As their manager, you can help your Danish colleagues by acknowledging cultural differences in the workplace.

This will create a language around culture, and make it legitimate to spot and talk about differences when they pop up in everyday cooperations.

Many of us Danes, despite being well-educated and well-travelled, often lack experience in navigating cultural differences at work. This can lead to ‘cultural bypassing’, where we believe we are at a level of enlightenment where we no longer are burdened by the risk of making cross-cultural mistakes.

We shut down our curiosity and forget to look at the impact of cultural differences in practice.

I recently spoke with a client – let’s call her Lone. She leads an American team and told me about their challenges. During their first team meeting Lone quickly introduced herself, collected everyone’s names, and then dived straight into work.

They were facing tight deadlines, and since she was going on vacation, she told them to send their work to her for review when she returned, as she wouldn’t be checking emails during the week where she was away.

When she came back, no one had submitted anything. After reminding them twice, she escalated the issue to her boss, which finally got things moving. She felt humiliated and angry, assuming their inaction was due to sexism, suspecting that her youthful appearance and gender made them dismiss her authority.

I suggested that while some team members might have been motivated by sexism, others might have simply found her leadership style unempathetic, incompetent, or even rude. She had spent no time getting to know them, appeared to offload all responsibility, and then left on vacation.

Lone started laughing as she realized that what she saw as efficiency (getting straight to work), trust (full delegation), and commitment to work-life balance (taking leave during a busy period) might have been interpreted differently seen from another cultural angle.

She recognized that she had jumped to conclusions – or as I would say, fallen into the trap of cultural bypassing – by assuming that her intelligence and travel experience made her immune to cultural ignorance.

She reflected that she in fact had worried about the cultural difference with her new Asian team – but had assumed that Danes and Americans would work seamlessly together.

Cultural bypassing is something we all can exhibit, but Danes are rather susceptible.

Danish cultural traits, such as a flat hierarchy and egalitarianism, are seen by many Danes as Culture 1.0, and they may therefore assume too quickly that others will adopt these traits when they realize how great they are.