There’s an interesting article in The Harvard Business Review on tailoring your project management presentations depending on the nationality of your audience. It all comes down to why and how.
Erin Meyer, an affiliate professor of organizational behavior specializing in cross-cultural management at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, writes she was making her first presentation after moving to France and not long into it was interrupted with questions.
She said she was asked, “How did you get to these conclusions? You are giving us your tools and recommended actions, but I haven’t heard enough about how you got here. How many people did you poll? What questions did you ask? Then another jumped in: ‘Please explain what methodology you used for analyzing your data and how that led you to come to these findings’.”
“So I assured them that the methodology behind the recommendations was sound, and was based on careful research, which I would be happy to discuss with them during a break. I then moved back to my conclusions, tools and practical examples. Let’s just say things got worse from there,” Meyer said.
What Meyer had run into was American vs. European training. Meyer said, “The stonewall I had run into was “principles-first reasoning” (sometimes referred to as deductive reasoning), which derives conclusions or facts from general principles or concepts. People from principles-first cultures … most often seek to understand the ‘why’ behind proposals or requests before they move to action.
Then she explained the American perspective she had brought to her presentation. “I had been immersed throughout my life in “applications-first reasoning” (sometimes referred to as inductive reasoning), in which general conclusions are reached based on a pattern of factual observations from the real world. Application-first cultures tend to focus less on the ‘why’ and more on the ‘how’.”
But the situation isn’t hopeless if you’re a project manager who needs to make presentations in different countries. “Most people are capable of practicing both principles-first and applications-first reasoning, but your habitual pattern of reasoning is heavily influenced by the kind of thinking emphasized in your culture’s education structure,” Meyer said.
Here is Meyer’s advice for the different types of audiences.
When working with applications-first people:
- Presentations: Make your arguments effectively by getting right to the point. Stick to concrete examples, tools and next steps. Spend relatively little time building up the theory or concept behind your arguments. You’ll need less time for conceptual debate.
- Persuading others: Provide practical examples of how it worked elsewhere.
- Providing Instructions: Focus on the how more than the why.
When working with principles-first people:
- Presentations: Make your argument effectively by explaining and validating the concept underlying your reasoning before coming to conclusions and examples. Leave enough time for challenge and debate of the underlying concepts. Training sessions may take longer.
- Persuading others: Provide background principles and welcome debate.
- Providing Instructions: Explain why, not just how.
Meyer further explored the issue in a blog post for Insead.edu, where she is an affiliate professor in the organizational behavior department. She said, Different cultures have different systems for learning, in part because of the philosophers who influenced the approach to intellectual life in general. Although Aristotle, a Greek, is credited with articulating the applications-first thinking, it was British thinkers, including Roger Bacon in the 13th century and Francis Bacon in the 16th century who popularised these methodologies. Later, Americans with their pioneer mentality, came to be even more applications-first than the British.
“By contrast, philosophy on the European continent has been largely driven by principles-first approaches. In the 17th century, Frenchman René Descartes spelled out a method of principles-first reasoning in which the scientist first formulates a hyphothesis and then seeks evidence to prove or disprove it. In the 19th century, the German Friedrich Hegel introduced the dialectic model of deduction, which reigns supreme in schools in Latin and Germanic countries. The Hegelian dialectic begins with a thesis, or foundational argument; this is opposed by an antithesis, or conflicting argument; and the two are then reconciled in a synthesis.”
Sometimes knowing the reasoning behind a person’s perception can help make your presentations that much better.
