Tell Me Where You Are From and I Will Tell How You Negotiate

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MPI Spain organizes an intercultural communication workshop to help meetings and event professionals to get to grips with the industry's increasing globalization.

How should the silence of an Asian client be interpreted in a meeting? What is the difference between a German and someone from Japan when concluding a contract? These and other issues were addressed by Suzanne Sutton and Mauro Buso of Richard Lewis Communications in the workshop on intercultural communication and its competitive advantage in the meetings and event industry, held on 16 June as a part of MPI Spain's education programme.

Internationalizing a company involves investment and, for this reason, knowing our interlocutor is the key to success. For Dr Suzanne Sutton, an intercultural communications expert, the chief challenges facing global cooperation are language and cultural barriers. "We tend to assume that at a meeting everyone sees what we see, and listens to what we say," said Sutton. Although when people of two different cultures meet, the approach of each interlocutor can be dramatically different. "There are two mentalities, two languages with their own set of norms, and the objectives we start out with are different, as well as our expectations. The way in which we try to win people over and clinch a deal also varies depending on our culture," said Mauro Buso, representative of Southern Europe for Richard Lewis Communications.

For both experts, the first golden rule is to understand the culture of our target, step into the world of our professional colleagues, and show respect and a sympathetic ear right from the word go. "Cultural knowledge allows us to understand the similarities between different cultures and, therefore, avoid misunderstandings," explained Sutton. This, for instance, is one of the keys of Japanese culture when doing business: the first meetings are basically for establishing a trust relationship and to detect potential sources of dissention, with the aim of eliminating them right from the start. The signing of contracts is left until later.

Likewise, concepts such as "contract" and "ethics" are understood in a different way depending on the country: in USA, the signing of a contract marks the end of the process; for the Japanese, it is just the start, and they regard it as ethical to modify the terms and conditions of a contract depending to market changes.

More than 200 nations coexist in the world, without counting regional differences. With over 40 years of experience in the field of intercultural communication, the multinational Richard Lewis Communications identifies three groups with different cultural characteristics and negotiation techniques: Practical, People-centric and Listeners. People in the first group – which includes the Germans, Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians – stand out for their excellent organizational skills. They are efficient, quick and frank, as well as trusting the rules, respecting deadlines, paying punctually and regarding time as money. Spain and Latin America, together with the African countries, are more sociable nations where efforts are geared to building trust relationships with colleagues as the keystone for successful business deals.

Asians, which lead the group of Listeners, are born negotiators. They know how to listen, avoid starting discussions or taking the lead, ask a large number of questions without voicing their opinion immediately, mistrust people who talk too much, and avoid eye contact when possible. For them, silence is tantamount to respect, as it gives weight to the words of their interlocutor, and humility is one of their main characteristics, not as a sign of weakness but completely the opposite. "The idea is not to create stereotypes, although it is undeniable that each nation has a certain profile. In business, we should avoid cultural faux pas. Behaving correctly saves time and money," concluded Sutton.

Published
02/07/2011