This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 203.
Are Proverbs useful in business relationships?
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Hey, Aubrey, how's everything today? I'm great.
How are you, Lindsay? I'm feeling good today.
Yeah, excited to be on Business English and getting into a really interesting topic today from a listener.
Yes, this is super interesting, right? Especially when it comes to business English, working with people from all over the world.
With globalization, a lot of you likely have colleagues, clients, co-workers from many different parts of the world.
So understanding their culture is going to help you connect with them.
Oh, my God. Culture is huge. Yeah, we have to.
We need to know the whole person. And part of us, it comes from our culture, right?
Not everything, but part of us does for sure.
What else have we talked about in the past?
Should we check out another episode? Yeah.
So this question is from Aya and she asked two questions when she emailed us.
So the first part of her question we answered in a previous episode, 199, how to be a squeaky wheel in business English.
She asked about the idiom in English, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
And so today we're answering the second part of her question.
But if you missed that one, scroll up, check it out.
Be sure to hit follow. That was a really interesting episode.
Yeah, guys, hit follow right here in Business English.
And I'm going to go ahead and read this part of Aya's question.
So here we go. All right. So Aya says, conversely, again, this is continuing from the last question.
There's a Japanese proverb that refers to the exact opposite meaning, which is the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.
In this proverb, the nail refers to individuals and the hammer refers to society.
It explains if you stand out or try to make a difference, you will face criticism or your opportunity for success will be hampered by someone around you.
Good verb, hampered. Really good vocabulary.
Hampered means hindered or affected negatively.
Because conformity and groupism are more valued in Japanese culture rather than individualism as we are a homogeneous society, I assume there's definitely cultural differences that exist between these two proverbs.
Have you heard of it or seen it when you lived in Japan, Lindsay?
Thank you, Aya. Okay, direct question. I love this.
I am so excited for you to share your experience, what you saw, and to give us some examples and to also talk about what this is like elsewhere in the world, in different cultures, because we have to recognize this could be different everywhere you go.
I know. I mean, even, you know, sometimes I'm surprised that I see this in cultures like Australia, right?
We had a conversation, I had a conversation with our friend Pete Smithson from Oz English Podcast, episode 1805.
What did we talk about in that one, Aubrey?
Yes, he brought up the tall poppy syndrome is what they call it in Australia, right?
And he was talking about how you just call people by name.
You wouldn't use ma'am or sir because of this tall poppy syndrome where they don't want to feel like they're bragging or sounding like they're above someone else.
Yeah, that's really interesting because just in that episode with Pete, I realized there's quite a stark difference between Australia and the US.
But then when we pull in Japan, we bring in another element here.
That's why I love international workplace, international industries, workplaces where we just learn.
We're constantly learning. Yes, absolutely.
And it broadens our horizons to recognize like, okay, I can't expect everyone to think of things in the same way that I do.
So I think this is super useful to talk about here and just to be aware of when you're out working with other people.
Yeah. But in the end, Aya did ask us a question.
So I'm going to go ahead and try to answer based on what I saw.
So I lived in Japan for... a year and a half which is not a lifetime not that long in context of a whole life but i definitely spent a lot of time out there just observing right and first of all aubry i'm not a huge fan of proverbs what do you think about proverbs i totally understand why what you're saying because often they contain stereotypes, right?
We have to recognize that anything that we might say about a culture or a person won't necessarily be true for everyone in that culture or every person.
And sometimes Proverbs are stated in such a way that make it sound like it's true for everyone.
Right, exactly. And I think that that can be sort of kind of offensive to people at times and doesn't appreciate our individual nature and our personalities and our regional, where we grew up, our regional cultures, our family cultures, education.
There's so many things that go into who we are, right?
We're not as simple as a proverb. We could never be.
But this question came from Aya and in her question, she gave us this proverb.
So we're going to speak to it a little bit.
I mean, what I saw in Japan was actually surprising to me.
So I knew about this proverb before I went.
I had studied a little Japanese. I had read a lot about the culture.
I knew about the proverb, but what I actually saw was kind of the opposite of the proverb.
I saw a lot of subcultures in Japan, especially around fashion, really interesting and creative displays of fashion, different groups that dress in different ways.
And I don't know what they were all about.
I really didn't get into any one of them, but I saw a lot of uniqueness, Aubrey, that I never would have seen in New York City.
Yeah, this is interesting to think about, right?
In the United States, definitely in general, individuality is celebrated.
A lot of people want to be unique. They feel that they will be more successful if they stand out from the crowd and they will receive benefits from that.
But often in the United States, you don't want to be too unique, right?
You wouldn't want to wear like really extravagant Clothing, often you sort of don't want that attention.
Whereas in Japan, you saw that sometimes that was appealing.
