[Music] a negotiation can be over before it even gets started let's pretend that I'm an entrepreneur raising capital from three different funds operating under three different cultural norms Camille thanks so much for your time today in Shanghai in China and Japan it's customary to make a two-handed business card exchange Frank really appreciate the time today in Mumbai in India it's customary to make make a right-handed only exchange and you should have your University or college prominently displayed on the card as education is so highly regarded Ellen thanks so much for your time today in San
Francisco instead of giving you a business card I've decided to conserve paper and I'll be texting you my contact information you're cool with that right yeah well this is a slight exaggeration many firms in the US are shifting away from the traditional business card exchange practice nonetheless at this point in the meeting a small blunder can have a negative effect throughout the rest of the negotiation Grace Deepa Felix and I are going to explore the strategies and crosscultural negotiations while we're all pretty familiar with the concepts of IQ and EQ what about CQ cultural intelligence
CQ can be understanding when to dress more formally for a presentation and when to wear a hoodie but encompasses so much more than that pre-negotiation ation formalities such as handshakes the exchange of business cards and simple greetings can be culturally independent and the most compelling argument in a negotiation may become null and void if you've lacked the awareness up front the keys to navigating these negotiations are pretty consistent across cultures a strong argument a willingness to capitulate on certain aspects and desire to reach a conclusion and while finding an out come and cultural differences are
not mutually exclusive having the awareness and preparedness will ultimately put you in a better position to succeed there also exists a there versus here fallacy people wrongfully assume I have no plans of raising money or doing business in Russia anytime soon but what happens when a Russia investor comes to you what happens when the there comes here cultural context is independent of geography and it's very important to be aware of that our goal today is to provide you with three basic tactics and strategies that will give you the confidence to help navigate through these crosscultural
negotiations I'm now going to pass off to Deepa who will talk about the nuances of disagreement thank you man disagreement is inevitable in any negotiation let's take a quick peek and a short video sorry he's wired in is he yes how about now you're still wiring in call security you issued 24 million new shares of stock you were told that if new investors came how much your shares diluted how much were his lots of emotion right this could happen to any of us and what makes this more complicated in a crosscultural context is the fact
that the way disagreements are expressed varies significantly from one culture to another researchers see that there are two essential characteris itics of how disagreements are expressed one is how confrontation is expressed and the second is how emotions are expressed so for example if you're in a negotiation with your Russian counterpart there's a strong likelihood that he or she will disagree with pretty much every single thing you see because from their perspective that is an open invitation to have an animated and Lively discussion on the other hand if you're in a negotiation with a Mexican counterpart
you may want to soften the disagreement so that you don't run the risk of completely shutting down the conversation so if you have any plans of co-organizing a trip to Waka with haime and you're negotiating the terms and the itary you may want to approach it along the lines of H I'm not sure I quite understand this or could you explain this a little bit more researchers also say that negotiators have an assumption which is a fallacy that emotional expressiveness goes hand inand with confrontation and that's not always the case your German counterpart may be
very open to confrontation but only so long as it's expressed calmly and factually on the other hand your Indian counterpart may be polite and soft when it comes to confrontation but will wear their emotions on their sleeve so now that we're aware of these different cultural nuances and contexts how can we be prepared for a crosscultural negotiation linguistic experts say that the key is to analyze verbal cues and they specifically highlight two types of cues what they call upgraders and downgraders upgraders are words like absolutely and completely that help you strengthen the disagreement whereas downgraders
are words like maybe just a little bit that help you soften the disagreement so the key really is to make sure that you analyze and understand these bble cues within their cultural context so that you're able to adapt your reaction and your response accordingly that will help you be more successful and more effective in establishing that early connection with your negotiator and with that I'm going to hand it over to Grace who's going to walk us through the implication of the words yes and no in cross culture do you want to watch another video yes
no am I right in thinking there is nobody else in this house no then there is someone else in this house no sorry I said no meaning yes no meaning yes in the United Kingdom where I grew up Yes means yes and no means no so this is where things get confusing for me in some countries such as Egypt Yes actually means no or maybe or I'll think about it or I really want to do what you want but it's absolutely not possible and I hope you can tell that by my body language a verbal
yes might be seen as more polite or pleasing and there's no expectation that yes is binding in parallel there are some cultures um where no no might actually mean yes or let's discuss this further way wa let's say you're doing a negotiation with a French person let's say Claire and she responds to a question with no no no no no she might actually mean yes she just wants to debate it a bit further so if yes means no and no means yes don't ask yes or no questions instead of saying can you do this for
me say by when will you be able to do this for me and if you just have to to ask that yes or no question make sure to analyze tone and body language for example yes is very different than yes now that we've discussed the difficulties of yes and no questions I'm going to hand it over to Felix who's going to discuss problems with putting things in writing thank you Grace So Deepa and Grace immers you into the challenges of what a negotiation has in terms of of oral communication but what about what we put
in writing and whether we have to put it into writing you know I don't do contracts but what you do have is my word and it's stronger than oak so in the countries on the left hand side of the screen especially in Africa and Asia a word this is stronger than oak but in other countries the one you have on the right hand side hand side of the screen we like to put things into bright so let's take the US for instance guys here in the US you like Clarity and repetition as a way to
make sure that the other party understands what you were negotiating about so toas if you go back to Guatemala that I'm sure you will be doing that and you leave the procurement division at your family business don't be surprised when you negotiate with your American suppliers and they send you an email with a list of things you have agreed on and even ask you to reply back to them by saying yes I agree with that they do that and you guys do that and we do it in western cultures because we want to protect ourselves
against potential eventualities and because we want to build trust with a counterpart that we don't necessarily know as opposed to that in Africa in countries like Nigeria and for those of you who want to go into Africa direct there business people will take an email or a contract as a sign of disrespect and also as a as a sign of lack of trust the want you to be flexible be flexible around two things first to take a contract an oral contract as a right contract and secondly to take an oral contract as something that is
flexible and can change over time because circumstances change so the third piece of advice for you and how we want you to be prepared is actually to ask your counterpart to prepare the first tra of the contract so that they feel more comfortable with it and remember one thing in some countries around the world a contract is not binding at all so by now you are probably a little bit overwhelmed by all the advice the countries the references the friends that we have from France from different countries we want you to remember four things the
first one is you have to analyze the verbal cues and adapt your reaction to the emotion you are perceiving from the other from the other party second thing is avoid just and no questions as great said and third thing is please ask the other party to try the first strap of the of the contract if you have to do so so that they feel more more comfortable with it but if we want you to remember something is the aps framework be aware of the differences be prepared for those differences so that you can be more
successful next time you are negotiating in a different culture thank you very much and now we'll be happy to take any questions you may have
