Why Your Email Overseas Might Be Failing
Living in Colombia as a kid, airmail would often take weeks to arrive – if it ever did. I remember the first time my family received a fax. It felt revolutionary: This idea that someone from the U.S. sent a letter that I could print it out and hold in my hands.
First it was the fax machine that outperformed "snailmail." After that? Email.
Except for a few bizarre instances where I recently needed to fax something to a title agent, I have happily relegated the fax machine as an ancient artifact of the past.
Email is a great tool, especially if you need to quickly communicate a message to someone in a different country. Case in point: While I was visiting Rwanda, I sent a letter to the U.S., but came home before the letter even arrived.
Email would've been faster.
Even though email is highly convenient in breaking down distance barriers, there is one barrier that email doesn't easily break down. It's known as "power distance."
Power distance is one of the dimensions of Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. It's a term used to describe how people in a specific culture view and accept power relationships (superior/subordinate).
If you live in North American or Western culture, power distance is relatively low. The U.S. has only one word for "you." It doesn't matter if you're talking to your boss, or your subordinate, you would address them both with the same question: "How are you doing?" (Though some American subcultures use the phrase “y'all”, as a short for “you all”, but that’s besides the point.)
In contrast, the Spanish language has two levels of "you":
"Usted" is formal
"Tu" is informal
The Korean language even has seven levels of speech for addressing different audiences!
When we are writing in English to someone in a different culture, we can easily forget about power distance. But the person receiving your email? They are very aware.
This power distance is especially critical to keep in mind if you work for an international organization of any kind.
Let's say, for example, that you are writing an email to an employee who is responsible for reporting back to your organization, or maybe they received a paycheck from your organization. While your email might sound non-threatening to you, a person who lives in a culture with a high power distance might be nervous about responding if they don't already have a good relationship with you.
Power distance is also important to consider if there is a large group on an email chain, and you ask someone from a developing country to respond to a question. That's like if you were summoned to a large crowd and asked to answer a question in a different language than your mother tongue.
Imagine that.
How would it make you feel?
That's what an email can feel like if we're not considerate of power distance.
I'm speaking from personal experience. I've had conversations with people who were copied on a large group email. When I called them or reached out to them on WhatsApp, they were relieved and explained that the email chain was very "crowded." They appreciated a personal conversation.
While I love emails (yes, more than fax machines) and understand the importance of keeping everyone "cc'ed" on your emails, for effective cross-cultural communication, take the time to reach out personally to people through a platform like WhatsApp. Or send a voice memo. Both are well-loved overseas and make communication more personal and effective because they can hear the tone of your voice.
The next time you send an email across the pond, think about the element of power distance and how it might be perceived by the recipient. Then, lean into other forms of communication in order to build trust and establish deeper connections with people across cultures.
