This weekend was World Cup quarter finals weekend in Qatar. Without boring readers who are doing all they can to avoid the world cup, please let me explain the below picture before continuing to why this is relevant for today’s blog..
The ‘odd man out’ in this picture is the one on the right; Dutch manager Louis Van Gaal. The other three are the star players of Croatia, Brazil and Argentina respectively. The Dutch, despite having many good players, are represented by their manager rather than one of their top players.
I sent this picture to a WhatsApp social group that I’m on which has a number of Dutch members. My comment (in jest) was that the Dutch didn’t have any players worthy of being included with the other three, to which one of my Dutch friends replied: “Not at all. We’re OK with celebrating the team over the star player.”
This is so very Dutch. The Dutch, along with the Swedish, are two of the most consensus driven societies in the world. Decisions are taken by consensus and attempts to enforce decisions by rule of authority are not well received. Remember the early days of covid? The Swedish government did the unthinkable; there were no social restrictions even when covid was at it most uncertain. While the rest of the world locked down and locked out, the Swedish government imposed very limited restrictions, instead choosing to trust that the people would make the right decisions for society. Is there any more extreme example of consensus driven decision making?!
And, which was the first country to experience riots during lock down? The Netherlands – the Dutch don’t like being told what to do by an authority figure but will readily follow consensus decisions. We can reverse the analysis and consider how China, a very authority driven culture has been able to keep a population of 1.4bn locked down for over a year after most of the world has opened. This could only be achieved where respect and adherence to authority is deeply engrained in the cultural psyche, as is the case in many parts of Asia.
Based on the research of world leading psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini, the psychology of consensus is one of the six underlying principles which govern whether we say “Yes” or “No” to any given request. It simply states that when we have insufficient information to make an informed decision, one method we use to arrive at a decision is to observe what others are doing. It is this underlying psychology that drive social media, influencers and KOL’s.
As we have discussed in this article, there is also a cultural overlay to the principle of consensus. It is more likely to be impactful when dealing with people from cultures who value group decision making. So, the next time you’re trying to influence someone from Netherlands, Sweden or similar nations, build consensus into your argument!
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