Communication & Power Distance Index

One more of my ‘I-read-a-book; I-liked-an-idea’ blog posts!

The book I read recently is named the ‘Outliers – The story of success’ by Malcolm Gladwell of the ‘Tipping Point’ fame. I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell as I feel he writes about the most complex of concepts in the simplest way and hits the reader hard with his real life examples. In the Outliers, the author tries to throw light on the lives of successful people and shows us how the outliers in any group are not necessarily there just because of their intelligence and hard work but also because of their circumstances in the past. The idea at first sounds a little reckless but once the author starts uncovering the facts one feels like there is some truth to this concept.

Anyway, I’m not going to write a review about the book here. I just wanted to share one thing that I read in the book that made a lot of sense to me. The author speaks about Hofstede’s Dimensions which was developed by the Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede. He talks about 3 of Hofstede’s dimensions in the book out of which the one on ‘Power Distance Index (PDI)’ is the one that interested me. For the other dimensions, of course, you could read the book. In fact, I recommend it as a really interesting read that will leave you smiling and better for the experience.
PDI is defined as the index of attitudes of each culture towards hierarchy and authority. A lot of questions were asked to people about how they view hierarchy and how they communicate with their bosses or people older than them, how much of inequality in power is tolerated by people in the lower ranks, etc. Based on these questions some countries have been defined to have ‘Low PDIs’ and some as having ‘High PDIs’. Some of the countries in the High PDI list are Brazil, South Korea, Mexico while United States of America, Ireland, Australia are in the Low PDI list.

One of the typical characteristics of communication in cultures with high PDI is that the one in a lower position (as with age or rank) clearly accepts the authority of the one in the higher position and looks to this person for directions or orders. For instance, in such cultures, people who perceive someone as higher in the hierarchy, expect the person to have all the answers. They are also less likely to tell the superior the right answer even if they do know what it is. In some cultures which are very hierarchy driven, the subordinate may not even correct the boss if he/she is wrong and will go down with the boss. They do this to ensure they do not appear rebellious or question the authority of someone who has relatively more experience (either doing a job or just living life).

This whole PDI concept, as I mentioned earlier, is pretty interesting especially given that I work for a multinational organization where people communicate with colleagues around the globe. I almost see this in action when some of my colleagues struggle to communicate clearly. It appears as though they do not have answers but if you dig deeper you realize that they do know the answers but they just let someone, whom they think are higher up in the hierarchy, tell them what to do. This was always a mystery to me but with this concept of the PDI I can see why this is happening. India is surely one of the high PDI cultures, given the fact that many of us have never ever tried to stand up for our choices as against our parents’ because we think that this amounts to bad character or plain simply disrespect for elders. And in such a culture it is not surprising that people who perceive someone as higher up in the hierarchy are treated with the same reverence as an elder at home, i.e. listen and accept without questioning.

So why is this really so interesting for me? In my work, it is imperative that people communicate clearly to ensure that the product we deliver to our customers is of high quality. Come to think of it, this is true for all business, I presume. Now, this understanding of the analogy between Communication & PDI gives us an opportunity to train people not just on business communication but more on cultural standing and their myths, which then will hopefully change the style of communication for improved customer satisfaction. Isn’t that an exciting solution to the puzzle of inappropriate communication, which was hitherto simply attributed to a less than acceptable grasp of the English language?