The unfortunate affair of Luis Suarez at Liverpool has highlighted the perils of not understanding cultural differences. It seems surprising that football clubs don’t have cultural awareness training given the multi-national nature of their squads. But leaving aside the rarefied atmosphere of top flight football, even small businesses need to be aware of potential issues if they are to do business abroad. We tend to forget that the influence of US culture on us has made us far less formal than many other nationalities. While we naturally tend to use first names, the French, for example, will expect to use surnames and the formal ‘vous’ form of verbs until a relationship is well established. Likewise, unless speaking to a very young woman, it is safer to use ‘Madame’ rather than ‘Mademoiselle’ even if she isn’t married. But cross the border into Italy and we have almost the opposite situation where the use of ‘Signorina’ may be viewed more favourably than ‘Signora’. Move north into Germany and start a meeting with small talk about your journey or other trivia and you’ll get some strange looks.
Understanding the people with whom we are hoping to do business is vital. Of course, that applies equally whether they reside at home or abroad.
