CultureWizard's Intercultural Awareness Model, ICAM® 8 Dimensions of Culture, refers to Motivation as whether you or your home culture are driven more by a desire to achieve wealth and status or if you’re willing to sacrifice career ambition for the joys of family and leisure time — life balance. For example, the US and China are considered status-driven cultures where work, career and attainment take precedence over free time and family. Countries like Brazil and Sweden, on the other hand, are more concerned with striking the proper work-life balance and do not willingly sacrifice personal time for work related duties.
When it comes to working inter-culturally, the cultural dimension of motivation often becomes a significant obstacle to building a cohesive team. Most status oriented managers think nothing of asking colleagues and workers to put in overtime, unknowingly planting seeds of resentment among colleagues who view their personal time as sacred. Conversely, a hard-driving worker putting in long hours at a foreign office while all his colleagues are enjoying their personal time can be ulcer inducing.
The question of whether pushing ourselves harder and longer in the workplace actually yields more productivity and better results is hotly debated these days, and it’s why I found this article about stress, depression and suicide at Silicon Valleys’ top high schools so fascinating. Ironically, some of the best and brightest of America’s youth — the children of affluent, high-achieving silicon valley parents — going to high school in the shadow of Stanford University, are among the most depressed, stressed and at risk youth in the country. They are committing suicide at rates higher than anywhere else in the nation!
The revelations and statistics presented in the article are alarming and beg the larger question, are we pushing not just children and teenagers, but ourselves too hard, and to what end? The question piqued my interest so I cross-referenced the LiveScience Happiest Nations Index with our own CultureWizard Culture Calculator and found that of the ten happiest nations on the planet*, only two, Canada #5 and Australia #10, rank moderately high on the motivation scale, in the direction of Status. The other 8 countries all fall to the moderate and low side of the scale, toward life balance. The other factor to consider is that all 10 of the happiest nations are high-achieving countries with sophisticated and tech-savvy economies. So despite the pressures that Silicon Valley companies and parents tend to hoist upon their workers and high school students, none of it seems entirely necessary when it comes to achieving success and even might be antithetical to it.
With all this stress, it’s no wonder Silicon Valley has also started the C.H.O trend — Chief Happiness Officer. That’s right, worker happiness — or more aptly, the lack thereof — has become such a concern for Silicon Valley that many major players, including Google, have created whole departments dedicated to enlightening minds, opening hearts and creating world peace. A noble goal. For the sake of Palo Alto high school students, let’s hope some of the good intentions rub off on their parents.
So what are your thoughts about ambition and happiness in the work place? What companies and countries where you have worked seem to have the formula down right, and, downright wrong?
Would you like to know where you and your teammates fall on the Motivation scale? Request a CultureWizard demo today and find out!
*(Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia)
