You’ve packed up your things and booked the flight. You’ve read every Western expat blog and book you could find and grilled colleagues. You’re mindful that some of your lifestyle and behaviours may need to shift in your adopted Gulf home.
You’re excited about exploring a dynamic region and its culture. But you’re still unsure of what to expect, especially in a business environment.
While learning as much as you can about Gulf business etiquette before you arrive is helpful, as with any big change, culture shock can hit when you least anticipate it. To thrive at work in the UAE, you need to go beyond book learning and amp up your emotional intelligence and communication skills.
Here are three important cultural norms these skills can help you navigate.
It is often a revelation for new arrivals to realise how diverse the working population of the Gulf is. You are just as likely to be doing business with expats from Europe, Asia, Africa or the Americas as you are with a Gulf local — sometimes all in the same deal!
Doing business in such a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural environment may seem daunting. However keep in mind one of the key customer expectations in the region: building a strong rapport with your customer before moving towards the business at hand is critical.
As Dean Foster confirms, Gulf customers put a premium on knowing and feeling comfortable with people before they decide whether they will do business or take on risk with them. For example, trying to push a meeting along too quickly could sabotage your goals and label you as rude in an environment that highly values courtesy.
In reality, the conversation, your behaviour and your reactions during meetings are extremely meaningful for the customer — who has likely already weighed the relative merits of your proposal.
As business is conducted on the basis of relationships built over time, do not take for granted that one deal with a customer will automatically lead to others. Pay the same amount of attention to every new piece of business. Allow sufficient time for a higher level of client servicing (especially face-to-face meetings) and to complete business formalities.
There may be a longer sales cycle and extended delivery or launch time frames, especially for deals involving more complex services.
Customers will often expect you to anticipate their needs rather than telling you directly what their requirements are. They may not be able to share business metrics to help you plan or internal issues such as budgetary constraints or staff shortages.
If the customer is unhappy with your work, you may not hear any “bad news” talked about openly. Use your emotional intelligence skills to work through grey areas and to come to a mutual understanding.
If you are responsible for formal documentation such as contracts, take time to familiarise yourself with any jurisdictional or cultural impacts on language: for example, if you are required to comply with Sharia or Islamic finance rules you should not use terms that imply usury such as interest.
A big part of managing culture shock is becoming aware that even when you are speaking the same language, words do not always mean the same thing to people. This may seem obvious — but consider the following example.
Jules Davidoff researched the Namibian Himba tribe’s language, finding that there also was no word for blue — or recognition of it as a separate colour. However, the tribe had more than ten words to distinguish infinitesimally different shades of green, a vital skill in their environment.
Use your communication skills to go beyond everyday language and understand nuance when conducting business in a culture outside your own. What is your customer really saying (or just as importantly, not saying)? What does it mean in a local context?
Have you truly understood each other? As linguistics researcher Guy Deutscher suggests, “culture shapes language and language, culture (and) affects how we think and perceive the world.”
The writer is the founder & CEO of HNI Training & Coaching.
