(EMAILWIRE.COM, April 03, 2012 ) London -- Today more cultures work together in business than ever before. Never has it been more important to get savvy with international business culture than now.
Conducting business within an unfamiliar environment can be a potential minefield of professional faux pas and cultural indiscretions. The way business is done can be make or break in any location but can be harder to get right when out of a cultural comfort zone.
It can be easy to make the assumption that the basics of international business culture are the same across the board, but even at this level of interaction there can be significant differences. Take the handshake, for example. In the West this is a much-used way of formally greeting someone and is used abundantly in business. Certainly, if an English businessperson offered a hand to a Japanese businessperson, there would be the handshake that the English person is accustomed to, but if that same English businessman had bowed, as is done in Japan, that all-important first impressionwould have been great, not just good. It can be subtleties such as this that can form the best business relationships across cultures.
ItÂ’s not only important to know about the way other cultures do business, but why they do business that way. As more and more diverse cultural groups work together, there can be conflict with cultural differences and values. The precedents set early on in business meetings and the like, can continue on throughout all organisations. The knock-on effect of this being that all levels involved have a healthy cultural awareness and cross cultural communication is vastly improved.
As always, preparation is key to improving the chances of successfully conducting business across cultures. Reading up on the way business is done in the target culture as well as attendingseminars and training sessions (http://www.culturesmartconsulting.com/business-across-cultures), can provide invaluable information.
What it comes down to is respect. Taking the time to become educated about a culture, to show an interest in another way of working and to be happy to go that extra mile to make a business associate feel comfortable, is crucial to a healthy business relationship.
About CultureSmart! Consulting:
CultureSmart! Consulting offers face to face training for international management skills, cross cultural training, diversity and change management, international business briefings, language training, cross cultural profiling as well as a vast selection of guides for businesses and organisations throughout the world. Comprising a team with solid experience and awareness of how relocation can affect every aspect of life, CultureSmart! Consulting also offers advice, training and webinars on how to handle working in a new country successfully.
