Last week, we organized an international commercial contract negotiation between some of my International Business Law students and a group of students from the Toyo University in Tokyo that I taught while I was on my fellowship there. The nature of the case was not too complicated (and something that my former IBL students would probably recognize), but what made this negotiation process difficult was the language barrier and our shared ethnocentrism.
Not only do we all tend to perceive the world through our own experiences and lenses, but when we are unable to clearly articulate our interests and views to the other party, the negotiation process stalls (or derails). One obvious remedy to this problem would be to further develop our language skills, but above and beyond that, there are psychological barriers and issues of conflicting values that are more difficult to overcome. For example, Japanese students generally tend to be more reserved and deferential, even in adversarial situations, because that is how they are taught to be, which may place them in a disadvantageous position in terms of the negotiation. The UM students, on the other hand, may have to learn to read between the lines better and think about what the Japanese party is trying to say by paying attention to what they are not saying. After all, the Japanese are taught from very early on how to “read the air” or as we would say, “read the room”.
In the end, there are “no one size fits all” solutions to any of these cross-cultural communication issues. The only thing we can really do is to practice a lot and gain plenty of experiences working with diverse teams from different cultures, backgrounds, and values. Not only does doing so harness our ability to adapt and to think quickly on our feet, but it also allows us to reflect on our own ethnocentrism and our blind spots.
Special thanks to our participants: Emma Evangelisti, Gabriel Sielaff, Vincent Durán Lagunas, Laetitia Nzungize Teta, Lucie Valachová, Julia Czajkowska, Tamaki Uchida, Asumi Kikuchi, Nao Yamashita, Oozora Seyon, and Urara Tanaka!