German Efficiency vs. American Communication Standards

Communicating is difficult. Not only do you have to mind what you say and how you say it - it is also what you do NOT say and how you do that. I just realized that when I got somebody mad at me for not replying to his text message. The problem was I didn’t think he wanted me to reply because if I was in his shoes, I would not have expected it. However, I was taught better: Equating your own communication standards with those of others is not a good idea. Even more so if you originate from different cultures – which was the case in that story. I could have used that as an excuse, actually… why didn’t I think of it earlier?!

In order for you to avoid inter-cultural communication clashes, I came up with the idea to list a few things that made me wonder about the American way of communicating. Not only that, I will also explain shortly why Germans would do it differently. So to say, I’ll try to improve the German-American communication so it gets more efficient… which is very German in a way. However, be aware that reading this will make it harder for you to simply blame cultural differences for your personal misbehavior.

What Americans do	What we feel is strange about it
Asking:“How are you?!” Anyone, anytime, anywhere.	We are surprised to be walking in a store or having a complete stranger on the phone and still and being asked how we are. I even was a bit shocked and didn’t know what to reply when I was asked for the very first time. Luckily, it didn’t take me too long to find out that no other answer than “good” – if any at all – is expected. I am not sure whether it is the German remoteness or because we’re striving for German efficiency even in our conversations, but we would only pose this question to a selected group of people… and we’d be prepared for a reply which consists of more than one word.
The first name and even nicknames are appropriate to address to your coworkers’ und superiors – immediately.	In Germany, you start off addressing to people using their last name, possibly even their academic title. What’s next is a specific time frame (which varies from weeks up to several years, depending on the person) in which you might proof to be trustworthy. In case you can be trusted to not misuse the freedom of calling somebody by the first name, the older party (AND ONLY THE OLDER PARTY) might offer you to address to each other with the first name from now on. Nicknames have no business in business. That would be a bit too much and regarded as unprofessional. It is more likely that people who have been colleagues for years and years still refer to each other as “Dr. X” and “Mrs. Y”
Praising/ Expressing feelings expressive. “Amazing!” “Your English is excellent.” “I am extremely impressed…”	Maybe Americans are just more willing to share their feelings with the people around them than Germans. We would only praise somebody or tell them how we feel about them if we are either very close to the person or something really (REALLY) remarkable happened. Graduating from school with nothing but A’s or an Oscar nomination would be considered worth to be praised in Germany. In America, this might already apply if somebody baked a really tasty chocolate cake. That’s why we get kind of suspicious if we are told that our English is “amazing” after we rarely said “Hi.”
You wish somebody a Happy Birthday before the actual day they were born.	You’d never ever even think about doing that in Germany. That would be even worse than not congratulating at all: it’s bad luck. So please, try to refrain from congratulating beforehand. That’s not going to make you popular among Germans. As midnight comes, you are free to shout out “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!” as loud and as often as you wish. Even days later, it would still be okay to wish someone a happy belated birthday.

 

Carolin