You wrote the process down. Everyone agreed to it. And still — half your team follows it to the letter while the other half treats it as a helpful suggestion, and both sides are quietly deciding the other lot are the problem.

This episode is about why. Meet Claire and two of her best people: Kenji in Osaka, who follows every step every time, and Rafa in São Paulo, who skips the review to rescue a client in a panic. Both are doing their honest best. Both are certain they're the sensible one — and the trust between them is quietly draining away.

Drawing on Michele Gelfand's research into "tight" and "loose" cultures, we unpick why the same rule reads as a binding promise to one person and a sensible default to another, why enforcing harder (or relaxing everything) both backfire, and four moves you can start this week to turn the divide from a fault line into a real strength.

It looks like a discipline problem. It almost never is. Here's what to build instead.

Work with Brendan: If this is a live issue for your team right now, it's exactly the kind of thing I work through one-to-one with leaders — advisory, coaching and workshops. More at https://brendanthomasquinn.com

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Music by Denis Pavlov / DPmusic via Pixabay.

Sources: Gelfand et al., Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study (2011) · Gelfand, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers (2018)

Cultural Friction is hosted by Brendan Thomas Quinn who works with leaders and teams navigating cultural friction within teams that work together or are dispersed around the world — as an advisor, coach, and workshop facilitator, and as Adjunct Lecturer on an International Business Masters programme teaching Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Friction brings that same real-world, research-backed approach to your ears in 20 minutes.

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