When Erin Meyer first moved to Europe, her new Swedish boss introduced himself as a typical consensus-building manager. Conscious of her American roots, he explained that this was the best way to ensure that everyone was on board and he hoped that she would be patient with this very Swedish process.

She was initially delighted with the prospect of working with an inclusive boss, who listened carefully to his staff and weighed everyone’s views before making a decision. But after her first few weeks, the emails had started mounting up. One morning, this message arrived:

Hey team, I thought we should meet for an annual face-to-face on December 6th. We could focus the meeting on how to be more client-centric. What do you think?

The firm was a small consultancy with more work than they could handle and her colleagues, mainly energetic young Swedes, worked long hours to meet targets and keep their clients happy. She didn’t feel she had much of an opinion on her bosse’s question, so her automatic response was to hit the delete button and get back to work. But in the hours that followed, her Swedish colleagues began sending their responses, adding suggestions and views on what to focus on. Occasionally their boss would inject an email with a few comments. Slowly, they began to reach agreement. She then got an individual email:

Hi Erin, haven’t heard from you, what do you think?

She really wanted to respond by saying, “I have absolutely no opinion, please make a decision so we can get back to work.” But remembering how delighted she felt when he had told her that he favoured consensual decision-making, she simply replied that she supported whatever the group decided.

As the weeks went on, many other topics got the same treatment and she realised her first impression of this style of working was not at all how she liked to work. She now understood why her boss felt he had to explain this consensual approach to her. He later described how it feels to be Swedish working with Americans, who are “too busy to be good team members” and “always trying to impose a decision for decision’s sake without soliciting feedback”.