Double meaning: Improve relationships with cultural intelligence

Law firms are facing a paradox: we live in a time of globalisation and near instantaneous communication, where English dominates the world of business as the only real lingua franca. Our world is one of email, social media and lightning speed communication that demand an equally fast reaction. Our interconnectedness has grown and our access to other cultures has increased, but our understanding of them still lags behind. The domination of English has fooled us into the dangerous assumption that, just because we speak the same language, we are making ourselves understood.

In law firms around the world, Brits, Americans, Japanese, Germans, Koreans, French and Brazilians meet, negotiate, collaborate, conference and communicate with each other and with clients, all in English. At the same time, lawyers are finding that, despite speaking the same language as their clients and colleagues, they are often failing to make themselves understood through their manners, business practices, work culture and values. Those same Brits, Americans, Italians, Australians, Dutch, Scandinavians and South Americans may assume mutual understanding when in fact they are misinterpreting, misunderstanding and misconstruing what is being communicated.

Bridging this gap – turning assumption into understanding – requires cultural intelligence – a vast subject whose value is becoming increasingly recognised as important.

Why cultural intelligence?

At its heart, cultural intelligence is about the individual’s ability to work effectively and efficiently across different cultural boundaries. For lawyers, this means practicing law, advising clients and communicating with colleagues in a culturally aware way.

Cultural intelligence is the ability to understand others and adapt one’s own behaviour accordingly. This does not just mean knowing which hand to use during a business meal in India or knowing to bow rather than shake hands in Japan. Cultural intelligence goes much deeper than that and strikes at the heart of what it means ?to practice law and do business throughout the world.

Some law firms are already embracing what clients and business schools have recognised as a crucial skill and are teaching cultural intelligence as part of their core curriculums. Most law firms are not, but if you genuinely believe that excellence and differentiation are critical to client relationships, you cannot continue to ignore its importance. So, how can you build cultural intelligence into your firm’s day-to-day business?

Best practice tips

Best practice in the field of cultural intelligence is a four-step process.

Step 1: Raise awareness levels

Create a client-centric culture within your practice and raise lawyer awareness of ?the impact of cultural intelligence on ?client relationships.

Often, this is best done through a combination of training and the sharing of success stories (and mistakes made) by client relationship partners in their communications with international clients. It should also be done by sharing information between offices about ?client-specific styles of doing business ?as well as the business, economic, ?political and legal environments ?prevailing in different jurisdictions.

Raising awareness also involves increasing self awareness and appreciating how others view one’s own culture. Lawyers need to understand not only that different cultures may operate entirely differently and require a service tailored to their needs, but also how people from other cultures perceive them, especially when those perceptions may be based on inaccurate stereotypes.

Step 2: Understand comparative ?legal cultures

Increase your lawyers’ understanding of different legal systems and their impact ?on business thinking.

This means appreciating the differences between common (reflexive) law and civil (legicentric) law approaches. It also involves drilling down and examining how contracts, concepts such as consideration, reasonableness, bad and good faith, materiality, best efforts and even the very concept of truth are subject to cultural variation. It also means looking at cultural differences in areas such as corporate governance, bribery, conflicts and compliance.

In litigation and arbitration, lawyers also need to understand that common law discovery and cross examination still remain a complete mystery to many clients and lawyers who have worked only in civil law jurisdictions.

Step 3: Learn about different ?national cultures

Through learning and coaching, lawyers should develop an understanding of typical cultural norms or ‘cultural averages’ typically found in different jurisdictions and how these impact on client behaviour.

It is only with this understanding that lawyers can begin to avoid the all-too-common mistake of jumping to false conclusions by misreading and misinterpreting their client’s way of operating.

Some of the cultural norms that lawyers working internationally will come up against on a daily basis include the following.

Time management, deadlines ?and meetings

In the UK, the US, Scandinavia and Germany, for example, time is viewed in a very linear fashion. Time is money. Time is a limited commodity. Deadlines are respected. Plans are adhered to. Punctuality is essential. People in these cultures usually divide their day into self-contained time slots and do not like to be interrupted when performing prescheduled tasks.

Other cultures perceive time much more as a guideline that can be bent to meet specific needs. Time is more fluid in, for example, Africa, the Middle East, Southern Europe and parts of Asia. Deadlines are less sacred. Meetings may be interrupted for other business. People from these cultures will be happy with doing several things at once or splitting their attention between several people ?or tasks. Interruptions are viewed as a part of life, rather than as a sign of disinterest or disrespect.

Communication styles

For North Americans and the Dutch, for example, the message is unequivocally in the words on the email, or in what is being said verbally. Communication is both direct and explicit. People say what they mean. ?In these low-context cultures (those in which context is not particularly important), words are the principal way in which meaning is conveyed – there is little ?room for subtext or ambiguity.

In high-context cultures, however, the unsaid can be just as important as what is said. Words may not be the primary carriers of meaning. In these cultures, lawyers must be able to decode the overall cultural context and read between the lines to reveal true meaning and understanding. In these cultures, even common words such ‘yes’, for example, may not imply agreement, ‘impossible’ may be an invitation to convince and being ‘sorry’ may not imply a personal apology.

While Japan is typically thought of as a quintessentially high-context culture, so too is Britain. Our extensive use of understatement, indirectness, self-deprecation and idiomatic expressions, along with our tendency to default to humour to diffuse conflict or alleviate tension, are often baffling and sometimes maddening to foreigners.

Power and hierarchy

There are marked cultural variations in the way in which power and hierarchy are perceived and dealt with.

Some cultures have very flat and relatively democratic and egalitarian management structures, while others are much more authoritarian in their approach to management, with highly centralised power and a tendency to defer to authority. French or Japanese executives would not typically challenge their managers or contradict them openly, but this perhaps would not seem like an issue to their Scandinavian or Dutch colleagues.

