If, like me, you grew up hearing ‘Make sure you give a firm handshake and keep eye-contact when greeting someone’ and ‘A sloppy handshake is a sign of weakness’ – it might be time to reconsider how you meet and greet people during your international and cross-cultural business encounters.
My Top Three Tips for Improving Your Intercultural Business Greetings
I’ve put together my top three tips to help you navigate or avoid awkward greeting situations as seen above:
1. Consider Local Greeting Customs
While many parts of the world have adopted the handshake greeting for business interactions, including (urban/corporate) India, Vietnam, and China, there are sometimes other more appropriate ways to greet respectfully according to local customs – whether it is a simple nod of the head, kisses on the cheeks, placing your hands in prayer position, or bowing. It is good practice to do some research on local greeting customs before going on your international business trip – you could ask a peer with experience in doing business in that specific culture or, even better, get tips from someone local to the culture.
2. Don’t Assume That a ‘Sloppy’ Handshake Reflects Someone’s Personality
There is great risk in assuming that how a person shakes your hand is connected to their strengths or weaknesses (people make these assumptions all the time). If someone greets you with what you perceive as a ‘sloppy’ or ‘weak’ handshake, you might naturally assume that this gesture reflects their personality. Making such assumptions could influence whether you think they are the right candidate for a job; whether they’d make a suitable and assertive leader; or whether they’d be a strong team worker. However, if you instead consider that this person may have grown up in a culture where giving a firm handshake with direct eye contact is inappropriate, rude or even insulting, your perception of this person could change. Failing to see a situation from someone else’s perspective, could lead to failure in establishing new valuable connections, friendships, business and acquiring new talent. So, rather than enforcing your own ways of meeting and greeting someone, try ‘reading’ and responding to the other person’s body language, personal space and gestures upon greeting them. And if you’re a hand-squeezer, please loosen the grip a little :)
3. Observe Hierarchies and Gender Relations
Keep in mind that there are significant cultural differences in how we respect and adhere to hierarchies and gender relations. This is also true during greetings. Who you greet and in what order can influence how respectful you come across to those you are greeting – as illustrated in my animation Hierarchy of a Vietnamese Greeting. In terms of greeting across the genders, there are also different religious, cultural, and local customs. For instance, during my PhD greeting studies, I met Muslim women and men who preferred to greet the opposite gender without any touch, and I met Muslim women and men who did not mind greeting the opposite gender with a handshake. Likewise I met Christian, Buddhist and Atheist women and men – some who greeted the opposite gender the same as the same gender, and other’s who greeted the opposite gender differently. The important thing is to be aware of the possibility of someone not being comfortable with a greeting you are accustomed to – for personal, cultural or religious reasons – and not to take offence if they do not meet you with the same greeting.
While some of these tips may seem obvious to some, I am still amazed at the lack of cultural perspectives included in sales and business training. In any sales workshop or presentation I have attended, I have been told ‘You have to greet with a firm handshake to show them you are assertive and strong’ – In my opinion it is time to diversify this kind of training to prepare employees to interact better in a global context. Cross-cultural interactions should be more about understanding, respecting, and learning to read each other’s ways of communicating, and not about enforcing our own cultural ways on the people we meet.
Parastoo Diba
I was thinking about this issue and I found your article in my research.
You are right, and I really enjoyed your writing.
One other problem is the way people from developed countries look at other cultures. For example they think their way of greeting is the standard way of greeting and they see themselves in higher position.
But as your infographic, it is totally equal. There is no standard way of greeting.