Working across cultures

Working across cultures isn’t mainly about knowing the rules of each country. It’s about noticing your own defaults and leaving room for other people’s.

I’ve worked with teams and candidates in Italy, Portugal and well beyond, often all at once. Cross-cultural engagement has become one of the skills I rely on most, in recruiting and in research.

Defaults are invisible until they clash

Everyone carries assumptions about how work should go: how direct feedback should be, what a deadline really means, how much small talk comes before business, who speaks first in a meeting. None of these are right or wrong. They only become a problem when people assume theirs is universal.

Where it shows up in people work

• Interviews. Self-promotion that sounds confident in one culture can sound boastful in another. Modesty can be mistaken for lack of ambition.
• Feedback. A gentle hint may go unnoticed by someone used to direct feedback, while blunt comments can feel harsh to others.
• Communication style. Some people say yes to mean “I heard you”, not “I agree”.
• Language. Working in a second or third language takes extra effort, and it can hide real expertise.

What helps

I try to make expectations explicit: what feedback will look like, how decisions get made, what “urgent” means. In interviews, structured questions and clear criteria reduce the risk of rewarding a familiar style over actual ability. Most of all, curiosity helps. Asking “how do you usually approach this?” opens more doors than assuming.

Diversity is the point

Different working styles can create friction, but they also bring better ideas and wider networks. The goal isn’t for everyone to work the same way. It’s for different ways of working to fit together.

Cultural awareness starts with one question: what am I taking for granted here?