If you greet a Japanese visitor to your office with a lot of friendly eye contact, there’s a good chance he or she will end up feeling threatened rather than welcomed. Likewise, if you crack a couple of jokes to a German business person to break the ice, you may in fact break his or her confidence in the professionalism of your company.
”As businesses operate on an increasingly global level, it’s more important than ever to treat visitors from overseas in culturally appropriate ways,” says Angelena Boden, a language and cultural trainer and author of The Cultural Gaffes Pocketbook. ”Get it right and you show some understanding of their needs, as well as respect for their culture, which in turn can help create good business relationships. Get it wrong and you risk losing the business relationship altogether.”
Even such apparently universal gestures as a nod for ”yes” and shake of the head for ”no” have their exceptions. In Bulgaria and parts of Greece, Turkey and Iran, ”yes” is signalled by a lateral head sway easily confused with the head-shake. Muddling such gestures may not just confuse, but deeply offend overseas colleagues.
”It’s particularly important that secretarial staff gain a basic understanding of cultural differences in communication because they’re often the first people to meet foreign visitors to a company — and first impressions count,” says Boden.
A common mistake, she says, is talking loudly and slowly to all foreigners. ”This just sounds patronising. A simple ‘hello’ or ‘welcome to our company’ in their own tongue goes a long way, although you might want to make it clear that your use of their language stops there.”
Make sure you find out where the visitor is from first, however. An easy blunder is muddling neighbouring countries. And the Dutch, for instance, can become prickly if you assume they are from Germany. Similarly, Canadians don’t like being mistaken for Americans and New Zealanders don’t like being confused with Australians.
Punctuality needs some consideration too, says John Mole, a trainer in global business culture and author of Mind Your Manners: Managing Business Cultures in the New Global Europe. ”In Britain it is classic to keep people waiting 10 or 15 minutes, but northern Europeans would expect an 11am meeting to start at 11am prompt,” he explains. At the other end of the spectrum are business people from the Middle East who would often be prepared for a 2pm meeting to begin about 3pm.
Humour is a further issue, says Mole, who explains that in northern Europe and even more so in North America, ”a business relationship is seen as independent from a personal relationship”. He continues: ”It is possible to walk into the office of a complete stranger with a proposal and begin to talk business. The further south you go in Europe and the further east you go round the globe, the more important it is to cement social and personal relationships before you can even start to work together.”
Increasingly, British employees are expected to think about appropriate greetings for people within their own country. Employees at Bristol City Council in south-west England were recently told to stop using terms such as ”love” and ”dear” when welcoming the public. Barbara Janke, the council’s Liberal Democrat leader, complained that staff’s attitude to the public was too casual and that they must now start using ”sir” or ”madam”.
With the growing dedication required to getting it right when it comes to greeting strangers at an organisation, many employees in Britain are forgetting their own colleagues, according to research by business supplier Office Smart.
While 92% of employees said that they think politeness at work is vitally important, 40% admitted that their colleagues don’t even say ”good morning”. And 25% complained that their own good morning greetings were simply ignored.
”The survey shows that Britain’s workers aren’t as polite as they should be to one another and 78% feel it damages motivation,” says Elena Neville, marketing director at the firm.
But some people are going the extra mile, according to research, which questioned 1 000 office workers across the United Kingdom and found that more and more now greet each other with a kiss. Mind you, the study also found that 86% said kissing was an inappropriate form of business greeting, with a humble handshake favoured by 58% of respondents.
Will we ever get it right? Boden suspects not, pointing out that it’s not just the Brits who are a mixed bunch when it comes to greetings. ”While many Japanese people would be confused by being greeted with a handshake, many are making attempts to act according to British protocol when in Britain. Ironically, in British organisations where efforts are made to be culturally sensitive to their needs too, you end up with the Japanese going to shake hands and the Brit going to bow.” — Â