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Interview: Cross-cultural business

Sion: Working with people from different cultures can shine a spotlight on our own culture and make us realize how our communication styles and preferences are shaped by the society we grew up in. In the following interview, our correspondent Melita Cameron-Wood spoke to Carlos Omaña Vargas, a Colombian software developer in the insurance sector. He has been living in Germany for 12 years and working with a German team for the past ten years. Ready? Let’s begin.

Melita: The first thing I wanted to ask you was what are the main things that you’ve noticed over the years working with Germans that are different to things you’d experienced back home in Colombia?

Carlos: The first thing that caught my attention was the type of communication. In Colombia, you don’t get that much in detail [non-standard] and you try to be always as polite as possible. And Germans go straight to the point and that could be a bit tough or rude for Colombians.

I have an example, too. I have [non-standard] to ask for a phone, because my team was in [an]other city. I was working and living in Frankfurt, but they were in Magdeburg. And in Colombia, you have to take care when you ask for those things because you are asking your boss. And hierarchies there are more visible. And I -remember that I was writing the email asking for the phone, and I was doing that in German, but I think the way I wrote it, it was too Colombian, or like the Spanish, like, “I wish you a good day. I was wondering if there is any possibility to have blah, blah...” I wrote [a] super long thing, and then at the end, I just asked to have a phone. And the answer of my boss at that time was really funny. He just told me, like, “OK, Carlos. You can have it. But could you be more direct? You just have to ask.” And somehow I like that, because I think that makes the whole thing way more efficient.