The thing I am going to write about is only one of many things you can learn by working with people of different backgrounds, cultures and areas of expertise. It's not technical insights, hard skills or "How does Let It Go from Frozen sound in your language?"; today, we talk about different forms and formats of communication. Everyone keeps repeating that "Communication is vital" - but how exactly?
The example situation I want to bring up happened during a weekly catch-up call with my cinematic art team. It was a rather casual meeting where we used to update each other on task statuses, blockers, and - sometimes - on things not directly related to work. At the end of the meeting, one guy asked, half-joking, for our opinion on ellipsis aka three dots (...): "How do you feel about people using it in messages?" To my surprise, the opinions were polar: one person said that they don’t care and it’s completely fine, another one said that it is a sign of passive aggression, and the third one confessed to using them and explained that it’s his way of illustrating the thought process. What sounded like a very minor and straightforward topic to me turned out to be ambiguous and important for some of the team members.
This simple example illustrates that the same things can be and will be processed by different people in different ways. It starts with small stuff like... three dots... in the message... and goes up to high-level concepts like company values or product goals. To prevent this, we need to achieve an open-minded attitude and develop an ability to look at things from another person's point of view. And when I say "we", I don’t mean "fellow producers" or "managers". I mean "we" as the whole team.
Before shifting my career to game development, I spent 5 years working in a court (I probably will write about it soon) where people with all kinds of jobs and social statuses come to solve their problems. That was an interesting experience that helped me to gain patience, empathy and communication skills that can be extrapolated to the teams I work with. In a big, multicultural company, you can expect to have colleagues with different mindsets, but what you should remember is that identical backgrounds do not shape people equally.
In her (brilliant) book The Culture Map, Erin Meyer explains how different cultures approach communication, feedback and decision-making. This is crucial in international teams where misunderstandings arise not just from language barriers but from cultural norms as well.
For example, consider low-context vs. high-context communication:
- Low-context cultures (e.g., Germany, the U.S., the Netherlands) value direct, explicit communication. If they say "This needs improvement", they mean exactly that—no hidden message.
- High-context cultures (e.g., Japan, China, France) rely on implied meaning, tone and context. A reserved "It’s interesting" might actually mean "This is not good, but I won’t say it outright".
How does this apply? A direct, American-style critique might come across as rude to an Asian or Middle Eastern colleague, while a subtle, indirect response from a high-context culture might be misinterpreted as indecisiveness. Recognizing these differences allows teams to adapt their communication styles and avoid unnecessary friction.
I once witnessed a feedback meeting where a Danish colleague told an Argentinian artist in a soft and joking format that "the 3D model is not exactly what we envisioned but it's alright, I guess", and the artist encoded this as "Works for us". No one was happy in the end. But we addressed this to make the feedback more direct next time, and the artist responded positively, saying: "That's all you had to say, I'm on it!". They delivered a great result afterward.
Though people from the same countries or departments obviously have some similarities, they are also individuals with their own perceptions of everything around them. There is this ancient meme, "this is Six, this is Nine", but I found a more mind-bending version.
This pic takes us to a psychological concept known as "The False Consensus Effect". It refers to people’s tendency to assume that others share their beliefs and will behave similarly in a given context. Only people who are very different from them would make different choices, which often means that "those people are wrong". This does not necessarily create a conflict, but what it surely creates is assumption and misunderstanding. It may happen both internally (within the team) or externally (between the team and clients/users/other teams).
Cognitive biases like confirmation bias (favoring information that supports our beliefs) and negativity bias (giving more weight to negative interactions) can make this worse. If a teammate disagrees with your approach, it’s easy to assume they "don’t get it" rather than considering that their perspective might be equally valid.
Let’s take it from theoretical blah-blah to more actionable steps: how to mitigate this? I believe this is a two-three-whatever-way process and the best thing to help you with it is… W-O-R-D-S (no way!)
W - "What do you mean"?
To clarify is not scary. If you feel that you misunderstood a task, don’t be afraid to look incompetent - just ask. If you sense some friction in messages, don’t fret - clarify. Most likely, the person you are talking to has been in a similar situation where they were not sure if the perception was the same on both sides.
O - Objectivity is subjective.
Remind yourself from time to time that your opinion is, you know, only your opinion. E.g., you can agree on product goals but for different reasons. So, talk it through and make sure that everyone is on the same page. And if you want people to onboard your vision, you need to be extremely clear in explaining it.
R - Respect others.
Even if the person is behaving inadequately (I’ve seen that A LOT in the court), that does not mean they are wrong. And even if they are, you can do better than getting on their level. If you are working in an IT company, you can learn that from user support people - I still can’t believe how limitless their level of patience is.
D - Don’t assume, ask questions instead.
I’m personally guilty on this one, especially when it comes to tools that we use daily. I assume sometimes that everyone knows how to use them, but that’s not always the case. So instead of assuming that people know, ask if they really do (Do you copy, Murad?).
S - Stop second-guessing.
If you push these ideas to the extreme, you might end up being too critical about every word you say. If you think you’ve made some communication mistake, it’s never too late to clarify it. But accept the fact that you’ll never be able to make everyone happy, as sometimes people are overly dramatic for their own reasons. Everyone defines their own level of acceptance, so ask yourself: where do you draw the line between emphatic understanding and ridiculous drama?
Pick your words wisely and be true to yourself. "Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit".
