We have truly entered into the age of the global market place. Your best customers may now reside, not on the other side of the continent, but across the ocean on the other side of the world! Distance is one obstacle, but language and culture are usually even more difficult to overcome. This increases the complexity of preparing for and executing successful negotiations. With that in mind, here are some tips and best practices for getting ready to negotiate cross-culturally.
For American companies, there may be surprising obstacles even when negotiating with English-speaking partners in Great Britain, Canada and Australia, but once you move out of the English-speaking world, things can become complicated very quickly. Typically, the challenges to be addressed include:
It will always be true that your negotiation will be based on Interests, Issues, Positions and Bargaining, no matter what culture you are negotiating in. However, the way these things are perceived and expressed may be totally different from anything that you have encountered before. It is important to recognize that the Culture is NOT about making you into me or my way vs. your way. It is about adjustment of my expectations and ultimately connecting to the other side in ways that make sense to them, in order to help me better relate to the other side and create value for them in terms they appreciate and understand.
For this reason, it is crucial to spend a lot of time researching the standards, values, traditions and tendencies of the culture you will be working in. Doing this will enable you to:
People are the same everywhere – or NOT
This is one of the most commonly made “killer assumptions” we make when negotiating across cultures. Expressions such as “common sense,” “common courtesy,” and ‘common decency” are all too familiar to us. When taking a closer look at what it actually means to each of us, we come to realize that what is “common” is ultimately defined by the culture within which such “commonality” is observed. People do share some basic common needs, but how they go about fulfilling those needs could be very different. In fact, taking it further, we recognize that our NEEDS may the same, but the way we perceive them, express them, and meet them or not.
Here is a simple example. In a negotiation, Americans tend to want to get right down to business, hammer out an agreement, and move on. If it can all be done over the phone or with a series of emails, all the better. However, in many Asian countries, it may take several meetings, including elaborate dinners with lots of toasts, and even occasional visits home to meet the other side’s family, before they are ready to openly address anything related to business. For Americans it is all about the deal. In other cultures, it is all about the relationship. They want to get to know you first, and they want you to get to know them as a precondition to doing business.
There are countless examples like this we could cite, and everything changes according to the culture in which you are negotiating. The only option you have is to not only become an expert in the process of negotiation, but to become an expert on the culture, too. There are many good resources for helping you do this; just make sure you do it.
In negotiations, we talk a lot about finding ways to expand the size of the pie and creating more options. Learning how to relate to the culture may not exactly be the same as expanding the pie, but it may be the key to making the pie taste a lot better for everyone. Understanding where your opponents come from has never hurt your options at a negotiating table, nor has it ever implied giving up your own views. It simply means that you will have more alternatives to consider and provide for more opportunities for immediate negotiation. We may not WIN every international negotiation we are a part of, but we can definitely learn from them!
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