AdamSmith Posted March 3, 2015 Posted March 3, 2015 Found this in a post on LinkedIn by a Dutch person on her country's personality traits... No hugs please, I'm Dutch Let’s just get it out there; we Dutch don’t hug, we don’t give compliments and we are very bad tippers. Yes, that’s a generalisation and yes, I do know loads of Dutch people who give the most beautiful compliments, love hugging and provide a proper tip after good service. Generally though, we just don’t. Does that make us stingy, cold and reserved? Well, we prefer to think we are authentic! Being authentic The whole ‘being authentic’ thing is big for us. Coming from the time when we were a trading nation and contracts were sealed through a handshake and a verbal commitment, it means you are true to yourself and cut to the chase (we also value time and ”move” is simply quicker than ”would you mind terribly stepping aside please”). The problem is that, unlike us, other cultures may neither see nor describe our behaviour as ‘authentic’. They will use words like ‘rude’, ‘direct’, ‘confrontational’ or even ‘unfriendly’. And while all of this comes down to perception, in the end we Dutch probably need to understand that there are only 17 million of us and a couple billion non-Dutch out there. Our ‘authentic’ ways may not always go down as well as we’d hoped. Adapting to other, more context based, cultures may require quite a bit of effort though and I personally have to work really hard to be less, well let’s say ‘explicit’. Even after 12 years of international experience, half the time I still honestly don’t even realise I could potentially be perceived as overly direct or confrontational. It’s only by asking for regular feedback that I can continuously enhance my understanding of what works and what ‘crosses the line’. Authority issues On top of all of this, we don’t like authority and have a huge need for an egalitarian leader, company and society. “You are not the boss of me” is a phrase that could have originated in the Netherlands and one that we fiercely live by. Our favourite phrase, directly translated, is ‘act normal, that’s crazy enough’. In the Netherlands, trying to be special and standing out from the crowd is simply not done. We are all equal and want to be treated as such. It goes without saying that this causes issues when either Dutch go and work abroad or when foreigners come to our beautiful little country in a leadership position (except for the Danish and Swedish who have the same need for equality in leadership). We want the company hierarchy to be as flat as our country is. One of the leading Dutch newspapers, NRCQ, published an article (in Dutch) about the differences that I’m describing above. They wrote that when it comes to deciding, together with Sweden and Japan we go for the consensus model, trying to get everyone’s input, more than any other country in the world. Our royal family is one of the most prominent examples of our need for equality. You will see photos of them, dressed in orange t-shirts (along with the rest of the nation during a large event like the Olympics or a World Cup) jumping up and down and cheering on the athletes as much as any of us. In fact, at those moments more than at any other time, we feel they are ‘just like us’ and we love them for it. Just imagine Prince Charles doing something like that... Celebrate differences I live in Ireland and my entire team is Irish. To top it off, my line manager and the majority of my colleagues are in the US while my stakeholders are all over Europe. With more international experience also comes the willingness and, more importantly, the ability to adapt more. To think twice, to say things like “could you consider other options?” rather than “this just isn’t going to work” and I’ve even converted to hugging (I now just hug everyone which is potentially going slightly overboard ;-). At the same time, my plea to all other nationalities I work with, is to please be patient with me. To understand that my brain is hardwired to give direct feedback, to say it as I see it and to be to the point. Trust me; I’m just trying to be authentic ;-) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hugs-please-im-dutch-sacha-dekker ...Reminds also of McCullough's account in John Adams of how Adams, finally fed up with the French and Franklin equally, left Paris in exasperation and went to the Netherlands, where he found the hardheaded direct people much more in tune with his own Yankee sensibilities, and successfully negotiated substantial loans to help prosecute the Revolutionary war. numerito 1 Quote
Members RA1 Posted March 3, 2015 Members Posted March 3, 2015 Cute, but, "only a couple billion non-Dutch"? Best regards, RA1 Quote
AdamSmith Posted March 3, 2015 Author Posted March 3, 2015 That was Dutch humor. Sometimes hard to be sure, of course. Quote
Members RA1 Posted March 3, 2015 Members Posted March 3, 2015 Just like Dutch chocolate. I have dealt with folks from Holland before. Always interesting. Best regards, RA1 Quote
