In some countries nodding your head up and down means no, and shaking your head from side-to-side means yes.  Even when I know I am in such a place, it is still hard to remember that our standard head movement for yes is no, and their no is yes.  It gets even more complicated when verbal cues are the opposite of what we expect.

What happens when you are negotiating with people who are very nice, but not really?  Who are very friendly and assure you that, yes, they want to resolve whatever is going on to help you out.  What happens when they really don’t mean it, but being very nice and accommodating is just how things are done?  A recent piece by Christopher de Bellaigue in the Atlantic Monthly discusses just this dilemma when negotiating with Iranians: Talk Like an Iranian

In the piece de Bellaigue writes about the Iranian tradition of Ta’arof, a term “which refers to a way of managing social relations with decorous manners. It may be charming and a basis for mutual goodwill, or it may be malicious, a social or political weapon that confuses the recipient and puts him at a disadvantage.”

The piece is a nice reminder of how complicated it can be to negotiate cross-culturally.  Even when we think we understand the other culture, it is still difficult to work with these differences.

As de Bellaigue illustrates, understanding the complicated cultural difference doesn’t  guarantee the final result you want.  For example, there is the story of US diplomat John Limbert, one of the US hostages in Iran:  “In April 1980, he was paraded on Iranian TV alongside the revolutionary cleric Ali Khamenei. In flawless Persian, Limbert joked that his captors had “overdone the ta’arof”—­going on to explain that they were such diligent hosts, they had refused to let their guests go home.  The joke was itself a very Iranian way to level a sharp criticism: it allowed Limbert to highlight the hostage-takers’ breach of traditional Iranian hospitality.”

It took another nine months until Limbert and the other hostages were freed.