Leadership Speaker Erin Meyer: Low Context vs. High Context Societies

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In a low-context society, while we are communicating, we assume that we have a low level of shared context. What does that mean? It means that we don't have the same reference points or the same body of knowledge or relationships, that we have a low level of shared context. So in a low-context society, we believe that good, effective, professional communication is a communication that's very explicit, that's very simple and very clear.

In a low-context society, we're trained that if I want you to understand blue, then I have to say blue, literally. We're trained in a low-context culture that if I give a presentation, I should tell you what I'm going to tell you, and then I should tell you, and then I should tell you what I've told you. Why do I tell you the same thing three times? Because we're focused, overall, on making sure that the message was passed simply and clearly.

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In a high-context society, while we're communicating, we assume or consider that we have a larger body of shared context- that we have the same reference points, body of knowledge, information. And because we assume all of this shared context, in a high-context society, we believe good, effective communication is a communication that's more implicit, or layered, or nuanced.

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I had a German individual who said to me, you know, Erin, in Germany, at the end of a meeting, we almost always do a recap. First, we do a verbal recap, and then we do a written recap.

That's low-context, right? Clarification, clarification, clarification. He said, now that I've been working frequently with the French, I often find that at the end of a meeting, I'll get ready to do a recap, and my French colleagues will just stand up, and someone will say, et voila, there it is. And I'll think to myself, but voila what? And then I'll be very surprised to see that it just seems that people know what's been decided, that they know what's supposed to happen next, without going through all of those levels of clarification that I'm so used to in my own culture.

(2:20 - )
I had a second example. I was doing some work a while ago in Istanbul, and I had a Turkish client who was telling me about all of these issues that he was having with his new American boss. And I said, when your boss was here, did you tell him what you're telling me now? And he said, well, you know, Erin, I made it known so that he could see it if he wanted to see it. And I thought to myself, he probably didn't see it, right?

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I'll give you a third example from China. I was giving a presentation at a conference in China last year, and all the people in the room worked for the same multinational American company. Before I worked with him, the chairman, who was this American from New York City, gave a presentation that went very well, and then he left.

Afterwards, when I was working with the group, we were talking about this, and I had the Chinese human resource director raise his hand, and he said, you know, Erin, this concept is very interesting to me, because the whole time the chairman was talking, I was trying to make sure that I was listening with all of my senses, that I was picking up all of the levels of meaning that he might be trying to pass. Now that I look at this, I'm asking myself the question, is it possible that there was no meaning beyond that, you know, first, those simple words that he was saying? And I thought to myself that that chairman would have been really surprised to think that anyone was trying to understand his message beyond the first degree.