India, Japan, U.S. – Contrasting Assumptions

In our cross-cultural programs on Japan, we have an exercise that describes a scenario of a Japanese arriving in the U.S. having slept through meal service on the plane. Since Japanese are indirect and don’t want to be a burden on others, we explore what he might say that could be a clue that he’s starving.

In a recent training, we had a couple of participants from India, and the male answered first stating, “The Japanese man has just gotten off a long flight, we would naturally assume he’d like something to eat and automatically take him somewhere. I don’t understand why we are discussing this as an exercise.”

This aroused a completely different response from the Americans. They countered with things like, “It’s not my job to know if you’re hungry. If you are, you should tell me.” And, “If he doesn’t say he’s hungry, I assume he ate on the plane.”

“No, no. You, of course, should just take him somewhere regardless of whether or not he ate on the plane. It’s natural hospitality,” the Indian man asserted.

This is when the Indian female spoke up. “Rajesh,” she said, “you think that because you’re Indian. We feed people because it’s a matter of personal honor to us.”

This was a perfect opportunity to discuss relationship-oriented cultures versus task-oriented cultures.

Relationship-oriented cultures, which make up some 80% of the world, need to build trust before they can work together so people from these cultures take every opportunity to cultivate a good relationship from the very start. This means engaging in rapport-building conversation and going out of their way to make the other person feel comfortable and cared for.

Task-oriented cultures, on the other hand, form relationships while working on the task and give priority to accomplishing it. They, too, want to be considerate, but this takes a completely different form. “You’d probably like to know the agenda for the meetings. I’ll give you the rundown while I drive you to your hotel.”