Teamwork - understand-culture

Universal Genuine Participation

If you’re working with a Dutch team, expect everyone to contribute and expect everyone to be expected to contribute — including you. This isn’t a culture where quiet participants are politely tolerated. In a Dutch meeting, if you haven’t said anything, someone will eventually ask what you think — and they’ll expect a real answer, not a polite agreement. The same goes in the other direction: you’re expected to say what you actually think, not what you imagine the group wants to hear. Passive membership isn’t really membership. Every person in the room is there to add something genuine, and if your contribution isn’t forthcoming, the team will notice. This applies regardless of seniority. Junior members are expected to contribute just as actively as senior ones. The quality of the collective’s thinking depends on everyone actually putting their real perspective in.

Deliberative Legitimacy

Dutch teams make decisions through consultation, and that consultation needs to be real. If a significant decision affects your Dutch colleagues and they weren’t genuinely consulted before it was made, they will object — not as a formality, but as a matter of how things are properly done. “We decided” in a Dutch context means the people who need to implement the decision and who have relevant knowledge were genuinely part of making it. This is why Dutch organizations have works councils and why coalition negotiations take months. It’s also why skipping the consultation step to move faster tends to backfire: you get a faster decision that produces slower or incomplete implementation because the people executing it didn’t help shape it. Build in genuine consultation early, keep it open to actual influence, and the resulting decision tends to stick.

Leveling Norms and Collective Frame

The Dutch have a saying: “Just act normal — that’s already crazy enough.” It captures something real about how Dutch colleagues relate to status and individual prominence. Excel at what you do, absolutely — but don’t perform it. Don’t position yourself above your colleagues, don’t expect differential treatment because of your seniority or achievements, and don’t treat your individual contribution as something the group should be grateful for rather than something you simply owe. Dutch teams respect competence deeply; they’re resistant to ceremony around competence. The person who does excellent work without making a production of it earns genuine respect. The person who draws excessive attention to their achievements or uses their status to end discussion tends to lose standing. Equality within the team isn’t just a nice value — it’s a functional expectation that produces better collective thinking.

Action Orientation Within Process

Dutch teams consult thoroughly, but they also expect to get somewhere. Process has a purpose: you deliberate to reach a workable decision, and then you execute it. If your meeting is going in circles without moving toward a conclusion, Dutch colleagues will notice and say something. If you’re organizing a project, know that extended deliberation without clear progress is considered wasteful — “gedoe,” unnecessary fuss. This doesn’t mean Dutch teams rush past important discussions. It means they expect discussion to be productive and to result in something you can act on. The rhythm is: invest in the consultation, reach a real decision, commit and move. When the Dutch say they need to “aanpakken” something, they mean it’s time to stop talking about it and start doing it — and that’s not a criticism of the consultation, it’s its intended conclusion.

Shared Stakes and Collective Ownership

When a Dutch team succeeds or fails, it succeeds or fails together. You won’t often hear Dutch colleagues attributing a project’s failure to an individual who underperformed while the rest of the team performed well, or celebrating individual success within a collectively failed outcome. The orientation is toward shared result. This means Dutch team members genuinely care how the whole project goes, not only how their piece goes. It also means they expect the same from you — if you’re watching the project head in a bad direction and doing nothing because your part is fine, that won’t land well. This collective ownership is what makes consultation so important: if the outcome is shared, then the decision-making process that leads to it should also be shared. You’re all in the same situation together, and everyone’s performance affects everyone’s outcome.

Direct Communication as Collective Service

If a Dutch colleague tells you something isn’t working, take it as a good sign — they’re treating you as a full member of the team. Dutch directness isn’t aggression; it’s how honest information gets into the room so the group can deal with it. Feedback is given plainly, disagreement is expressed explicitly, and this goes in every direction — to managers as readily as to peers. If you see a problem and don’t say it, you’re failing the team. If you say something politely ambiguous when you mean something clearly specific, you’re also failing the team. Dutch teams function on the assumption that what people say reflects what they actually think, so indirect signals and softened criticism tend to either not register or create confusion. Be direct about what you think and what you see, expect the same in return, and treat direct challenge — including challenge to your own ideas — as a sign that the collective is working properly.