Rules of Engagement

In the hierarchical cultures of Asian countries, guests and superiors are never corrected in meetings or teleconferences. Even if you asked, "Can we move ahead with this plan?" you might hear "yes," but that simply means you're senior to them and they can't push back, Crotts says.

In India, a "no" might sound like, "I'll try to get to it on Sunday," Schafer says. "Many people in Asia think they're preserving the relationship by giving us what they think is a soft no," she says. What can cause more confusion is that workers in India aren't culturally compelled to close the loop, because in their minds, they never committed to a time frame.

With so much room for misinterpretation, it's important to play it straight with both speech and body language. Keep your vocabulary basic, and avoid jokes, Rosen cautions, as they never translate. Don't use a lot of hand gestures -- a thumb's up and the OK sign are obscene in places like Brazil, Australia, Spain and the Middle East.

"Since gestures have different meanings in different parts of the world, they can cause confusion," says Terri Morrison, president of Getting Through Customs , which provides books and seminars for international travelers. This is particularly true in "high context" cultures such as Japan, France and many Arab countries, where important information is transmitted in nonverbal or indirect ways, in comparison with low-context cultures such as the U.S., U.K. and Germany, where most information is transmitted verbally.

It may seem basic, but you should also speak slowly, since many in the audience may not speak English as their primary language. "We don't think of ourselves as having an accent, but when I ask people in India what is hard about communicating with Americans, they say accents," Schafer says.

Confrontation is also treated very differently throughout the world. Whereas workers in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Australia, Scandinavia and Israel are comfortable vocalizing contrary opinions, even in the presence of superiors, Asian workers are less so.

"When Americans work with India, China or another Asian country, they make the assumption that people will speak up in a meeting or conference call -- and they will if they're in a position of power," Schafer says. "But if they're not, our questions may be met with silence." For that reason, problematic issues should be discussed privately in one-on-one conversations. "Conference calls are good for disseminating information but not for discussions of what is not working," Schafer says.

The situation is quite different in Israel. Meetings there can involve lots of shouting, but "it's nothing personal -- once it's over, everyone's friends again," Huber says.

And while Americans have no problem jumping into a business discussion as soon as a meeting begins, it's considered insulting in places like the Far East to begin negotiations before socializing and forming a relationship, even if that takes days, Kubilus says. Similarly, in collectivist cultures such as those of Spain, Italy and Latin America, it's important to build a relationship first and let that dictate where business decisions lead, Davidson says. "Individualistic cultures like in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany are more interested in getting the task done and building the relationship later," he says.

But unlike in the U.S., where relationship-building may happen as much in the office as outside it, Danback has found that in Europe, business offices are not considered social settings. In countries such as France, where people work strict 37.5-hour workweeks versus 50 hours or more in the U.S., "there's a time to socialize and a time not to," he says. For instance, lunchtime and right after work are more acceptable times for building relationships.

Cowboy vs. Engineer

Another area that can lead to mistrust is in the different approaches toward software development. Americans tend to take an iterative approach toward programming, which is part of what Rosen calls a "cowboy culture," while Europeans, particularly German and Swiss programmers, tend to be more rigorous and process-oriented and manage to a spec that doesn't change.

"They can get tremendously frustrated that we don't have details worked out ahead of time, and we might think they've buried themselves in minutiae," Danback says. His firm has paired the engineering-oriented staffers with the more creative and iterative people.

Another approach is to compromise, Rosen says, and follow a formal process with standards and guidelines but with fewer steps than the Europeans might ordinarily incorporate.

These types of differences can even exist in the way people view meetings. In some cultures, people come to meetings prepared to discuss their opinions, having reviewed all materials and developed calculated positions, Davidson says. In other cultures, people expect meetings to be more spontaneous. "Setting expectations before the meeting regarding preparation and the desired outcomes can improve the productivity of the meeting and minimize the cultural friction that can occur," he says.

But the make-or-break factor for effective global teams is how well they collaborate. "You have to stop making assumptions that people understand what you mean and get some verification back to be sure they interpreted it correctly," Rosen says. Many people use collaboration tools such as WikiWeb from WikiWeb Inc. or Microsoft Corp.'s NetMeeting or Groove.

Schafer encourages lots of one-on-one communication in which people exchange instant messages while they are talking on the phone, since people are often better at reading a foreign language than listening to it.

And, of course, nothing substitutes for personal get-togethers. At Sunterra, Kubulis is kicking off a major project to migrate the company's European offices to a new enterprise system by getting U.S. process owners together with their European counterparts to create empathy between the two groups. "If I don't spend that time upfront, when I get to implementation, training and user acceptance, I'll be in trouble," he says.

It will also awaken people to the reality of cultural differences, because one of the biggest enemies of a well-oiled global project team is denial. "I often find people who say there are no cultural issues on their global teams, but I think it's because they don't associate the problems that crop up with cultural differences," Carmel says.

Indeed, says Crotts, "if you ever think you have the diversity journey figured out, you soon find there's another hill to climb or plateau to reach."