When Cultures Collide
Richard D. Lewis · 1996
When Cultures Collide (1996) is a book by Richard D. Lewis on Cross-Cultural Communication. Linguist Richard Lewis sorts the world's cultures into three behavioural types, linear-active, multi-active and reactive, and shows how time, speech, silence and status quietly govern every international meeting.
The field guide that turns "they're just difficult to work with" into a readable map of how the other side actually thinks, talks, and decides.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of When Cultures Collide pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- Lewis sorts cultures on behaviour, not geography or race: **linear-active** (task-focused, schedule-driven), **multi-active** (people-focused, emotional, many things at once) and **reactive** (listening-first, harmony-seeking). Most nations sit on a spectrum between the three corners, not in a box.
- Time is the deepest hidden variable. Linear-active cultures treat time as a scarce commodity to be sliced and spent; multi-active cultures treat clock time as a rough suggestion subordinate to the person in front of you; many Asian cultures treat time as cyclic, so a decision missed today can be made when the wheel comes round.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 8 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Cultural Spectacles You Cannot Take Off
- Three Types, Not Two Hundred Nations
- Time: Commodity, Companion, or Wheel
- Listening Cultures and the Uses of Silence
- How People Say No Without Saying No
- Leadership, Status and How Decisions Get Made
- National Portraits: The Model in the Wild
- Empathy as a Working Skill
Finish When Cultures Collide tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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