Reading : The Hidden Challenge of Cross-Border Negotiations + How to say 'This is crap' in different cultures
This will be my only blogpost for the week since I couldn't take part in the last negotiation session because of my 'projet tutoré'.
I must say that it took me several tries to read the first article, since it is quite long and full of examples that have not much to do with one another. In the end, what I think is the most important in this article is the emphasis put on the diversity of the situations a negotiator can face, which equals the diversity of negotiators they can face in the other party. As a negotiator, you have to be well-prepared, and as a team too : each negotiator has to have their goals, their positions reestablished so that there is no mistake made in the negotiations. You need to have a strong knowledge of the opposite party's culture if they are from another country. You also need to know what type of negotiators you will be meeting with : are they government officials ? members of an organization with really close ties to the country's government ? the CEO of a company and a team of selected advisors ? etc., etc. It is crucial to bear in mind what is at stake for the other party so that you can guess if other 'forces' influence the deal or not. To sum up quickly, you have to prepare for a long time and to accept the fact that you might not think about everything, and that part of the process is taking the risk of seeing everything shut off because of cultural differences that you might have underestimated.
The second article was way more interesting to me, maybe because of the lighter tone adopted by the author. The examples given, since they are on a human-to-human scale (and not a company-to-government-to-another-company scale, like in the previous article), are much more understandable and are ones that can be kept in mind much more easily. What is said about the French way of giving feedback was surprising to me at first, but then it made sense. It is true that, even when not in a managerial context, we tend to criticize a lot and we are not keen on paying compliments. I don't know if it is a good way of doing things or not, but I am happy that I am conscious of it, even though I am not in a working environment yet. It will still be useful to me, for example when doing a group project with foreign students !
I must say that it took me several tries to read the first article, since it is quite long and full of examples that have not much to do with one another. In the end, what I think is the most important in this article is the emphasis put on the diversity of the situations a negotiator can face, which equals the diversity of negotiators they can face in the other party. As a negotiator, you have to be well-prepared, and as a team too : each negotiator has to have their goals, their positions reestablished so that there is no mistake made in the negotiations. You need to have a strong knowledge of the opposite party's culture if they are from another country. You also need to know what type of negotiators you will be meeting with : are they government officials ? members of an organization with really close ties to the country's government ? the CEO of a company and a team of selected advisors ? etc., etc. It is crucial to bear in mind what is at stake for the other party so that you can guess if other 'forces' influence the deal or not. To sum up quickly, you have to prepare for a long time and to accept the fact that you might not think about everything, and that part of the process is taking the risk of seeing everything shut off because of cultural differences that you might have underestimated.
The second article was way more interesting to me, maybe because of the lighter tone adopted by the author. The examples given, since they are on a human-to-human scale (and not a company-to-government-to-another-company scale, like in the previous article), are much more understandable and are ones that can be kept in mind much more easily. What is said about the French way of giving feedback was surprising to me at first, but then it made sense. It is true that, even when not in a managerial context, we tend to criticize a lot and we are not keen on paying compliments. I don't know if it is a good way of doing things or not, but I am happy that I am conscious of it, even though I am not in a working environment yet. It will still be useful to me, for example when doing a group project with foreign students !
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