Comment by rossdavidh

Great article. One point I would like to add, is that "guess" culture works great when there is already a lot of shared cultural background, but "ask" culture works better when people are coming from very different backgrounds (and thus won't know enough about what the other person wants or needs, to guess very accurately). Sure, it's good to find out more about where other people are coming from, but this takes time, and in the meantime stuff has to get done. I'm guessing this is why most workplaces are "ask" culture.

Also, most families have enough common background to make "guess" culture work, so a lot of adolescents and young adults are more accustomed to "guess" culture, but once they move out into the world to deal more with people that have very different backgrounds, they will need to become more comfortable with "ask" culture.