Navigating cultural collisions

 

Having spent most of my career in multinationals in India, I've had a front-row seat to some genuinely fascinating cultural collisions — some that made me smile, some that made me scratch my head, and a few that I'm still making sense of.

Hierarchy runs deep — and there's wisdom in that

Growing up in India, you learn early that respect for elders and authority isn't just a rule — it's a value. And honestly, that translates rather beautifully into most workplace settings. You know how to read a room, how to carry yourself with seniors, how to show up with the right attitude. Where it gets a little thorny is when a Western corporate culture rolls in, cheerfully insisting that you "challenge your manager" or "push back freely." That's not always an easy switch to flip — and perhaps it shouldn't have to be.

We'd rather decide together

There's something genuinely lovely about the Indian instinct to consult widely before deciding. You bring people in, you hear everyone out, you don't just bulldoze ahead alone. In collaborative workplaces, this is a superpower. The friction comes when you're dropped into a culture that celebrates the lone achiever — where it's every person for themselves and individual glory is the whole point. That can feel quite isolating if you're wired differently.

Work was always personal — and that came from commitment, not compulsion

The idea of keeping work and life in neatly separate boxes has never quite fit the Indian experience. Staying late, picking up a weekend call, going the extra mile — these weren't grudging sacrifices. They came from a sense of ownership, of pride, of wanting to do right by the people counting on you. That spirit has served Indian professionals incredibly well. What's shifting now — rightly so — is the recognition that this dedication needs boundaries too. Burnout is real, and the younger generation is much more clear-eyed about that. Good for them.

We communicate with care, not just words

In India, what you don't say is often just as important as what you do. There's a gentleness to the way difficult things get expressed — a softening, a reading between the lines. It's not evasiveness; it's consideration. The challenge is that this style loses some of its texture in remote and hybrid settings, where you're stripped of tone, body language and those wonderful unplanned conversations over kaapi. So much mentoring and coaching used to happen in those in-between moments — a quiet word in the corridor, a nudge after a meeting. That's genuinely hard to replace with a calendar invite.

Time has always been a little more... generous

There's a warmth to the Indian relationship with time that corporate schedules have little patience for. "It'll be done" said with a smile used to mean something reassuringly vague. That has changed considerably though — today's professionals are sharp about deadlines and delivery. The old stereotype is just that — old. What remains, perhaps, is a healthy understanding that life sometimes interrupts plans, and that's okay too.

At the end of the day, none of this is about one culture being right and another being wrong. It's about recognising that people carry their histories with them into the workplace — and that's not a problem to be fixed. A little curiosity, a little generosity, and a genuine willingness to meet each other halfway can go a very long way. You won't resolve every tension, but you'd be surprised how much simply seeing each other clearly can help.