If I had just one guilty pleasure over the 35 years I’ve been traveling internationally for business, I’d have to say it’s been turning on the television in my foreign hotel room to a local channel, and observe the nuances and subtleties of culture that often go by unnoticed.
That’s how I recently caught a few minutes of the very popular British television show, Dragon’s Den, which was the inspiration for America’s own Shark Tank. I watched as the British investors were about to say if they had interest in the company they just heard about.
“I think this is going to be a punt for me”, one investor says. Just then the camera switches to show the reaction of what I assume will be a dismayed entrepreneur. But to my surprise, that wasn’t the case. This was a man who looked as if he had won the lottery!
That’s how I came to learn the word “punt” to the British has the opposite meaning as it does to us Americans. But it makes sense when you think about it. After all, we derive our meaning of the word from something that as popular as it might be to us, is not the least but universal–American football. And when we punt, we give up on something, at least for the time being. But turns out when you punt in rugby it takes on a very different connotation; Punting means take the risk, and go for it. And that is precisely what the entrepreneur on Dragon’s Den heard his new investor tell him.
The playwright George Bernard Shaw once said the U.S. and the U.K. are two countries divided by a common language. In fact, it’s been estimated that there are over 4000 English words used in the U.S. that aren’t defined in British English, and almost the same number of British words that aren’t defined in U.S. English. And in a few rare instances some words may actually take on opposite meanings, such as punt.
It’s not just words that confuse and cause misunderstandings. There are tons of English language phrases that don’t translate between the Americans and British. Primarily because they are a breeding ground for capturing cultural and historical sentiments that are lost on the same language speaking group from another location.
A few months ago I ran into a client I hadn’t seen for several years. Larry had been the Chief Operating Officer, and was always willing to take action when cultural differences got in the way of his company’s performance.
I coached his VP of Engineering who was struggling to keep the Bangalore-based development team on an aggressive schedule. I helped his Israeli expat employees to how important the concept of saving face was to their Chinese colleagues. And when a declining U.S. sales forecast could be signaling that his domestic sales team had “fallen behind the times”, I explained how modify their sales tactics when encountering foreign-born decision-makers.
Larry would often tell his others how getting out in front those cultural situations was his best insurance that his organization could succeed in today’s multicultural business environment.
So when Larry told me his company would soon be acquiring a foreign-based company and its entire overseas workforce, I naturally looked forward to helping his company through all the workforce integration issues that lied ahead. Yet despite our previous accomplishments, Larry was convinced that cultural differences weren’t going to be an issue this time – “They’re located in the U.K. so how different could they possibly be?”, he’d ask.
Nine months later, I’m back in his office at his request to discuss the problems they’re having with – you guessed it, the acquisition. Larry starts by saying that at first there were a few expected “minor misunderstandings”. But it wasn’t long before the misunderstanding were no longer minor. Ultimately there came the growing realization that priorities and commitments weren’t as aligned as previously thought. And now it had gotten to where mutual mistrust was endemic.
We discussed what could be done to improve communication and rebuild trust, but also knew what we were now up against. “We may have already missed the market”, Larry surmised. Unfortunately, he was right. In less than a year from acquiring the British company, it was sold off at a substantial loss.
Now that it’s been a few years since I’ve seen him, I just have to ask Larry something I’ve been wanting to know for quite some time. What could I have said to convince him that the differences between us and the British were enough to wreak havoc on any organization. But of all the ways I imagined Larry answering, I did not expect to hear this, “To be honest? I don’t think there was anything you could have said.”
In hopes that you’ve adequately forewarned, and never find yourself in a similar situation to Larry, here’s list of some of the most common mistakes made by American executives doing business in in the U.K.
- “We both speak English, so I don’t anticipate they’ll be any problems at all.”
In a few rare instances some words may actually take on opposite meanings. I recall the time a British colleague of mine was driving me to the Heathrow Airport to catch a flight home. Traffic was miserable and it was starting to look as though I was going to miss my flight. As noticed that the next exit was for Central London, so I thought instead of fighting the traffic I’d spend the weekend relaxing and reschedule my flight home. So I said, “Hey Keith, I don’t think we’re going to make the flight. Maybe we should just punt”. To which Keith responded, “Sure, if that’s what you like to do”, at which point he gunned the gas pedal, weaved in and out between cars, and drove down the shoulder of the road as needed.
That’s when I learned that the opposite meaning of the word punt. In the U.S., to punt is to give up – at least for the time being, as when football players kick the ball when it is 4th down. But to the British, rugby defines what punt means – which is, no matter what the situation– give it all you got!
- “I’ll Show them my enthusiasm and passion. Those have always been my strengths in managing anyone.”
Lyndon Johnson once said “What convinces in conviction.” While it’s a truism in the U.S., it’s hardly a universally accepted concept. And to most American’s surprise, the U.K. is one of those world cultures where your American enthusiasm may not serve you as well as you might think.
Consider this from the opposite perspective, and you may be able to see more readily how this could happen. Imagine that your British country manager has just arrived from the U.K. to give a presentation to the executive staff on a new project proposal. At first you give her the benefit of the doubt thinking maybe the time zone differences have something to do with. But then you and the others listening to her presentation notice that she doesn’t sound confident in what she’s presenting. It’s as if she not doubts her own facts, and is skeptical about her own conclusion. Later on you overhear other saying, “Her presentation really lacked confidence – if she doesn’t believe in his forecast, why should we?”
- “They don’t seem to understand how critical this is. Maybe we need to be more direct”
Directness isn’t always your best course of action in the U.K. There’s often a far more effective manner to communicate disagreement, strong criticism, and even disdain. The Brit’s (The English more specifically) have turned “harshness through irony and sardonic statement” into an art form. Try learning about “British Coded Speech”, which is used to allude disappointment, frustration, or being upset
Once you’ve opened your mind to the notion that language alone does don’t dictate the similarities or differences between two groups of people, you’ll find working across cultures won’t be as daunting. And then you’ll find, as the British would say, Bob’s your uncle.