Culture and the Tall Poppy. Last year I attended a leadership summit with a senior pastor and friend. The main speaker of the summit was The Leader of a large South African denomination. During the course of one of the speakers presentations, my friend leaned over and asked me if it was normal for the man speaking to be so aggressive in his mannerisms and in the way he spoke. I smiled to myself and told him it wasn't a problem and that he was just being conversational. What we had here was not a problem with content or teaching but of culture. For many English people the manner in which the person spoke appeared to be aggressive and abrupt, and they found it offensive. For people like myself who have been brought up in Southern Africa I found it clear concise and to the point, it was for me a normal way of speaking. When I first went to live and work in New Zealand I heard a term that I had never heard before. "The Tall poppy syndrome" To have a tall popp...