23 Jun The Hidden Communication Risk in Global Teams
Reading Time: 5 minutesBy Daniel Frysh
Global business depends on communication across languages, cultures and expectations. But what sounds clear in one context can land very differently in another.
A team may have leadership in the U.S., product in Europe, engineering in India and customers everywhere. They work across time zones, regions, languages and assumptions. Most of the time, everyone is trying to do the right thing: be clear, show respect and move the business forward.
That doesn’t mean they’re hearing each other the same way.
This is where communication becomes more complicated than most people want it to be. The issue is often not intent, but interpretation. What sounds clear, respectful, direct, confident or aligned in one context may not sound that way in another.
That’s where it starts to matter. Decisions can take longer. Problems may not get raised. A leader may walk out of a meeting thinking everyone agrees, when the room is only being polite.
A Framework Helps. But It Has Limits.
I like Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map because it gives language to something many people experience but don’t always know how to describe. Across cultures, people may approach communication, disagreement, hierarchy, decision-making, trust and time in very different ways.
That’s useful. If you’re working globally, you should have some sense of those patterns. But you have to be careful with it.
A country is not a personality type. “Europe” is not a culture. Even Switzerland is not one thing. There are Swiss German, Swiss French and Swiss Italian cultures and even within those, there are differences by region, company and individual.
So yes, use the map. Learn the patterns. Prepare.
Then remember that the person in front of you is still a person, not a case study.
A framework can help you avoid walking in the dark. But it can also make you lazy if you start treating people as representatives of a culture rather than as people in a room.
The Same Behavior Can Have Very Different Outcomes
One of the first times I became aware of this was not overseas. It was in the U.S.
I was training to be a first responder with the police, and the trainer would explain something. When I understood, I would say, “OK.”
That was how I had been raised. If I had repeated everything back to my parents, they would have thought I was talking back to them. If I had a question, I would ask it. Otherwise, “OK” meant I heard you and I understand.
But in that setting, the expectation was different. What she wanted was more of a summary. Something like, “What I hear you saying is this.”
To me, that felt unnecessary. To her, my “OK” sounded arrogant.
Neither of us was trying to be rude. We were just reading the same behavior through different rules.
That is a small example, but it shows the bigger issue. We often judge communication by our own expectations. If the other person does not meet them, we fill in the story. Maybe they are arrogant. Maybe they are rude. Maybe they are not listening. Maybe they lack confidence.
Sometimes that may be true. Very often, it’s not the whole story.
Direct Is Not Always Clear
The Dutch are a useful example because they are known for being direct, and they will often tell you that themselves.
When I first moved to the Netherlands, I sent a video I was working on to a Dutch friend. He sent back notes by timestamp. At 48 seconds, this did not work. At 1:21, he didn’t like how I handled something.
If you’re not used to that style, it can feel brutal. I knew enough about Dutch communication to understand he was trying to be helpful. He wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings—he was giving me the information directly because, from his point of view, that was the useful thing to do.
But that doesn’t mean directness is automatically clear for everyone.
From one Dutch person to another, it may be very clear. To someone not used to that style, it may come across as criticism. Once that happens, the listener may stop hearing the usefulness of the feedback because they are reacting to how it was delivered.
Feedback intended to improve work can damage trust if it comes across as a personal rebuke. On the other side, feedback that is too softened can fail to create any change at all.
The question isn’t whether directness is good or bad. The question is whether the other person can receive the message in a way that helps projects move forward.
“Yes” Is Not Always Agreement
This is another place where global teams get into trouble.
In some cultures, saying “no” directly is rude. People may say “yes” because they understand what you said, not because they agree or because they can do what you asked.
If you are used to a more direct communication style, that can be maddening. You think, “But they said yes.”
The better question is what the “yes” meant:
Did it mean they would try?
Did it mean they agreed?
Did it mean they didn’t want to embarrass you in the moment?
Those aren’t the same thing.
If a leader doesn’t understand that, they can leave a meeting thinking the team is aligned when it’s not aligned at all. Then deadlines are missed, frustration builds and people start blaming one another for a failure that began as a communication misstep.
In global business, alignment needs to be checked more carefully. A better approach is to ask more specific follow-up questions:
What would make this hard to do?
What would you need from us?
What could get in the way?
What concerns have we not talked about yet?
That’s the difference between hearing agreement and testing whether agreement is real.
Hierarchy Changes What People Will Say
I’ve worked with groups where people were very capable, very smart and very technically strong, but they were not used to speaking directly to authority.
An American leader may say, “I want your opinion,” and genuinely mean it. But the person hearing that may be operating inside a different set of expectations. In their experience, speaking too directly to someone senior may not be safe or appropriate.
The leader thinks they opened the door. The other person is still deciding whether the door is actually open.
That is why leaders have to be careful when they say things like, “My team knows they can challenge me.” Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. The only way to know is to look at what happens when someone does it.
If someone raises a concern and the leader gets defensive, the room learns.
If someone disagrees and the leader listens, asks questions and treats the disagreement as useful, the room learns that too.
People don’t decide whether to trust the invitation based on the invitation. They decide based on the response.
Global Leaders Don’t Need a Script for Every Culture
No one can know everything about every culture. That’s not a realistic goal, and it’s not really the point.
The point is to stop assuming your own communication habits are neutral.
That awareness shows up in small choices: avoiding idioms that may not translate, slowing down when people are working in a second language and checking whether agreement is real.
It also means noticing when hierarchy may be shaping what people are willing to say.
How Speakeasy Helps
Most leaders enter global conversations with communication behaviors that have worked for them before. They know how to lead a meeting, give feedback, ask for input and read the room in familiar contexts.
But in another culture, organization or power dynamic, those same behaviors can be interpreted differently. That’s where communication development matters.
At Speakeasy, we help business professionals examine how they show up in the room through guided reflection, real-time feedback and repeated practice. This process helps them become more aware of the choices they make, how those choices are received and what may need to shift in conversations shaped by different languages, cultures, expectations and assumptions.
In global business, messages can get lost in translation. But the bigger risk is assuming the message landed exactly as intended.