Welcome to Manager Tools. Today's show, Managing Cultural Diversity, the Windy Curve.

In today's cast, we talk about Manager Tools's first principle about managing directs from different cultures based on the Windy Curve.

Here we go. We get a lot of questions at conferences and email and on the forums as well, but these questions of

questions at conferences and email and on the forums as well, but these questions have a

commonality and they're all around managing directs who have different cultural

backgrounds than the manager.

How do I manage my Indian technology experts or not Americans but

overseas? How do I handle the lone American on my team? You know, really? Can you deal

with consensus culture or or is it going to just be a bull in a China shop?

Or how can I reduce the chance that he's a loose cannon?

You know, will my German employee be rigid and require rules?

How can I get him to open up?

Yeah.

Shouldn't I be managing differently based on where my employees are coming from?

How do I address the cultural differences between us?

We get tons of these kind of questions.

Yeah, look, the consulting and the management advice and business press industries have really supported, frankly encouraged it in a way probably caused these questions over the past 20 years as the workforces become more global.

You know, and it made sense to become aware of cultural differences. And frankly, it's a nice start to this. People are saying,

okay, how do I be respectful? I mean, how are they going to be different and, you know, I don't

want to step on myself, I want to be respectful. And it boiled down to how can a manager be most effective when managing a

culturally diverse workforce and unfortunately the business press and many many many companies industries got it wrong.

How can that possibly be? They're so smart.

...