This one's for Mr. Pérez

During my senior year in college, us Foreign Business majors were required to take a class called: « international negotiation skills ». On the very first day of class, Professor Pérez* told us that the objective of this course was to learn about different cultures in order to be able to efficiently and successfully negotiate with people from other countries.

By the end of the semester, the extent of our knowledge in « negotiating in different cultures » pretty much consisted of the following priceless information:

> If you set up a business meeting with a Mexican, arrive 2 hours late. Otherwise you'll be early.

> If you do business with a group of Japanese, always speak to the oldest looking guy.

> If you do business with an American, cut the small chit-chat and get straight to business. For Americans, « time is money »

> If you’re talking with a German, avoid the humor. Germans don’t laugh during business talks.

….....

Gee, I wonder how is it that Mexico is not a sitting member on the Executive Board of the UNO, what with clearly having such extensive knowledge on Foreign Diplomacy.

Even though Mr. Pérez lessons were clearly a major (and pathetic) waste of time, throughout my working experiences in France I am often confronted with those little things that make me wonder if what I'm witnessing is not the « French way of doing business » in comparison to the way it’s done elsewhere.

(Disclaimer: What follows is all purely based on my own personal experience and in no way a generalisation of the French business methods)

For instance, one of the traits that I’ve been told is highly appealing in résumés is the ability to be « concise and analytical ». This means that if you’re able to go straight to the point and not beat around the bush, it's considered a positive and valuable skill in the working world. On the whole, I agree with this (we’ve all attended a BS meeting at least once in our life, right?).

However, I can’t shake the notion that when selling an idea or standing your ground in a negotiation you should provide your counterpart with as much necessary information as possible in order to let him see the « wider picture ». This is how I see contracts being negotiated in the US and in the UK and yet, here, I often get the feeling that the exact opposite is the norm.

Take this case for example: I recall a few months ago reading a monthly report sent by a British manager to his French boss. The mail was detailed but not overwhelming in description, contained praise and recrimination where called for; mentioned areas for improvement and pinpointed subjects that needed to be addressed before they became problems. I remember thinking « Wow! What a great report! It provides all the necessary information and yet remains simple and clear for someone who’s not on hand locally ».

Later that day the said report came up during a conversation I witnessed and the French boss complained about the document being a « roman » (novel) instead of a short and concise business update. The French boss later forwarded that same report to his own Boss after having deleted 75% of the text, keeping only the strictly essential of the message (past events, new developments, next steps) all in a series of concise and brief bullet points.

I realize this is highly subjective and depends more on the final recipient than with business methods in general, but I couldn’t help feeling that somewhere in that example was a very subtle indication of the differences in how corporate information is conveyed from one country to the other.

Another example of different business methods I usually notice is how the first person is used in communicating.

In English we tend to use phrases like « I strongly feel… », « it is my perception…. » or « based on my experience on this subject…. » We implicate ourselves in our messages.

In French the person « on » is often used to do exactly… the opposite it seems, Un-implicate. Now, « on » is a tricky person, I’ve since learned. It can mean WE and it can mean WE(without me). And it's not always easy to tell which is being used.

For instance if you say:

« à l’époque on avait décidé…. »

It can mean :

« at the time we had decided »

but it can also mean :

« at the time we had decided, but I wasn't there physically to confirm »

Why is this important? You guessed it. Thanks to « on » you can easily twist the meaning to your advantage depending on the situation. Even I admit that ever since I learned of this great tool, I use it unabashedly, and I gotta tell you, it comes in handy.

But translating it back to English can be a bitch.

Come to think of it, French translated to English can often play such a big part in misunderstandings and lead to failed negotiations simply because the language comes off as being petulant, authoritative and downright mean, which is usually not the intention.

For example let’s say you want to say « We’d highly appreciate you sign the contracts before Friday » to a client that has just awarded you a 2 million € deal.

In French, it is perfectly acceptable to say: « Merci de bien vouloir signer les contrats avant vendredi »

But in English it is often translated as: « Thanks to sign contracts by Friday »

I can understand a person on the other side of the Atlantic going « man! What pompous jerks those French people are! »

Here's another example: say you need your British branch to participate in a highly sensitive conference call with one of your clients who’s pretty pissed off at you.

In English you would probably say something like: « we ask that you please join us during the call with our client »

In French you would write: « veuillez vous joindre à nous lors de cette conférence téléphonique avec le client ».

Which in French is a polite and respectful request, but which is often translated to English as: « you will join us for this call with the client »….

That’s the thing, often words like « veuillez » and « merci de », two very common business lingo terms, blur the fine line between a polite invitation and a stern, almost mean, request.

And so I often end up asking myself how much of these things influence a foreigner’s perception of the French negotiation skills? And how much is simply a wrong conception of the language more than a question of different ways of handling business from one culture to another?

Or, in other words, what would Mr. Pérez have said of the French in his negotiation skills class?

Sadly, I’m guessing it would have probably gone something like this:

- When negotiating with a Frenchman, always remember to tell your counterpart to go to hell. And don’t forget to put it in bullet points.


Fned.

* For privacy purposes, the name has been changed.


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