Yeah, yeah. And so I started to think, why are these extremely interesting subcultures so popular in Japan?
And people seem to go really deep into them.
There's an interesting article in the Tokyo Weekender that we could send our listeners to by Lisa Wallen on July 15, 2022.
And that does talk about the different subcultures.
I would love for our listeners from Japan to read it to tell us, is this correct?
Is this accurate? Because again, we never know.
This is written by, I think, someone in the US.
But a sense of community within these subcultures makes me think maybe that's why they become very popular.
That uniqueness becomes normalized and then there's a community built around it.
Yeah, this is really interesting to think about because when there are subcultures in the United States, I feel like there is often still this drive to be sort of the best or the most successful even within the subculture.
So it would be interesting to see what this is like in other countries.
Is that the case or is it more, you know, tall poppy syndrome like it might be in Australia where you're wanting to all succeed together?
That's really interesting. So the need to achieve even within a subculture that is supposedly a community, but within the U.S.
What are you thinking about in terms of a subculture?
You said gamers, maybe? Yeah, specifically I'm thinking about my son watches these YouTube videos and they're like gamers that do, you know, they're showing you how to beat the game or play the game really well.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
So that's interesting. So even within a place where there are strong subcultures within the... So does the greater culture call to us to exceed or succeed within that group?
Or does it call to us to blend in and focus on the community?
That's super interesting. But anyways, my experience in Japan was I was really surprised and fascinated by what I saw, just street fashion, just the different trends and more than trends, those subcultures on the street in terms of fashion, really striking.
But I would say there was one thing that I noticed at work that kind of held up the proverb of the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
So maybe this has changed too since 2005, 2006.
But I worked for a company that taught English.
And I had a native speaking coworker. And then there were teachers of English from Japan that I also worked with, my colleagues.
We were all pretty close, actually. We hung out a lot on the weekends.
And then there were two managers who were Japanese as well.
And the Japanese teachers generally tended to stay at work until my manager went home.
And the manager had a lot of work to do.
So we're talking about 9, 10, 11. Whereas we would go home at 9.
Work ended at 9 in my case. So they would stay 10, 11, maybe 12.
And In the U.S., I feel like it's more common individually.
It's like, hey, I'm efficient. I finished my work.
I'm awesome. I'm going home. See ya. Right?
What do you think about that? Well, especially if you think about education, at least in the U.S., you are not paid anymore to stay for longer hours, right?
Some jobs that are... hourly, or possibly if you're trying to make partner in a law firm, and someone notices if you're putting in more hours, there might be potential for a partnership or a pay raise, there may be some kind of benefit.
But in general, for teachers in the US, there isn't a benefit, right?
As soon as I was done with my classes and prep, I was headed home.
There was no benefit to me to stay. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And again, I don't know a ton about this, but I do remember having a few conversations with the Japanese teachers and I said, how late were you at work last night?
And they let me know that they did need to stay.
So that was the example that I saw in Japanese culture living there.
I'm thinking about, this is really interesting because when I was a teacher in the Bronx, it was a small charter school and a lot of the teachers didn't have families yet.
They were teaching, but they didn't have kids they needed to head home to.
And a lot of them would stay. And I did notice there was sort of a tighter, there was more unity between the teachers that would stay late and then sometimes they'd go to happy hour.
So I can really see how within a subculture like that, The benefits, the bonding that's created by something like that.
So it's interesting because I would have, you know, I was thinking there's no benefit to me in staying.
It's more like I got to get home to my kids.
There actually were a lot of benefits if I could have stayed and become part of that sort of subculture.
Right. Like maybe your primary community was your family, whereas maybe for your coworkers, like their primary community was work.
And yeah, that, I mean, I saw that in Japan too.
Like often, um, well, I think there's an expectation to go out to the Izakaya, which is like a Japanese pub where you get food and drink after work with your coworkers.
We did that a lot. I actually had a blast doing that.
I thought that was super fun getting to know my coworkers.
And sometimes our adult students would join us too.
It was really fun. Um, but there's, There's an expectation in the business world, like for in the more corporate world in Japan, too, that people will go out.
If your coworkers and your managers going out, you would go out.
At least there was. And I want our listeners to chime in here because this could be out of date knowledge, right?
This is years ago. I know I would love to know if this is still the case or if it has changed a lot.
And we're chatting sort of about what this is like in the business world as well.
But it's making me think of a proverb or an expression in English we have that is the cream always rises to the top, which is sort of the opposite of that.
The nail gets hammered down, right? It means that those who work the hardest, those with the best work ethic or the most skill, maybe the strongest moral character will find success.
So, this is interesting because I would love to know what this is like in other cultures as well.
