Wow, you’re soaring like an eagle through this course and just like that, you’re onto Chapter 3.

Today you will learn about the cultural sensitivities you need to account for when doing business with other cultures. There may have been moments in your life when you felt as though things were going well for you, whether you were working in a team or with a potential client and all of a sudden things just go wrong.  The relationship sours or the deal falls off the table and you just can’t figure out why. Often people overlook culture as a reason for this since most of us aren’t even aware that cultural differences exist. You simply think, ‘we act the same, we do the same, therefore we must be the same, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Each and every person has their own culture that affects how they feel and relate to people and certain situations, essentially it is an invisible puppet master that can wreak havoc if we do not take the due time to research and understand different cultural beliefs and behaviours of another person.

In the last lesson, you learnt about correct behaviours in a meeting, in this chapter you will learn that some behaviours may need to change according to the culture of the person you are doing business with. Research is everything when doing business with other cultures.

This chapter will help you:

• Close a deal due to culturally appropriate behaviour.
• Ensure that your teams get along due to a better understanding of people’s motivators and what behaviours are perceived as unacceptable or rude.
• Prepare yourself for interacting with foreign clients and their preferred way of doing business.
• Understand how your past behaviour has affected your present deals.

In this chapter, you will learn that research into the cultures of the people you are working with will have an extremely positive impact on your interactions.

Once you have finished this lesson you may feel curious about different cultures and what motivates them and what differences there are between yours and other’s cultures. If you do feel this way, take some time to research behaviours related to the cultures you work with. You may be very surprised by what you find.

Let’s light this chapter up. Fly eagle fly!