The diagrams have no legend as to how they work. This seems like BS.
Also, small talk is missing from german discussion. It is important to note that bosses initiate and set the time limit on that, though.
Tangentially related: Musk claimed in a tweet that Business Insider is not a real news publication. Seems like a business publication..but a lot of fark and fluff. Is Musk's view justified ?
I don’t know about the musk comment but they had one of the worst takes of the pandemic a few months ago about return to office, that seemed to include made up gen Z personas, like Jessica the 25 year old software engineer, who loves feeling the heat of her coworker’s bodies.
> Seems like a business publication..but a lot of fark and fluff.
To be fair, I'd be surprised if anyone at BI sees this as a "real" article. Like, it's more of an equivalent of a cartoon in a newspaper or a meme – couple of funny diagrams to get some easy clicks.
If you want to get an accurate view, I think you'd need to look at the base rate (like, are all articles empty fluff?).
Alternatively, I could imagine a two-pronged model when the fluff-clicks are funding the "real" journalism. If so, I'd check if the deeper articles are substantially higher quality – I think it's unlikely, but I might be wrong.
What's the logic for choosing these countries? Where is Japan or South America? So many similar EU countries and they leave out Japan - where negotiations are likely incredibly different.
This is a content farm advertisement for presumably more complete works. The fascination with Japan here is always bizarre. Anyways, they left out most of the Middle East and Africa while ignoring the norms of specific industries and organizations. Reductive cultural distillation based on specific anecdotes is the entire game. Frankly, we should be happy for 'cultures' not present in this rubbish.
I'm confident they left that material in the cited reference. It might even be a major section since Japan is such a large market and there exists an extensive corpus of English business literature about Japan. It is because of that oft-described trade that I'm surprised anyone would want more of that reduced to the murky framework described here. Worth repeating, it's better to be absent to this playbill of characters
There is even a legal phrase for that in Germany in the context of procurement by tender : “bekannt und bewährt”. Meaning that the receiving party is especially trustworthy since one has a previous ( business ) relationship.
Cross-cultural business communications is a fascinating experience. I’m often tasked with reviewing emails to our Japanese counterparts or clients. Among other things I’ve picked up is that the American mode of expressing disagreement is blunt and comes across to the Japanese as questioning the relationship. I’ve had good experience with the “disagreement sandwich.” Start by reaffirming the shared purpose, then state the disagreement clearly (you don’t have to be oblique), and then put the disagreement in context to show it’s not directed to the foundation of the relationship. I’m sure there is a more culturally appropriate way of doing this (I’m winging it) but it seems to get better results than blowing things up like a howitzer which is the American default.
Utterly bizarre. What's "Word base"? What does the Y-axis represent? What are the shaded areas?
These are either real diagrams that have been stripped of their legends and so rendered meaningless, or they are Arnell-Pepsi time-cube nonsense that never meant anything in the first place.
Wasn't Business Insider a respected publication? What the hell is going on? Am I awake right now?
It seems like some product of how quickly and loudly people are talking, and how many people are talking at once. Maybe call it the “heat” or “wattage” of the conversation.
My impression is that it is "degree of agreement". I.e., there are two lines with arrows in each of the diagrams (except the swedish). Those could represent the progress of the two respective delegations: If the lines get closer to each other, mutual agreement and/or shared understanding is growing, if the lines move away from each other, disagreement is growing.
It's complete guesswork though and might be completely wrong.
By that logic, the Swedish delegation would spend a lot of time just discussing with itself.
I'm also not sure what the "diamond" patterns in some diagrams are supposed to mean. Both delegations switching up their respective viewpoints like in an old bugs bunny cartoon?
These seem like national stereotypes turned into nonsensical diagrams: The Spanish are romantic, Americans are blunt and angry, Canadians are friendly Americans, and half the Asian countries are sneaky or deceptive.
I also find it weird that Indians are referred to as "English Indians". Maybe the book is better, but this looks like lazy stereotypes dressed up for a profit
"English Indians" received a heading entirely divorced from the diagram and describes deception as with poetic mysticism. Are they absent from the UK diagram?
This is not about negotiation styles, this is one colonial lens interpreting a narrow set of observed interactions. The author(s) are more or less sitting in meetings at specific companies doodling lil racist cartoons about the attendees in their notes.
There are a lot of things wrong with this article, but I don’t think a failure to engage with actually-global markets is one of them. They cover Hong Kong separately from China; they cover Indonesia; they even cover Singapore.
The set of countries covered here is basically “the set of countries most manufacturing bigcorps care about expanding into by partnering with local manufacturing partners.” The only ones missing re: modern sensibilities would be Vietnam and Mexico.
"People in the UK tend to avoid confrontation in an understated, mannered, and humorous style that can be either powerful or inefficient."
Enter Brexit.
All jokes aside, trying to alter your communication patterns based on these diagrams will probably lead to poor results. A tool of good communicators is being able to assess situations and find paths towards empathy and collaboration. Bad communicators are rigid in their style and unyielding, which leads to friction and misunderstanding.
The expressive/confrontational diagram is particularly good IMO. For the cultures where I have some experience, it seems reasonably accurate. It's a way to temper one's reactions to others' behavior that might not mean what you think it does based on your own culture. Of course, nothing as complex as conversation or negotiation can ever be reduced to a formula, but it never hurts to have a bit of a calibration guide at first. You'll develop your own experience later.
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