How To Network Across Cultures

Great stuff from Andy Molinsky, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Brandeis International Business School.

Picture this: You are at a networking event and see across the room a potential employer from a company you’re interested in. You walk over to that person, look him in the eye, and say the following:

“Hello, I noticed that you’re from IBM. I’m very interested in IBM and would love to give you a sense of my background.”

I recently posed this scenario to a group of foreign-born professionals in the United States and then asked whether they believed that according to American cultural norms, the person’s statement was:

(a) Too direct
(b) Not direct enough
(c) Appropriately direct

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