You will be able to use cultural knowledge without assuming every individual fits it.
Kai Xin's next meeting is with the Singapore office of a Japanese electronics company. Having read about nemawashi and consensual decisions, she prepares for a slow, indirect meeting: lots of small talk, no numbers in the first session, careful reading of every pause. The procurement manager, Kenji, turns out to have spent ten years working in Sydney. Ten minutes in, he says, "Your price is too high. What can you do on it?"
Her preparation wasn't wrong, exactly. It was a reasonable guess about a culture, applied to a person who didn't fit it. This lesson is about using cultural knowledge without letting it turn into a stereotype.
Frameworks like Erin Meyer's The Culture Map describe tendencies: where the middle of a culture sits on a scale such as direct or indirect feedback, or task-based or relationship-based trust. Meyer's scales show where cultures sit relative to each other, and she is clear that individuals within any culture vary a great deal.
That means any individual can sit anywhere. A Japanese manager can be very direct. An Australian can be very indirect. A Singaporean can be either, and may switch between the two in one afternoon. The cultural pattern tells you what's more likely across a group, and nothing certain about the person in front of you.
Nationality is only one influence on how someone negotiates, and often not the strongest.
Industry has its own culture. Procurement teams in many sectors negotiate in a direct, numbers-first way, wherever they're based. People in creative industries may be informal everywhere. Banking and law have conventions that cross borders.
Company culture matters too. A start-up founded by people from three countries will have its own norms. A long-established family business may be very different from a multinational in the same city, even if the staff share a nationality.
Personal experience matters most of all. Kenji's ten years in Sydney shaped how he works. Someone who studied abroad, or who has spent years working with colleagues from many countries, may switch styles easily or may have settled on one of their own.
Singapore makes this especially plain. A single meeting in a Singapore office might include people with Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian heritage, colleagues from across Asia, Europe and elsewhere, and people who have lived in several countries. Guessing anyone's style from their name or appearance would be unreliable even if it weren't also unfair.
The practical approach is to treat your cultural read as a starting guess and update it from what the person actually does.
Before a meeting, cultural knowledge helps you prepare. It tells you which behaviours to watch for, which mistakes to avoid, and which possibilities to plan for: that decisions might take longer, that a no might be indirect, that a senior person might need to be included. Preparing for those possibilities costs you little.
Once the meeting starts, watch and listen. Notice how quickly the person gets to the point, whether they disagree openly or by hinting, and whether they seem to want small talk or numbers, then adjust to what you see. Kai Xin, hearing Kenji's direct question, can drop her plan for a slow opening and respond directly: "Thanks for being straight with me. Let me explain how we arrived at the price, and then we can look at where there's room."
Notice that some of her preparation still helps. Kenji may be direct in meetings and still need to bring his Japanese headquarters along through a consensual process. Updating your guess doesn't mean throwing it all away. It means keeping the parts the evidence supports.
Before an important cross-cultural negotiation, ask a colleague or contact who knows the culture, and ideally the organisation, to review your plan. They can tell you which of your assumptions are reasonable, which are outdated, and which they'd expect to be wrong for this particular person or company. A former employee, someone in your network who has worked with them, or a colleague from that country can all be useful.
The more specific the question, the better the answer. "Would it be rude to raise price in the first meeting with this company?" gets a more useful answer than "What are Japanese people like in negotiations?"
The activity asks you to write down your assumptions about an upcoming counterpart, and what you'd need to see to know each one is wrong.
Write down your assumptions about an upcoming counterpart and what evidence would tell you each one is wrong.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).