Navigating Cross-Cultural Partnerships in Business: Finding Balance and Understanding

Everyone knows that cross cultural relationships, no matter the nature, can be tricky. It takes time to understand and adapt to each other’s ways of thinking and doing things. Here’s one small example I often give to people when they ask me about this in regards to my relationship with my Indian husband: at the start of our relationship, he felt like we never ate rice, and I felt like we ate rice all the time. The thing is, it was all about perspective, he was used to having rice for almost every meal of the day, I was used to rice once a month. Or one day, he was working late so I made us each a big loaded sandwich for dinner and brought his to him to his desk. One hour later, he asked me what I felt like for dinner. I looked at him surprisingly saying we already had dinner, and he looked back at me very confused! I reminded him of the sandwich we ate for dinner, but to him, meals had to be hot, a sandwich was just a snack. Or on busy difficult days when we were craving comforting food, he wanted something warm and spicy and I was craving something cheesy, and we’d both end up having to cook our own separate meal. Fast forward to now, we’ve been together for over 10 years, and I love rice, I sometimes crave spicy food, even for breakfast, with a nice cup of hot coffee, and he’s happy with a nice big sandwich for some meals, certainly when we’re back home in Belgium and we get all the delicious spread options! We have found our balance! Now, this is just two people living together and these are all small little differences. However, imagine how much bigger and harder it would be for teams of people from very different cultures working together. That’s a lot trickier!

I am bringing this up because in the last year, I have been a guest speaker on several of our cross-cultural training sessions. These were requested by Indian companies to help their teams who were already working closely on projects with Western companies. I have seen teams that were curious about some of the interactions they have had, some that clearly struggled a bit with the huge difference in communication style and others that seemed completely dejected to the point I just felt really bad for them. None of the issues they had encountered were their fault, they were quite literally the result of misunderstandings due to differences in cultural communication.

While these training sessions are invaluable, I often ponder their timing. Introducing such training early in the partnership between Western and Indian companies would be more beneficial. But what strikes me even more is the one-sided effort. It's primarily Indian companies investing in understanding Western business culture and communication style. This imbalance is surprising since the benefits of a successful cross-cultural partnership are mutual.

So, if your Western organization collaborates with partners in India, China, the Philippines, or any non-Western country, consider the immense value of cross-cultural training. It's not just about avoiding misunderstandings; it's about enriching your business relationships. Such training might seem like a small investment, but its impact on the success of international partnerships is significant. Remember, effective collaboration in today's global business environment requires meeting each other halfway. It's about making an effort to understand, respect, and adapt to different cultural norms and communication styles.