“I have worked in business development with the clients in the Middle East and would say that their business culture of not wanting to say ‘no’ to a business opportunity out of politeness can be frustrating. There can be a tendency to maintain contact with no intention of purchasing your service until the ‘no’ comes at the 5th/6th call/form of contact.”
“When I arrive to the office in Oman the very first day. The shows of respect were too much, a little bit overwhelming. During the first week I got tired of telling the people not to call me boss, it was embarrassing. After a couple of weeks I gave up, I realized that not doing it was embarrassing them even more.”
“In Oman...Trying to push people, put pressure on them does not work (…) Also the instructions need to be pretty clear and not leaving anything open. This happens especially at the beginning, then little by little you get used to each other way, you start providing the explanations in the way their need and they started to understand how to do things the way you like.”
“Working in the UAE has shown me that due to cultural differences, many of the nationalities here in the region do not have the desire to make decisions, they are following orders without thinking about if, what they are supposed to do, makes sense or not. It’s sometimes difficult for me to understand such behaviour.”
“I was giving introduction training to the company from 8:30AM to 12:30PM. Some of the participants showed up 15 to 30 minutes late, but 3 of them, showed up at 11:30 AM not even apologizing for being late and just joined the training (...) Being on time is not a given for many other cultures.”
“In Saudi Arabia, working with clients staff promising to do some work for tomorrow, god willing (Inch Allah). Driving me mad because I had the feeling they would not take responsibility for the deadline and I also had a good intuition that they would actually NOT be finished with the work.”
“I find working in Iraq incredibly challenging as the culture could not help but be affected by war. They had become a very defensive nation expecting to be taken advantage off. It meant for delicate, compassionate discussion where confidence and trust were the primary aims of initial meetings to help lever relationships and encourage new business opportunities.”
“Iranian people are extremely nice and diplomatic, avoiding conflict and trying to comfort everyone, as opposed to Croatian “Balkan” people in general"