Transparency and politeness both sound like universally positive qualities in business. Yet what happens when one professional culture interprets honesty as respect – while another interprets politeness as respect?

In this podcast episode, we’re exploring the conflict between more direct Central European business communication and the more diplomatically coded communication frequently encountered in English-speaking professional environments.

We’re examining why a German professional may interpret polite language as insincere, why a North-American professional may Dutch directness as rude and harsh, and why the words ‘perhaps’, ‘quite’, ‘a little’ or ‘I would suggest’ may carry considerably more force than their literal wording appears to contain.

We’re exploring the research behind low-context communication, direct and indirect negative feedback, politeness, face-saving, understatement, upgraders, downgraders and intercultural conflict.

More importantly, we’re discussing what happens when these differences enter business, leadership, negotiations, meetings, employees’ performance management and everyday workplace communication.

Because the real challenge in intercultural business communication is not just literally understanding what another person says. It is understanding what the other person believes they have communicated.

Goddess, I would love to hear your perspective. Have you experienced a situation where directness was interpreted as rudeness, or where politeness prevented an important message from being understood? E-mail your opinion and, if applicable, your personal experience to coucou.goddess@gmail.com.

REFERENCES

• Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Goffman, E. (1955) ‘On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction’, Psychiatry, 18(3), pp. 213–231.

• Hall, E.T. (1976) Beyond Culture. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.

• House, J. (1989) ‘Politeness in English and German: The functions of please and bitte’, in Blum-Kulka, S., House, J. and Kasper, G. (eds.) Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex, pp. 96–119.

• Kádár, D.Z. and Haugh, M. (2013) Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Meyer, E. (2014) The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. New York: PublicAffairs.

• Meyer, E. (2015) ‘Giving negative feedback across cultures’, INSEAD Knowledge, September 16th, 2015.

• Meyer, E. (2015) ‘The most productive ways to disagree across cultures’, INSEAD Knowledge, April 6th, 2015.

• Murphy, M.L. (2025) ‘Separated by a common im/politeness marker: please in American and British web-based English’, English Language & Linguistics.