Power and hierarchy often have a direct impact on the degree to which information is shared within client organisations. Power in some cultures is closely linked to information that individuals keep to themselves and only share on a ‘need to know’ basis. Depending on whom in the client organisation a law firm is dealing with, this may have an important bearing on the firm’s ability to obtain clear instructions.

Uncertainty avoidance and risk

There are also critical cultural differences in attitudes towards risk and uncertainty. Typically, a US client (coming from a culture where failure is not necessarily stigmatised) will be tolerant of uncertainty and more risk inclined than a Japanese or Russian one. Change is viewed very differently across different cultures – positive for some and threatening for others, while failure may be utterly acceptable or have strong negative connotations.

When these factors come into play in the workplace, they also have an enormous and direct effect on the speed of decision making and the perceived reception of initiatives and ideas.

The French, for example, will typically not feel comfortable with reaching a decision without extensive upfront analysis and an intellectual grasp of the issue at hand. Their US or British counterparts, on the other hand, may well take a pragmatic approach with only 80 per cent of the facts to hand. In cultures with a tolerance of uncertainly, clients are much more likely to challenge and ‘intellectually test’ the advice of their own lawyers than in other cultures.

Negotiation styles

Negotiation styles also vary across cultures from the discussion-style approach typical in the US or UK to the more emotive and expressive engagement style used in France, Italy or South America.

In much of Northern Europe, conflict in negotiations will be dealt with by internalising emotions, confronting problems factually and elaborating arguments, while maintaining a calm non-confrontational manner. Trust and emotional control often go hand-in-hand in these cultures.

In engagement-orientated cultures, opinions and feelings of frustration will be openly expressed, voices will be raised and anger will surface where necessary. In these cultures, these types of behaviours, rather than being seen as a sign of weakness, provide a clear demonstration of the seriousness and importance of the subject matter under discussion.

The use of silence can also be important in some countries. For example, it is used very effectively in Finland in negotiations with their US counterparts, who can find its use extremely disconcerting.

The power of relationships

Cultures may differ in the weight attached to rules as opposed to relationships and the relative importance of the group as opposed to the individual.

In many cultures, for example in much of Asia and South America, people tend to be collectivist. In-groups, family ties and pre-existing business relationships are strong. Trust is relationship driven. In more individualist cultures, such as the US or Germany, in-groups or family ties will be less well developed. Often, lawyers from these cultures will fail to get the balance right between product and relationship and overly prioritise technical ability to the detriment of investing in the client at a holistic level.

Lawyers from individualist cultures need, for example to understand that a long lunch in the middle of a meeting or negotiation is not time wasted but, rather, provides an invaluable opportunity to forge a relationship. Indeed the time spent over the meal may well speed up the meeting and enable the parties to reach an agreement more quickly.

These lessons are particularly important for law firms in the area of business development. Many firms, particularly in the US and the UK, still grossly underestimate the time that they need to invest in client relationships before work will be entrusted to them.

Step 4: Create cultural strategies and adapting behaviour

Armed with a combination of cultural knowledge and understanding, along with a good dose of self awareness about how one’s own culture is perceived, create tailored strategies to deal more effectively with clients from different countries.

By anticipating the likely behaviour of a Brazilian, Korean, French or Russian client, by understanding how important personal relationship building and trust is to, say, an African or Middle Eastern client and, above all else, by never assuming understanding, lawyers can strategise in advance and adapt their styles to run multicultural meetings more effectively. They can better handle meetings or difficult negotiations, write emails or provide legal opinions that can be understood by non-native English speakers and consciously (and without being asked) explain legal concepts in ways that will help their clients in their decision-making process.

Every conference call, meeting, email and fee negotiation with a client therefore needs to be underpinned by a clear cultural strategy. Assuming ‘sameness’ and believing that all sector clients are the same is the most dangerous trap that lawyers can fall into.

Adapting ways of working to fit cultural needs does not imply a loss of cultural identity – culturally-intelligent best practice simply means working smarter.

Communicating with clients

Cultural intelligence is not a soft skill. It is an indispensable one that lies at the very core of the client relationship.

Law firms should be training a generation of lawyers who understand the importance of not just being technically excellent but who can act as cultural guides to clients and colleagues.

The reality is that each of us is, inescapably, wired for culture. Lawyers are no different to their clients in this regard and they certainly do not benefit from any professional exemption.

The job of lawyers is to advise, speak, listen, write, analyse problems, assess risks, negotiate and, above all else, communicate with their clients and colleagues. They cannot possibly hope to do this if they do not understand the people with whom they are working.

Without cultural intelligence, legal advice can often be misunderstood. It may be presented in a form or style that is confusing or unfamiliar to the recipient. Legal concepts may be lost in translation, critical points may be missed and negotiations may stall or fail.

Without cultural intelligence, time may also be wasted, costs and write-offs may increase, deadlines may be missed and the client relationship may be fundamentally mismanaged. If lawyers do not take the time to figure out their client’s assumptions and understandings, expectations may not be met, stress will increase, and ultimately, revenues will suffer.

We no longer live in a cultural vacuum. There are now more people in the world who speak English as a second language than there are native English speakers. Native English speakers therefore need to learn to speak more slowly and avoid using jargon and idiomatic expressions that could confuse others. They need to write more clearly and succinctly. They need to explain more fully and not assume that they are being understood.

Above all else, lawyers, in whichever jurisdictions they operate, should keep in mind the words of Austrian-American psychologist Paul Wazlawick: “What is true is not what I say but what the other person understands”. That statement is truer today than it has ever been.

Peter Alfandary is senior guest lecturer at European business school ESCP Europe (www.pra-crosscultural.com)