Today, almost all business is global business. Cultural awareness is core for successful businesspeople today. This post is part in an ongoing series to help readers leverage insights into the eight dimensions of culturally based work style differences, so you can raise your own global business productivity.
Motivation is a primary Dimension in the CultureWizard Intercultural Model®. It is critically important to understand the nuances of work-life balance and motivation because it’s the key to comprehending what inspires people and encourages top performance.
Yet, it’s a great challenge for multi-cultural teams and, in fact, all facets of intercultural communication: Motivation is one of those subtle cultural dimensions that can take you by surprise. It’s not only influenced by culture and personal work styles, but it’s also impacted by generational expectations. And, if misunderstood, it can cause you to make erroneous assumptions – leading to sometimes stunning repercussions.
Conflicting Motivations in a Cross-Cultural Team
I saw this first hand when I was in Genoa, Italy, working on my thesis project in a collaboration between the University of Genova and New York University, where I was completing a Master’s degree in Music Technology. The program culminated in a collaborative performance that included teams from dance, music and interactive technology majors.
Throughout the preparation process, all the teams worked to overcome various language and cultural barriers to focus on their common goals. I found great satisfaction in discovering that while most of my Italian counterparts spoke very limited English, we spoke the same technical language and also found a great deal of understanding and camaraderie in our work.
By the end of the program, the class was singularly focused on preparing for the culmination performance and the entire group was excited and nervous in anticipation. Due to several last-minute delays, the technology team had not successfully tested all of our final programs in the main concert venue, so we needed to use the dress rehearsal as our final test before showtime.
I arrived 30 minutes early in order to set up for the dress rehearsal, but was disappointed to see that none of my Italian colleagues arrived until after the time we had discussed the night before. As is often the case with complex technology, unforeseen challenges did arise, and seemed to multiply with each passing minute. At the time the dress rehearsal was scheduled to begin, there were still a number of problems and I was frantically working in the control room on a particularly pressing issue, assuming that the rest of my technology team was in the main performance hall working on the problems that had arisen there.
If you’re from a work/status-focused culture, you might imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw my American program director standing over me, demanding with panic in her voice to know where the rest of my team was. When she told me that the hall was empty except for the musicians and dancers who were waiting on us, I began to panic as well.
I could find no one from my team. Had they seen the scope of the problems facing us and decided to quit at the last minute? I took a deep breath, looked at my watch, and a thought that was previously inconceivable began to dawn on me.
I ran out the door and up a steep and winding alley to a nearby café, where I found my entire team of technologists sitting at a table with the remains of a sumptuous Italian lunch. When they saw me plunge through the doorway, sweating and panting, they were probably as shocked to see me as I was to see them. As I asked them incredulously why they were not fixing the last bugs to get us ready for the performance, they insisted that the espressos had just come out and that they would be able to help out again as soon as coffee was finished.
It became painfully clear to me – a work-oriented Midwestern American – that to my team mates, work-life balance meant that a social lunch followed by coffee was as important to them as promptness to the dress rehearsal. To me, commitment and accomplishment were primary motivators, while to my Italian colleagues (who didn’t want to disappoint our fellow students, either) the primary purpose of life was enjoyment, ritual and social bonding.
The team finally made it back to the venue and worked through the rehearsal all the way up to the moment of the performance to make sure that everything worked flawlessly. The event was a huge success, and at its conclusion, my Italian teammates didn’t hesitate to point that out to me. So what if they were a little bit late? And, how sad it was that I didn’t get a chance to enjoy such a wonderful lunch!
Cross-Cultural Motivation and Work-Life Balance
Motivation-Work-Life Balance refers to how much work-life balance is valued in the society. Which is more motivating: personal time or a promotion at work? What do you consider personal sacrifices and what do you consider reasonable requests for work? Is it reasonable to be asked to work on a weekend, to reschedule a vacation? What’s the separation between your work and personal lives? Do you live to work or work to live?
While we’d all like to think we strive for balance in our professional and personal lives, cultures differ in the values they hold regarding the importance of work versus personal time. Another differentiator of societies is how much people identify themselves by their personal lives or their work titles and achievement. These differing values are also reflected in organizational and government policies regarding vacation time, flexible work arrangements, child-care provisions and other family benefits.
In societies that are work-oriented, individuals are willing to sacrifice personal time, work into the night and on weekends, take their laptops on vacation, and hop onto a plane at a moment’s notice. While the outward signs are obvious, under the surface what’s motivating people may be status as well as personal satisfaction. This isn’t just a matter of individual choice. You tend to find that countries with a highly work-oriented culture don’t have state-mandated vacations or welfare benefits that substitute for work.
At the other end of the continuum, Work-Life Balance cultures tend to value one’s personal life as being equal to, if not more important than, work. You work to live, not live to work. People in such cultures rarely discuss business at a social function; personal achievement and economic gain take second place to quality of life. When you’re asked, “What do you do?” it could just as likely be a question about your hobbies as your career.
In many countries that rank high on Balance, government or corporate policies enforce long vacations and may limit work hours. There are programs, such as parental leave, to help parents. Failure to take one’s full quota of paid leave is considered foolish. The people who are always last to leave the office are not considered dedicated, but inefficient – they can’t complete their work within the allotted time.
Some societies view work as what needs to be done to survive and enjoy your life. Since people in these societies don’t gain power and status by dint of hard work, they typically limit their time at work and concentrate their energies on family, friends and personal undertakings.
At the other end of the spectrum are cultures in which people value achievement and may sacrifice personal time and family because work related accomplishments are central to gaining power and status. Organizations in these cultures think nothing of asking employees to give up family time or sacrifice vacations for work responsibilities. Self-fulfillment comes from economic gain and work recognition.
The Impact of Motivation on Cross-Cultural Business
Attitudes toward the Motivation Dimension impact the hours you work, the willingness to have organizations intrude on your personal time and even your self-image. In cultures that are high on Status, people feel that what you achieve is determined by hard work. Furthermore, they believe that work and accomplishments should be recognized and rewarded, and people are valued for their measurable contributions.
In these cultures, objectives are clearly defined and on-the-job performance is measured against these objectives for bonuses, promotions, retention, and recruitment for participation in special projects. In high status cultures, families readily tolerate work demands to interfere with a person's private life because working hard and showing the trappings of being very busy is a way of attaining status. It might mean carrying a pager or a cellular phone, or simply handing out one's home phone number to important clients. If a crisis occurs over the weekend, it means dropping everything to head into the office.
In other words, to many individuals in these cultures, what you achieve defines your importance and status in the world, and leads to a sense of well-being.
In cultures where Balance is the stronger Motivation, great value is placed on relationships and personal characteristics. For example, your job satisfaction is often more important than setting and reaching arbitrary goals. Since status isn’t controlled by individual accomplishments, people will more often seek harmony in the work environment.
Managing Different Types of Motivation with Multi-Cultural Employees
Since expectations in the workplace differ greatly with the Motivation Dimension, it’s critical to understand what types of reward structures will be most effective with your team. Is the reward work-life balance or is it recognition for work-related achievements? Will your employees respond more positively if praised (and compensated) for their enormous accomplishments or will some other type of reward be more motivating?
As a result, finding common ground for rewarding and motivating workers is a significant challenge when dealing with employees with diverse perspectives on this dimension. Understanding the Motivation Dimension gives you the basis for making those determinations.
Learn more about the influence of motivation in the work environment. 
