The Secret to Cross-Cultural Negotiations - Harvard Business Review

To read the full Harvard Business Review article, please click here.

Negotiating across cultures is a high-stakes dance, and misunderstanding the rhythm can cost you the deal. 

In a world where global deals are the norm, many professionals believe they’re one book away from mastering cross-cultural negotiations. But what if we’ve been looking in the wrong direction all along? What if success isn’t about mastering cultural checklists, but about decoding people?

This is the provocative premise behind a brilliant Harvard Business Review piece by negotiation experts Horacio Falcão and Thomas Wiegelmann. Drawing from five decades of combined practice and research, they offer four powerful principles to navigate international deals, not by assuming who’s sitting across the table, but by truly understanding them.

Rule #1: Negotiate with the Person, Not the Culture

Culture matters, but it’s not enough.

Imagine you’re preparing to meet a Japanese executive. You expect indirectness, formality, and slow trust-building. Instead, she arrives with a confident handshake, an American accent, and a startup mindset shaped in Silicon Valley.

This is the point: culture is not a template. It’s a background layer. The person in front of you may be shaped by many influences - education, career, values, life experiences - that override cultural norms.

In high-stakes negotiations, relying on cultural assumptions leads to lazy thinking. Worse, it creates blind spots and unconscious stereotypes. You risk either overcompensating or offending, when what you really need is to observe, listen, and adapt to the individual.

Try this instead: Start with curiosity. Ask how they like to work, how decisions are made, what they value most in a deal. Let them reveal how they operate, rather than guessing based on their nationality.

Rule #2: Identify Your Counterpart’s Intentions

All negotiations should begin with the question, “Does my counterpart want to work with me or against me?”

Imagine someone who drags out discussions, avoids commitments, and stays ambiguous. At first, you might think they’re just being careful or culturally cautious.

But take the example of a Singaporean executive dealing with a Swedish counterpart. He knew that Swedes prefer clarity and structure. So he intentionally keeps things vague, knowing it would make the other side uncomfortable. Eventually, the Swedish negotiator starts conceding, not because they make strategic sense, but just to move the deal forward and regain a sense of control.

Now zoom out: that’s not a cultural difference. That’s a strategic manipulation (a subtle one, one might argue). The ambiguity wasn’t a coincidence. It was a calculated tactic designed to wear the other person down.

So how do you protect yourself? Make your own intentions clear, early and often. Say what you’re aiming for, explain your logic, and invite them to do the same. Win-win negotiators usually reciprocate. Win-lose negotiators won’t. That’s your clue.

The best way to gauge your counterpart’s intentions is to make your own explicit, because this typically encourages reciprocal behavior.

Rule #3: Don’t Adapt to Rituals, Co-Create New Ones

Take two teams: one from Switzerland, the other from Spain. They’re entering a long negotiation that requires regular meetings.

Aware of their wide cultural differences - different communication styles, different comfort levels with structure -

they decide to build a shared roadmap. Instead of forcing one side to adapt to the other, they write a short document, outlining five positive behaviors they want to see in each other.

At the start of every meeting, each person highlights one of those behaviors they noticed from the other side. They use it to build trust and course-correct as needed. Over time, this ritual becomes their foundation.

Why does this matter? When you adapt blindly to another culture’s norms, you give up control. And when you force others to adapt to yours, you put them at a disadvantage. Neither approach is sustainable.

What to do instead: Co-create your rules of engagement. Be explicit. Decide together how you’ll communicate, give feedback, resolve tension. Rituals don’t have to be traditional, they just need to be shared.

Rule #4: Use Preference Gaps, Not Power Gaps

You’ve probably heard this story before: two sisters fight over an orange. Their mother splits it in half. Fair, right? But one sister eats the fruit and throws away the peel, while the other uses the peel for baking, and throws away the fruit. Both walk away with only half of what they needed.

Now apply that to negotiation. As we’ve seen, win-lose negotiators try to leverage power, often using cultural differences as a way to improve their position or conceal predatory behavior. But in win-win negotiations, each side leverages preferences.

In most cross-border deals, people want similar outcomes: profit, stability, recognition. The differences are not so much what negotiators want but how much each of those things matters relative to one another. One negotiator may value “saving face”; the other, speed. Those aren’t obstacles. They’re leverage points.

Smart negotiators look for these differences. If your counterpart values face-saving, and you value speed, trade one for the other. Offer them public recognition in exchange for faster timelines. If you care about long-term loyalty and they care about upfront fees, build the structure accordingly.

Final Word: It’s Not Culture. It’s Character.

Even when you do everything right - signal intent, co-create rituals, leverage differences - things may still go south.

If they do, keep this in mind: the problem isn’t cultural misalignment. It’s personal agenda. Someone chose a win-lose game. And that’s on them.

To read the full Harvard Business Review article, please click here.