Question

Imagine that you are the representative of a Chinese food company, and you're hoping to procure a new ingredient for several of your products from a German company. A representative from the German company is flying in to meet with you.

How will you prepare for the meeting to overcome the potential cultural barriers in negotiation?

Answer 1

Here, let me imagine that being a representative of a Chinese food company, I will be procuring a new ingredient for several of my products from a German company. Further, one representative from the German company is flying into meet with me, here, following are the ways I should be prepared for the meeting to overcome the potential cultural barriers in negotiation, these are as stated below:

• First thing, here, I should do that is here performing research about the information of that person’s culture. Here, I could be aware of that person’s culture, customs, and rituals. Through this approach, it will help many ways during business negotiation as I can avoid various embarrassing moments, eliminated cultural barriers and keeping more emphasis on improving efficiency of business negotiation meeting.
• The next important thing is that we must avoid over reliance on the cultural knowledge that I have grabbed through my research. I must avoid stereotype effect. I must not judge anyone just based on knowing the cultural part of their country. Instead, I should understand and observe that person’s negotiating behavior, his/her training, experience, technical knowledge level and personality. I should appreciate if he/she shares any knowledge with me.
• Overcoming cultural barriers could be one option, another thing can be done like we should build bridges across cultures, and we can find cultural similarities and make fun on it.
• We can also understand the border context on working for business negotiations. Here, we can build Negotiation plans and we can perform risk assessment, we can be much aware about business norms, community rules related to other countries. Further, we must our stress down in managing cross cultural business negotiations.