Transcript

You tell a German colleague we should we should grab lunch sometime she opens her calendar Thursday and now you're having lunch on Thursday most people think that the American German communication gap is simple Germans are blunt Americans are polite I think it's more nuance than that and so I wanted to share with you my top five areas that I have noticed in working with Germans about German uh u s uh communication differences. No. 1 would be how are you? in the U S it's a greeting in Germany it's a real question typically you know back I was researching this back in in in the 1930s psychologist Kurt Lewin a German very famous social psychologist who had moved to America noticed something that Americans let almost anyone into the outer layers of their lives uh but Germans kept that outer layer a little bit more close but once you're in with a German you're kind of really in uh so this gets back to the old uh famous cultural comparison where Americans are peaches and Germans are coconuts uh you know hard shell but once you get through the hard shell it's softer inside until that that lunch invitation I mentioned earlier to to you might have been small talking to her it was a real offer. No. 2 criticism Americans say um exactly what they mean until the news is bad and then then comes the softeners right? You know maybe tweak this a Little Germans kind of go the other way. You know, this is completely wrong. Uh, uh, so, so, so they're, they're very direct in terms of, um, criticism because it's more efficient and it's more honest, really, honestly. Um, No. 3 is praise. Um, I, good work is expected in Germany. So why celebrate it? Why, you don't need to celebrate something that's just part of your job. Whereas Americans, you know, might call, call a decent spreadsheet amazing, right? Um, Germans often discount American praise and Americans can panic when a German boss just says good, something like that, or, you know, does, doesn't give the praise they're waiting for. No. 4, making your case. Americans here in this case are more of the blunt ones. We sort of, Americans tend to leave with the bottom line. Um, when they're making a case, making an argument, Germans want the why before the what, the logic, right? So to, to a German, what I've noticed is that skipping the reasoning looks like you almost skip the work. And to an American, starting with a reasoning sounds like you're kind of stalling, like get to the point. And No. 5 is disagreement. A German colleague might take your idea apart in a meeting and then sort of cheerfully join you for lunch. Attacking idea and idea and attacking a person are two separate things. And in Americans, I notice often we'll hear that same debate is sort of like a fight. And maybe even spend the afternoon worrying about the relationship. So those were the things that I've noticed. Um, if you are American and work with Germans, or if you're German and work with Americans, or if you're neither but work with both Americans and or Germans, I would love to see what you think in the comments about these differences.