Do you feel that way or is it more of the nail gets hammered down?
Both of them, I think, can definitely create stereotypes like we were saying, but it's interesting.
Yeah, for sure. Let's take a quick break here and then we'll come right back.
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Exclusions apply. See details online. Okay, Aubrey, so the cream rises to the top.
Maybe that is kind of our go-to value. And that comes back to achievement, right?
It comes back to wanting to rise to the top, wanting to be kind of the best or better or add value.
Whereas maybe other cultures would value kind of that community, right?
Coming together. relating. I don't know.
I don't know. It's fascinating. Culture is fascinating because people just can't, people are predictable, right?
They can't be put into boxes. Exactly. Right.
And even here in the U S right. I think about how, you know, different children are raised.
Like some are really pushed to be, are driven towards success.
And then, you know, others, there's more of an acceptance of like, you do you, you know, we're happy with whatever you do.
So even within one culture, I have witnessed myself that there can be extreme differences between depending on how someone's raised, the attitudes their parents have about the business world.
So that's like you were saying at the very beginning, Lindsay, it's really difficult to put people in a box, to even put a culture in a box.
We have to recognize that there will be outliers no matter what we witness.
Oh my gosh, it's so true. So do we answer Aya's question?
I'm not sure if we did. I think so, right?
I love that I was asking about your experience in Japan, because this is fascinating too, to be within a culture and recognize it and really respect something about your own culture, but want to know, you know, what did this look like to a foreigner, to you, to someone coming from another country?
And what did you witness? What did you observe?
I feel like, you know, my main point here is travel complicates your idea of life, which is healthy.
Like we need to be calm. Our perspective on people has to be complicated.
It should be complex because people are complex.
They're never simple. They never follow, you know, there's so many factors, right?
There's history. There's our family history that can affect who we become.
So the more complicated think of culture, the better.
Yeah, I think in all aspects of life, the more you see things as black and white, the more difficult.
There's so much nuance to language, to life, to culture.
And the more we can appreciate that, the less we will expect people to act a certain way or think that they should act a certain way, which can cause hurt feelings, can cause problems at work.
Yeah. And I think the way we can use culture, like let's go to the business world here.
If I work for a remote company and let's say I have some colleagues in Japan, I have some in Australia, some in London and some in New York.
It's not that I am going to predict what they're going to do, but I might use culture in the background as a way of putting context to certain ways they handle certain situations.
And I might check up on that and maybe have a conversation and say, hey, in your culture, how is this dealt with?
Staying late or coming into work early or achieving certain things, hitting metrics, right?
So it's one piece of the puzzle. It's not everything.
Right, Aubrey? Exactly. That's a really good point.
It's a great way to be able to eliminate misunderstandings.
You know, anything that might cause confusion, you are just aware that like, okay, we might be coming at this from a different perspective.
So open communication is always going to be the right answer to help us better understand each other's perspective.
It's so true. And then, of course, the classic example of this is always in international negotiations, right?
Absolutely. I mean, opposite negotiation styles.
And we can go into that another day or even better, we could have a guest on to talk about international negotiation.
That would be fantastic. That is a place where you will absolutely hit it head to head and you won't be able to avoid those differences, right?
And then we have to go deeper and figure out, okay, how do we think this party that we're negotiating with might approach this and how do we create... like widen the pie for everyone to get to that getting to yes, right?
As they say, there's always the goal of the negotiation.
I love that as a takeaway, right? Just that like, this is inevitable at work that you're going to come head to head with cultural differences with those you're working at, especially the more the business world becomes more global and to avoid, you know, sticking with proverbs and stereotypes and thinking that everyone's going to act a certain way, but instead open communication about it.
Yeah, moving beyond stereotypes, moving beyond proverbs.
Let's go for a 2.0 version of proverbs, whatever that is, more complex.
And also, just because we're all working online now doesn't mean culture doesn't exist, right?
Because even you and I, right? So you're in Arizona, I'm in Colorado, Mountain West, but we come from two different upbringings.
But we're here on this recording now, so there might be assumptions that we see the world in the same way, but we don't necessarily. right exactly right and the more we communicate about it and understand each other's culture the more the better success we will have at work and the deeper the connection will be always good stuff i love it all right i think we can leave it there hopefully i feel satisfied in that answer but um we pushed back and we also gave some examples to the affirmative of the proverb and uh aubry any final points You want to make sure?
Yeah, let us know, guys. If you want to hear more about culture, talk more about culture, definitely leave us a comment wherever you are watching, listening, YouTube and Spotify.
We would love to know, do you like these episodes where we talk about culture?
And we'd love to do more. All right. Good stuff, Aubrey.
I'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Awesome.
You too. Thanks, Lindsay. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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