Communication styles and cultural differences

I have to wonder when was the last time I haven't worked with a diverse team. The first thing you have to remember is that all people are individuals and there aren't going to be a whole lot of rules that you can lay out on a culture. I can make some generalizations about cultures, but they tend not to be 100% true.

Girija-

Great to hear that you managed to establish effective communication. Just curious, how long did it take you to get to that point?

Helping people in the US understand indirect communication styles, and that direct communication often does not mesh well with other cultures.

Farouq -

As we were on mission-critical projects we had less time to make issues of diverse culture. It was a highly visible portfolio of projects. To accomplish our project goals we started embracing the differences in a period of 3 to 4 months.

Being located in Russia, we work with the customers from US and some European countries. Moreover, on some projects our development teams collaborate with development teams of our customers (who are in US or Europe). Therefore, we understand that communication can be really tricky when it comes to cross-cultural interaction.

I would note the following differences:

- Russian guys may seem serious and reserved at first, not smiling too much. The belief that certain time is needed to build relationship and trust is common in our country; therefore, it may take some time for them to get more comfortable and behave more casually. US partners, however, often apply informal communication style from the very beginning.

- Partly the reason for the seeming restraint of Russians (as well as other nations who don’t speak the language of doing business as their native language) is that they are not used to communicate in foreign language in their everyday life

- Russians prefer not to discuss family and personal life a lot, they prefer keeping it to themselves. Unlike Russian guys, our US partners love telling about their families and often show their kids’ pics.

We have an article in our blog describing mentality issues one should be aware of when working with Russian provider: https://issart.com/blog/mentality-issues-o...sian-developer/

- One more difference is the perception of certain situations. What is considered unwanted in one culture may be okay in another. For example, let’s take an attitude towards time. As far as I know (and as our partners told based on their experience), being late for a meeting can be okay in Arab and Asian countries, but it is not okay in US, Switzerland and Japan.

- A couple of years ago we have conducted our own research of the main difficulties that Russian IT companies face when working with foreign customers. You may check it here: https://issart.com/blog/what-challenges-do...eign-customers/

One of the findings of this research is that 27% of the surveyed companies experience difficulties with the way to congratulate the customer with this or that occasion. Why? Again, differences in perception: it often unclear how this will be perceived in another culture.

So, in case of cross-cultural communication many aspects should be taken into account. Mastery in this comes only with years of experience.