Dimension 1 of 11
D1: Identity
Do people find who they are in themselves, or in their people? Understand it, and a lot of the world starts to make sense.
What is Identity?
Identity describes whether people mainly locate who they are, what they want, and what they owe in themselves, or in the groups they belong to: family, clan, team, tribe, nation. Neither end is better. Each is a different answer to the question, “Who am I responsible to?”
Two ends of one spectrum
Individualism
Individual goals and rights come first. Personal achievement, autonomy, and self-expression are prized. People look after themselves and their immediate family, and loyalty is given voluntarily rather than assumed.
Collectivism
Relationships and the group’s interests come first. People think of themselves first as members of a family, clan, or in-group. Decisions weigh the group’s welfare and reputation, and loyalty is assumed and reciprocal.
How Collectivism looks around the world
Collectivism isn’t one thing. Three regions land on the same end of the spectrum for very different reasons.
Confucian Asia: guanxi
A web of trust and mutual obligation, seen by insiders as a natural extension of the family. To them, a relationship with no strings attached isn’t really a relationship at all.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Ubuntu
“I am what I am because of who we all are.” Connection reaches from family to tribe, neighborhood, and congregation, and it lasts: the expectation to support those back home continues even after someone moves abroad.
Latin America: familismo
Centered on the family, with warmth and personal relationship first. Trust is extended more slowly to people outside the family circle.
Three things to keep in mind
1. Collectivism has many logics
Guanxi, Ubuntu, and family-first loyalty each ask something different of you. Learn which one you’re standing in.
2. Ask which group is in view
Someone can be deeply loyal to family yet individualistic at work, or the reverse. Notice whether the pull is family, team, or nation.
3. Expect a tension, not a label
Real places often hold both. New England, for example, carries a communal covenant tradition alongside an individualist Yankee streak.
Centered • Curious • Considerate • Confident
Dimension 1 of the 11 Dimensions of Culture