Linear-active or multi-active?

It is important to say that the south african culture doesn’t fit 100% in a category from the Lewis Model. As we can see on the image below, it is right in the middle between linear-active groups and multi-active groups. This means we have to analyze both categories.

Linear-Actives are task-oriented, highly-organized planners, who complete action chains by doing one thing at a time, preferably in accordance with a linear agenda.

On the other hand, Multi-Actives are emotional, loquacious and impulsive people who attach great importance to family, feelings, relationships, people in general. They like to do many things at the same time and are poor followers of agendas.

South Africa is located in the same groupo as european countries and United States. This may be to the fact that their culture has been highly westernized. It still reflects the power and influence that its previous colonies had over it.

Therefore, south african culture has individuals that are organized planners who may be impulsive once in a while. For them, family is really important but they don’t tend to be too emotional when it comes to achieving a goal.

A person from South Africa that came to Barranquilla would fit well because of the significance that family has for both cultures. However, if this person came to study and would have to do a group project would probably face some issues. For instance, Colombia is a multi-active nation, which means we are generally poor followers of agendas so that would be a problem. On the other hand, the fact that South Africans are such good decision makers according to the Lewis Model, would improve the group’s performance.

If this person is someone that does things one after the other could face limitations as colombians often do many things at the same time. This could be a problem in a group project or even in the classroom, as the techniques used by the teachers are probably influenced by this mindset.

In conclusion, it wouldn’t be terrible, both cultures are not that different. But styles in terms of action might be a problem. No doubt it is something that can be talked over!