Negotiating across cultures

Hello again. I'm Susan Raines. Today, we're going to talk about negotiation across cultures.

I've used this a lot, this information about how to deal with intercultural teams and how to communicate effectively across cultures. I don't just mean national cultures. I also mean family cultures, organizational cultures. Any kind of cultural difference between people and organizations. I've used this a lot because I've worked with Fortune 500 organizations and international institutions that are multicultural and multinational, and that presents particular opportunities as well as particular challenges in making sure everyone understands why they're doing that and how to work together effectively.

So the Number 1 question we want to know when we're communicating with people, and it comes up more when we're communicating across cultures, why did they do it that way? Cultural comparisons require generalizations. Here's a warning: I will be saying Germans are more like this and Americans are more like this, and British are more like that. But remember, these are big generalizations and within any group, of course, there is variation. We want to think like an anthropologist to improve our negotiations. That means understanding how did this belief or value or behavior pattern emerge if it's a cultural generalization.

So cultural distance and business negotiation is important to understand. Cultural distance refers to the extent to which two cultures differ on key factors and how they see things differently in a very systemic way. So what is the role of women or men, or gender in general, in determining work tasks? That can differ across cultures What does on time mean in different cultures? That really varies, and there are reasons for that that are fascinating. So we're going to talk about that. But the bigger the cultural distance, the more likely there will be miscommunications and misunderstandings. So we need to communicate a little bit more explicitly or ask questions to someone when we seem to have offended them or misstepped or we're not sure what's the appropriate behavior in an organization. We want to have a trusted person that we're working with that can be kind of like a host family in that culture to say, "Hey, at this new corporation I'm at who talks first, or what are the rules around or expectations around asking questions or disagreeing with the boss?" These are important things that you don't know when you come in from a different organizational culture. So it's very important to be able to discuss these things with a trusted friend.