preparation – Success Across Cultures

Two business executives, Mark and Hiroshi, sit across from each other in a Tokyo boardroom, their respective companies poised to enter into a pivotal partnership.

As the negotiation unfolds, cultural missteps trip up the veneer of professionalism.

Mark approaches negotiations with a directness honed by years of business dealings in the West, while Hiroshi, rooted in the traditions of Japanese culture, communicates with subtlety and nuance, often unspoken.

Their initial exchanges are cordial but tense due to the cultural chasm separating them.

However, as the negotiation progresses, something remarkable happens.

Despite the language barriers and divergent communication styles, Mark and Hiroshi seek common ground.

And they’re able to find it based on their knowledge of effective communication, cultural awareness, and stress management in cross-cultural negotiations in accordance with this groundbreaking research, shared by Harvard.

Effective Communication

A recent series of studies by esteemed researchers reveals invaluable insights for negotiators navigating diverse cultural exchanges.

One study illuminates the pivotal role of effective communication in cross-cultural negotiations.

Their findings underscored that communication quality significantly impacts negotiation outcomes, with cross-cultural pairs often facing lower-quality communication compared with their same-culture counterparts.

However, those cross-cultural pairs who overcame communication barriers achieved better outcomes than their same-culture counterparts, leveraging their differences to reach more creative agreements.

Stereotyping Pitfalls

In another fascinating study, researchers delved into how negotiators prepare for talks with counterparts from different cultures.

Surprisingly, the research uncovered a tendency among negotiators to overemphasize cultural differences, leading them to expect counterparts to negotiate based on stereotypes.

This inclination, while well-intentioned, can inadvertently pave the path to misunderstandings and culture clashes.

Stress Management

Further research examined the impact of stress on cross-cultural communication.

It was found that negotiators grappling with extreme demands on their attention are prone to succumb to cultural stereotypes, potentially impeding effective communication and negotiation outcomes.

These studies reveal the importance of striking a balance between acknowledging cultural differences and treating counterparts as individuals.

While cultural awareness forms the bedrock of successful negotiations, delving deeper into counterparts’ professional backgrounds, personalities, and negotiating experiences fosters deeper understanding and rapport on an individual level.

Additionally, mitigating stress at the bargaining table serves as a potent antidote against succumbing to cultural stereotypes, creating space for more thoughtful and effective communication.

Whether you’re an expat adapting to a foreign country or an international manager in one’s own country working in a multicultural environment, you must ready yourself for integration.

To integrate means to “bring together and become part of a whole.”

As a foreign or international manager, it’s your duty to bring your team together – to make it a cohesive whole – and you can do this by taking action.

Sink or Swim

Just as you prepare yourself for negotiations, coming up with your objectives and the strategy you might use to achieve them, you must also prepare yourself for integration into a foreign culture.

As with every aspect of meticulously planned business – from putting together engaging presentations that appeal to clients to scheduling your time down to the minute – a cross-cultural business venture requires an extra layer of planning: preparing for the cultural differences and those potential monkey moments that accompany them.

Depending on your organization, you might not even receive cross-cultural skills training prior to departure.

This leaves you two options: take it upon yourself to prepare beforehand or just wing it when you arrive in your host country.

Either way, your host country colleagues and the friends you make will essentially become your “trainers,” while your entire host country – from its local streets, shops, and restaurants to your workplace itself – will be your training venue.

Daily interactions with locals, friends, and colleagues will become hands-on training.

You’ll be thrown in the deep-end and told to sink or swim.

Here’s how you swim.

Learn How to Prepare

In order to successfully swim when thrown off the deep-end, you must eliminate, as much as you possibly can, the culture shock.

This phase is called “Taking Action.”

Taking action involves a conscious effort to adapt smoothly and quickly, avoiding monkey moments in the process.

Being that you’ve already taken the first step of cross-cultural integration – Awareness – you’re already able to reduce cultural monkey moments by following the next steps: Accepting, Adapting, or Adopting.

Accepting, Adapting, and Adopting are generic steps that help you integrate into any culture.

However, knowing the culture in which you’ll be living, you can take specific action to prepare yourself, for example, by learning the cultural values and norms prior to arrival.

In the next few weeks, this blog will discuss a general methodology to efficiently learn the scope of a new culture.

Tag: preparation

Communication, Preparation, & Stress Management: 3 Pillars of Negotiation Across 3 Cross-Cultural Studies

Sink or Swim: How to Stay Afloat When Thrown Off the Deep-end of a Foreign Culture