- they are well prepared for the meeting,
- they strive for a matter-of-fact, constructive and tightly timed meeting
- and they find small talk redundant.
With this in mind, cultural misunderstanding is already preprogrammed for Asian or Arabic participants. In Indian and Arabian cultures, private and professional life are much more closely connected: Small talk is a vital aspect of building trust in these cultures.
Even in other Western cultures, differences to Germany’s leanings towards efficiency can be observed: Spanish business partners view a long business meal together in an appropriate atmosphere as a hardly replaceable appreciation - the time component is of minor importance here. Researchers has studied the meeting culture and found that in comparison, Germans are more likely to address serious problems, make complaints more frequently and to reject responsibility more often than Americans. On the other hand, Germans are in turn more organised during the course of conversation, define goals, procedures and what has been said more often and generally appear less emotional. These examples clearly demonstrate how strongly culturally ingrained behaviours can influence business relationships.
Professional intercultural skills are aimed at avoiding the misunderstandings that arise from diverging interpretive frameworks: Your own framework should be critically questioned, differing expectations of the other person should be anticipated and the situation definitions should be sufficiently reconciled. In addition, defined roles, norms and values must be recognised and be taken into account.
A particular challenge of intercultural training is, admittedly, regarding all behaviours in a cultural framework - however, don’t forget your business partner’s autonomy and their diversity as a person. Learning stereotypical ways of thinking and behaving presents a paradox to reducing cultural prejudices - here it requires experienced service providers who know exactly how to convey their expertise in a vivid and easy to grasp way, despite this logical fallacy.