They are based on Erin Meyer’s “The Culture Map.”
Soft skills are crucial for career advancement and many immigrants pass on real opportunities because they don’t read the cultural code right – or act on it in time.
To understand what I actually mean when I say “helping immigrants navigate soft skills in the West” – I went back to one of my favourite books and started building persona cards based on countries of origin.
Erin Meyer who wrote “Culture Map” puts it well: “if you go into every interaction assuming culture doesn’t matter, your default is to view others through your own lens – and misjudge accordingly.”
Let’s not be delusional – most of those rooms (VC, well-paid jobs, the ones worth getting into) are calibrated for the Western culture you moved to. This is where hard-skilled immigrants sometimes fall flat. Not because they’re not good enough. Because nobody told them the unwritten rules of a game they didn’t grow up playing.
I was socialised in Novosibirsk – that’s Siberia, Russia. Then spent 15 years in Berlin. The Russian persona reflects me pretty well. 80%.
Now I’ve added the UK (wink Tom) and looked at how all three work together – where they click, where the friction lives, and why nobody in the room can quite name it.
If you were socialised in Russia, Germany or the UK – how accurate is this for you?
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