23 FASCINATING DIAGRAMS REVEAL HOW TO NEGOTIATE WITH PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD

JENNA GOUDREAU AND GUS LUBIN

Business Insider

You can't expect negotiations with the French to be like negotiations with Americans, and the same holds true for every culture around the world.

British linguist Richard D. Lewis charted communication patterns as well as leadership styles and cultural identities in his book, "When Cultures Collide," which is now in a third edition. His organization offers classes in cross-cultural communication for clients like Unilever and BMW.

Although cultural generalizations can be overly reductive, Lewis, who speaks 10 languages, insists it can be done fairly. "Determining national characteristics is treading a minefield of inaccurate assessment and surprising exception. There is, however, such a thing as a national norm," he writes.

Scroll down to see Lewis' insights on negotiating with people around the world.

AMERICANS lay their cards on the table and resolve disagreements quickly with one or both sides making concessions.

CANADIANS are inclined to seek harmony but are similar to Americans in their directness.

PEOPLE IN THE UK tend to avoid confrontation in an understated, mannered, and humorous style that can be either powerful or inefficient.

GERMANS rely on logic but "tend to amass more evidence and labor their points more than either the British or the French."

When meeting with THE FRENCH, be prepared for a vigorous, logical debate.

ITALIANS "regard their languages as instruments of eloquence" and take a verbose, flexible approach to negotiations.

Like Italians, SPANISH will "pull out every stop if need be to achieve greater expressiveness."

Among the Nordic countries, SWEDES often have the most wide-ranging discussions.

FINNS tend to value concision.

Most NORWEGIANS fall somewhere in between Swedes and Finns.

THE SWISS tend to be straightforward, nonaggressive negotiators. They obtain concessions by expressing confidence in the quality and value of their goods and services.

HUNGARIANS value eloquence over logic and are unafraid to talk over each other.

BULGARIANS may take a circuitous approach to negotiations before seeking a mutually beneficial resolution, which will often get screwed up by bureaucracy.

POLES often have a communication style that is "enigmatic, ranging from a matter-of-fact pragmatic style to a wordy, sentimental, romantic approach to any given subject."

THE DUTCH are focused on facts and figures but "are also great talkers and rarely make final decisions without a long 'Dutch' debate, sometimes approaching the danger zone of over-analysis."

THE CHINESE tend to be more direct than the Japanese and some other East Asians. However, meetings are principally for information gathering, with the real decisions made elsewhere.

People IN HONG KONG negotiate much more briskly to achieve quick results.

THE INDIAN English "excel in ambiguity, and such things as truth and appearances are often subject to negotiation."

AUSTRALIANS tend to have a loose and frank conversational style.

SINGAPOREANS generally take time to build a relationship, after which they can be shrewd negotiators.

KOREANS tend to be energetic conversationalists who seek to close deals quickly, occasionally stretching the truth.

INDONESIANS tend to be very deferential conversationalists, sometimes to the point of ambiguity.

ISRAELIS tend to proceed logically on most issues but emotionally on some.

THESE 8 SCALES REVEAL EVERYTHING YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DIFFERENT CULTURES

Japan is the opposite of America when it comes to communication.

Many people, perhaps especially Americans, underestimate how differently people do things in other countries.

Examples and insights for avoiding this can be found in "The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business," a 2014 bestseller by INSEAD professor Erin Meyer (also check out those global communication diagrams from Richard Lewis).

Meyer claims you can improve relationships by considering where you and international partners fall on each of these scales:

• Communicating: explicit vs. implicit.
• Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback.
• Persuading: deductive vs. inductive.
• Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical.
• Deciding: consensual vs. top down.
• Trusting: task vs. relationship.
• Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoid confrontation.
• Scheduling: structured vs. flexible.

Communicating

Americans are the most explicit or low-context culture there is (low-context meaning their conversation assumes relatively little intuitive understanding). This is not surprising for a young country composed of immigrants that prides itself on straight-talking.

Japan and other East Asian countries represent the other extreme.

Meyer offers strategies for negotiating these differences, but the most basic solution, as with all scales discussed in the book, is simply to be aware. Thus Americans in Japan should pay attention to what's not being said; while Japanese in America should brace themselves for direct language.

Evaluating

Americans may be very explicit communicators, but they are in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to giving negative feedback — as anyone who as been to an American school knows.

Israelis, Russians, and Dutch are among the most direct when it comes to negative feedback.

Japanese are among the most indirect.

Persuading

Some cultures, notably the French and Italians, tend toward deductive arguments, focusing on theories and complex concepts before presenting a fact, statement, or opinion.

Others, notably Anglo-Saxon cultures, tend toward inductive arguments, starting with focusing first on practical application before moving to theory.

This trait shows up in everything from how people give presentations or lead meetings to how they write emails.

Leading

"In Denmark, it is understood that the managing director is one of the guys, just two small steps up from the janitor," a Danish executive told Meyer. This represents one extreme in attitudes toward leadership.

On the other side of the spectrum in countries like Japan and Korea, however, the ideal boss should stand far above the workers at the top of a hierarchy.

America's outlook on leadership falls somewhere in the middle.

Deciding

How organizations make decisions relates closely to how they view leadership, but with some important differences.

Notably, while Japan has a very hierarchical leadership system, it has a very consensual decision-making system. This is the famous ringi system, which involves building consensus at a lower level before bringing a proposal to a higher level, thus enabling broad corporate consensus.

Trusting

In some cultures, notably America, people don't worry so much about trusting each other because they trust their legal system to enforce contracts, and so business negotiations focus on what's practical.

In others, including many emerging market economies but also to a lesser extent Western Europe, personal relationships are much more important, in part because people don't trust their legal system to enforce contracts.

Disagreeing

Some cultures embrace confrontation while others avoid it. This scale looks a lot like the scale showing the directness of negative feedback, though with some differences, such as Sweden being further to the left (direct) on negative feedback and further to the right (avoiding confrontation) on disagreeing.

Scheduling

That different cultures treat time differently is one of the most common observations for anyone working or even traveling abroad. On one extreme you've got the exceedingly precise Germans and Swiss; Americans fall relatively close to this end of the spectrum; Western Europeans and Latin Americans tend to be more flexible; Africa, the Middle East, and India are extremely flexible.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-culture-map-8-scales-for-work-2015-1#ixzz3ZO09teCO

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