The Asian challenge: Don't lose face

Many companies are developing contacts with Asia. Even technical writers often work with customers or team members there. If employees have little understanding of cultural customs and conventions, a project is threatened to fail, possibly due to very trivial reasons.

Text by Noemi Happ

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The Asian challenge: Don't lose face

Image: Robert Churchill/ 123rf.com

The collaboration with Asians often requires a high level of intercultural skills. Do the Chinese always say “yes” and mean “no”? And what’s behind the smile of the Japanese? The art of intercultural communication lies in ensuring that neither you nor the partner loses face.

Team work in the international context can hold a number of challenges that wouldn’t be considered even remotely possible in a purely German environment. Now, if two cultures such as the German and an Asian culture meet at a business level and have to overcome completely different challenges due to their history, but also due to their present situation, then it is pretty obvious that the communication between two partners influenced by such different cultures must proceed in a completely different manner in order to be successful. Otherwise colleagues might consider the planning rather as a matter of formality, or ...