Leadership

Two of the cultural principles that we all learn from a young age are that a communication between two individuals is a reciprocal process and that most of relationships are based on scripted roles. In the first principle, the idea is that both parties involved in the relationship expect to gain something. For example, when you are given something the person that gave you a gift expects a thank you. Forgetting to say thank you may cause the relationship between the two parties to deteriorate. The second principle defines a situation so that we can specify the roles that we must play and the amount of value that should be attached to them. For example, when a teacher (actor) says that the following thing is important, the students (audience) automatically become more alert. If what is then said is not important the teacher has played their role incorrectly, which then causes the students to become frustrated. (Schein, 2009)

Our everyday interaction is filled with interactions in which we play different roles. For example, at a lecture the professor is given more value and therefore receives more respect from the students. At a break, the professor still has more value but the conversation with a student can in that situation be less formal. In this case, the equity and fairness of the relationship is related to the situation, and is understood by both parties. The term that is used to define this value is face. Everyone claims a certain amount of face that the person whom with they are having an interaction confirms the claimed face or give them the face they think is correct. Intentionally embarrassing someone in front of others causes the person to lose face. This is also seen as being rude which causes that person to also lose some of their own face. Therefore, interacting with other people should be used to maintain mutual face and can be an opportunity to gain status. Next, we will look at the different cultural dynamics in more detail. (Schein, 2009)

Social economics

The currency that we use to show value of the relationships that we have with other humans are love, attention, acknowledgement, acceptance, praise and help. These are often taken for granted, but when forgotten in an interaction they leave a negative view of the person that didn’t express gratitude. A good example that was given in the article involves an interaction with a beggar. For example, if we give money to the beggar and he doesn’t thank us for that, we feel betrayed. To achieve social equity again, what we do is either claim more value to ourselves or reduce the value of the beggar. Often this will bother us for as long as someone confirms our claimed values. If we believe that the beggar did this on purpose, a wise thing to do is avoid or forget them all together. Interpreting these kinds of social exchanges incorrectly can cause unwanted outcomes such as anger (the person that gave money) and guilt (beggar) in our example. (Schein, 2009)

Intimacy and trust

When building a relationship most of us follow the same rules, some may agree with everything we say, others may compete with whatever we say and the rest simply avoid saying anything. Relationships are built, deepened and tested by manipulating these rules. By following these rules in our daily lives, we can spot people with whom we don’t get along thus avoiding them. The equity and fairness then dictates how deep we want the relationship to become. In case of wanting to stay distant we don’t want to be too aggressive so that we don’t seem rude. In a relationship that we consider deep we feel safe to reveal things that we value a lot. This is called trust. Two essential components of trusting someone are that whatever value I may claim the other person will understand and accept it, and they won’ take advantage of information that has been shared. (Schein, 2009)

Social Theatre

The name social theatre comes from the fact that our lives are a constant changing of roles in different situations where we act as actors and audience. The most important role relationship that we have is the one we have as kids with our parents. In this relationship, we learn to get things without having any power and how to give back to make the relationship equitable and fair to our parents.