Why am I passionate about this?
I love helping companies unlock global growth. As a child, I spent my free time writing letters to pen pals in countries around the world. That passion for communicating across borders, languages, and cultures never went away. I’ve spent most of my life working to overcome those barriers in business. I frequently write about international business for Harvard Business Review, and in my latest book, in which I share lessons learned as an operator and executive at HubSpot, where I led international strategy. Today, I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at Zappi, a tech company with employees in 16 countries.
Nataly's book list on books for global business leaders
Why did Nataly love this book?
So much of culture is unspoken and unseen. That’s why I love Erin Meyer’s classic book on doing business across borders.
As someone who oversees a global marketing team with people in various countries, I really relate to the compelling anecdotes she provides throughout. My favorite examples are ones where she showcases the misunderstandings that often go unseen and breaks down what is really happening behind the scenes when people from different cultures struggle to communicate in business settings.
Understanding high-context and low-context cultures is so important in global business. Having worked with employees in Japan, a high-context culture, I fully agree with her advice that global businesses should work toward making context more explicit so that all employees can thrive.
5 authors picked The Culture Map as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Whether you work in a home office or abroad, business success in our ever more globalized and virtual world requires the skills to navigate through cultural differences and decode cultures foreign to your own. Renowned expert Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain where people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together.When you have Americans who precede anything negative with three nice comments French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans who get straight to the point ( your presentation was simply awful") Latin Americans and Asians who are steeped in hierarchy Scandinavians who think the…