s.

I suspect that part of the problem is the topic’s complexity. First, what exactly is culture? There are literally hundreds of definitions. The simplest one is that culture is “the way things are done around here”. My preferred definition however, is offered by social psychologist, Geert Hofstede, who refers to culture as the software of the mind, a kind of collective programming that distinguishes one group from another.

Professor Hofstede elaborates by identifying and attempting to measure various aspects (dimensions) of culture. The resulting model makes no claims to absolute truth but it is useful in that it makes testable predictions about how these cultural dimensions might influence behaviour.

One of the cultural dimensions in the model is called power distance index (PDI). This can range from high to low and is essentially the degree to which members of a group accept and expect power to be equally (low) or unequally (high) distributed. I’m over simplifying a little, but a corporate boss from a high PDI culture will typically inhabit an oversized office and sit in a chair fit for a Bond villain. For relatively junior employees, gaining access to the “big man” will be virtually impossible.

The low PDI boss by contrast, tends to downplay the trimmings of hierarchy, insists you call him Bob (real name: Professor Sir Robert Grosvenor) and regularly has lunch with the troops/workers. In a low PDI culture everyone feels free to voice opinions and objections, which to the high PDI employee might seem confrontational or disrespectful. High PDI employees may even hold back ideas, and contrary opinions for fear of causing offence to their superiors.

Beyond work, PDI plays out in everyday life too. A colleague and I once attended an Emirati wedding where a coffee attendant (emgahwi), as custom required, poured coffee for guests. My colleague, from a very low PDI culture, felt uncomfortable having someone pour his coffee, and was even more disturbed when the coffee attendant stood by patiently waiting for him to finish.

To reduce the power distance, my colleague drank the scalding brew as quickly as possible, sparing the attendant the perceived inequality and indignity of waiting around on him. However, upon completing the first cup of coffee, the attendant simply poured him a second and then a third. I eventually intervened. With a burnt mouth and major caffeine high, my friend learnt a valuable lesson in cultural difference.

PDI is just one of six cultural dimensions in the model. I would like to see more organisations here take a deep approach to “cultural awareness”. In a society as culturally diverse as ours, a sophisticated appreciation of the consequences of cultural differences will undoubtedly reduce errors, improve lives and have a positive impact on bottom lines.

Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University and author of Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States

On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas