Negotiating with Australians & Thais
- Australians generally do not like skewed negotiations or high-pressure sales. They value directness. Therefore, present your case in a forthright manner, articulating both the good and the bad.
- Modesty and casualness are Australian characteristics. A business presentation filled with hype and excitement will not impress Australians; instead, it will inspire them to deflate the presenter with caustic humor.
- Australians may emphasize profit over market share.
- Do not digress or go into too much detail. As we stated, laconic Australians consider brevity a virtue.
- Decision-making takes place with the consultation of top management. This takes time—be patient.
- Australians are very direct and love to banter. If you are teased, take it in good humor.
- Australians are wary of authority and of those who consider themselves “better” than others. Be modest in interactions, and downplay your knowledge and expertise. Let your accomplishments speak for themselves. More than one Australian has complained that eager young U.S. executives “sound like walking resumes” because they are so quick to list their accomplishments and qualifications.
- Before beginning business meetings, spend a brief period of time in small talk. This social time will be short but will establish a familiar rapport, which is important to Australians.
- If you are invited out for a drink to establish a friendly relationship, do not talk about business unless your host brings it up. Work and play are taken equally seriously in Australia and are not to be confused.
- Your initial meeting with Thai businesspeople may be over lunch or drinks, so they can get to know you. However, do not expect to discuss business during lunch.
- Because of the Thai deference to rank and authority, requests and correspondence usually pass through many layers before reaching top management.
- Be flexible and patient in your business dealings. Recognize that Thais do not follow the same relentless work schedule that other cultures do. Allow sufficient time to reach your goal.
- Never lose control of your emotions, and do not be overly assertive; that is considered poor manners.
- Thais avoid confrontation at all costs. They will never say “no” but will instead make implausible excuses or pretend that they don’t understand English. They may even tell you that they must check with someone at a higher level, when such a person doesn’t exist. Likewise, they find it difficult to accept a direct negative answer.
- Always present your business card, preferably with a translation printed in Thai on the opposite side. (You can have these printed in Bangkok.)
- Thai businesspeople will be impressed if you learn even a few words of Thai.
- If someone begins laughing for no apparent reason in a business meeting, change the subject. He or she is probably embarrassed.
Negotiating is something important in doing business. However, it is not easy to do it. Negotiating needs a skill, patience, and understanding. Dealing with different people or company, needs different ways of negotiating, we can call this as the art of negotiating. This also applied in dealing with people in different countries. Every countries have their own characterictics and speciality that differ them from other countries. And as a negotiator, it is very important for us to understand how to deal with each of our future customer. In this article, we are talking about Australia and Thailand. Australian people tend to be more casual and don’t take things seriously. They separate business and friendships firmly, so when we are having a friendships meeting, don’t talk about business, or you will be stamped as disrespectful. Meanwhile, in Thailand, they take rank and authority seriously, so that we should also understand that to talk to people in Thailand. Do not make us embarrased with saying something wrong about people there in Thailand especially to our future customer.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I really enjoy interacting with Thai people. They are incredibly polite, but not in the utterly formal that Japanese are. Even though most of them do not speak English, or have odd pronunciation of English I can communicate with no problem. Some how I feel that their gaze is soft and friendly. And even in public spaces you can feel the peaceful aura radiating from their body. I have never done an International business deal before, but from what I have read in this article Thai business culture is quite similar to Indonesian one. Yet, they mix more feeling into their business culture. And even though I can not understand a single word, I still find Thai language to be incredibly soft to my ear. I suppose I would really enjoy having a business relation with Thai people. This is such a useful new knowledge to know.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was still in Lombok, the island where I grew up in, I used to live in a community surrounded by Australian expatriates. I made a good friend with many of them, some even went to the same school as me. The reason why they’re here is mostly because of their parents are having properties and business there. But they’re some people who came to Lombok to teach English and I had the opportunity to learn English from Australian. Even though I never conducted business with Australian, I learned a little bit about their habit, their characteristics and how they deliver what they want to say. I’m not surprised to find that there are similarities between what’s inside this post and what I’ve observed myself. And I have to say that my preference on separating my concentration between work and play was influenced by my Australian fellows. I can’t really give comments about Thais since I don’t know much about them regarding to this topic.
ReplyDeleteI find negotiating with Australians very interesting. I find some aspects of negotiating with Australians contradictory. I understand now that most non-Asian countries prefer more direct and straight forward means of business. They prefer to not get into detailed business conversations with their business partners. On the other hand, they still tend to act fairly loosely and have a sense of humor. The article suggests to take banter as a sign of affection from the Australians. I find this quite funny because they don’t like to have long business deals, yet they like to digress and add elements of humor in their conversations. I actually love the fact that Australians don’t like pretentious people who constantly demand to be recognized. I also find it great that Australians can establish and develop relationships outside of business with their business partners. I think, in my opinion, negotiating business deals with Australians would be fun and easygoing, hence the perfect business partners for me.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Thailand is a country in South-East Asia, I find some aspects fairly different when it comes to business deals. If I were to have business deals with people from Thailand, I would definitely enjoy a business meal before initiating the deal. However, I find some of the aspects fairly challenging for a foreign business partner to get used to. First of all, the fact that it would take some time to reach the top layer would be frustrating for anyone, regardless of how fast they like their business deals done. Therefore, we have to keep our frustration and emotions for ourselves in order to minimize the chance of misinterpretation. I would also find it very irritating that they don’t like confrontation. In my opinion, saying a simple ‘no’ would provide much more relief than giving unreasonable excuses. The final thing I find odd is the fact that they can sometimes laugh for no reason. Although some of these are quite odd, we still have to respect their culture of business dealings in order to proceed in future negotiations.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to be a succesful in doing business, you have to master the ability of negotiating. It is one of the main key to grow your business or just getting a good work performance. Meanwhile, doing negotiating with different people or nation needs different way. Every people have their own characteristic, different wish, different purpose, and different need, so you have to be able to adjust your way of negotiating. This is definitely applied with dealing with people from another country, Australia and Thailand in this case. Australian will hate it if you mix business and friendship. Like as mentioned in the article above, when you are invited to a dinner or lunch or something, you have to know which purpose it is, if it just for a casual lunch, you should not talk about business, or you will be stamped as disrespectful, meanwhile, if it is a business meeting, you definitely allowed to talk about business. Meanwhile in Thailand, the key is to understand about the level and hierarchy there so that you don’t get messed up.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the article posted above, I found out that the Australians, in terms of negotiating, are very direct. However, to achieve a result, the negotiations are filled with casualness and modesty. They tend to be a bit more relaxed, comparing to the Thais, as banter is more likely to happen along the negotiation process. On the other hand, I have concluded that the Thais are stricter in terms of negotiation as anyone with who negotiates with them is being told to be flexible and patient. They also are very proud with their culture, therefore, if you are able to speak a little of their language, it will certainly impress them. Unlike the Australians, in which requests are consulted with the top management, propositions requested to the Thais will have to be discussed by few layers before it finally reaches the top management. However, both Australians and Thais values short periods of getting to know you before the real business discussion starts.
ReplyDeleteI find this article quiet helpful for me in the future to understand how different country done their business. It will certainly at least reduce the amount of time I need to adapt to the way things work on that country. It also reminds me that people from different country have different culture and different ways to do things. From the article I notice there are some similarity between Thai land and Indonesia culture on how they never say no to avoid confrontation. I also analyze that Australians are more modest and casual in their business life plus they like to make some joke along the way. Both Australians and Thais are not really talk about business when they in lunch or drinking party, that may be means that they separated times to work and times to leisure with their coworker. Maybe next article will talks about difference in culture from other country like the way they introduce their self or the manner when eating.
ReplyDeleteWhat we can see from the differentiation of the negotiating values that Australians and Thais have is the fact that values differ from around the world although it is just two that we are encountering right now. But from what we can see is that we should agree on the statement that says that we have to know various traditions and values to be a professional in understanding the different values that are outside our own. Learning different values can give benefits not to other people but to ourselves. Why? Because this can create a high tolerance in us being a human being and being an individual out of the billions of other people in this world. What is lacking in Indonesia is the under value of learning other cultures, thinking that it is not worth it. Although for us to conquer the world is to understand the thousands of values that are out there.
ReplyDeleteIn General, Understanding Discussion is a form of speech activity by exchanging thoughts, ideas, consisting of two or more people verbally to seek agreement or understanding of ideas or opinions. Discussing can broaden knowledge and many experiences. Discussions involving several people are called group discussions where the leader needs a leader called the discussion chairman. The task of the chairman of the discussion was to open and close the discussion, arouse the interest of the members to express ideas, mediate the debating members, and present conclusions from the results of the discussion. The issues discussed are an issue that is discussed by the discussion participants to be understood, the causes are known, analyzed, a solution is found or the solution is taken, the right decision is made, the best between the good or not according to the circumstances and needs. Problems are problems that exist between hope and reality. Therefore, discussion activities are an attempt to find ways to eliminate, overcome or minimize the distance between expectations and reality.
ReplyDeleteNegotiations or commonly referred to as the bargaining process are common in everyday life. Not only occurs in the business and work environment, negotiations also often occur in organizations and community communities in general. Examples of cases of buying and selling negotiations that often occur are when there is a bargain before making a purchase transaction of an item. The most common thing is the negotiation of price reductions on certain goods. A buyer generally generally negotiates the price first with the seller in order to get the lowest price. Of course this price negotiation process can only occur in places that are more flexible and do not apply fixed prices, for example in traditional markets. But if the transaction occurs in a shop or supermarket that implements a fixed price, of course the negotiation process cannot occur.
DeleteNow moving on to the article in context. Ready or not, English is a business language in the global arena that will be faced by future generations. In fact, this has already been felt now, when more and more educated and professional personnel are required to have qualified English language skills. This was raised during a visit by Indonesian teachers to Pratomsuksa Thammasat School, Bangkok, Thailand, in the framework of the 2015 School Executive Excursion held by Binus University. Pratomsuksa is a public elementary school which is listed as the number one public school in Bangkok. The school applies English programs specifically outside of normal hours like in Indonesia, which is 18 hours a week. Most Thai people are known to have minimum comprehension of the English language, therefore negotiating with them would be difficult, not only due to lack of neutral language knowledege, buat also due to the fact that their negatively persistent attitude may be a factor of halting an understanding.
DeleteAustralians are known to be punctual and straightforward. This statement could be backed up by facts from entrepreneurs and analysts all around the world. They are known to be funny, entertaining, and humorous on most times, but they are also known to have the trait to be serious on needed moments, effectively dubbing them as such having an alter ego. During negotiation moments and operations, they are known to have no regards of small talks and jokes, only accepting and regarding straightforward statements and to the point sentences. To most people, this could be intimidating. But I didn’t find myself being intimidated and scared to encounter those individuals and facing these traits, due to me having the objective to find out and resolve issues regarding facing those characteristics, specifically how to make them warm up to us.
DeleteNegotiating is one of the most important things to do in business because one of the main factors of being successful is when you can negotiate with other people in business or in personal life. Negotiating does not have to be necessarily about work life, it can be also used in making important decisions in your life. However, in the current developed era, negotiating with other people is not as easy as before but needs ability to do it well. It is not easy because every people have their own character, have their own fondness and tendency. Due to this, when it comes to negotiating, we must know our partner’s character, fondness, and tendency as well so that we can negotiate well and achieve our target and demand. In this article, we could see that negotiating with Australian people and Thailand people will be different because as I’ve mentioned before, negotiating with each people is different just like other people in different nation. Normally, people from different countries tend to have different sets of personality as we call “stereotypes”.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article, now i know that every country have their own style of negotiating and each of them have their own uniqueness in term of communication, culture, and behaviour. From the article, i can see that the Australian seems to be more “easy going” and they tend to be straight forward in almost everything. On the other hand, negotiating with the Thai business people seems to be more complex and required a lot of patient. It’ll took longer time to deal with the Thais due to their beliefs on rank and authority deference, which mean that reaching the higher part of the management will be a tough thing to do. Meanwhile, due to the asian characteristic that belong to every asian, the Thais is really proud of their own culture. Therefore if you’re able to show a little appreciation towards it, for example by speaking their language, they will definitely appreciate this kind of act, which eventually will benefit you in the future business deal.
ReplyDeleteI find this article interesting because there is a noticeable difference with the way Thais and Australians interact and conduct business deals. From the pointers given above, Australians seems to be strict in separating which of their social interactions and relations are strictly business which are personal. Although they do small talk and do occasional banter with their business partners, it is merely in their nature and culture to indulge in teasing. Despite that, they prefer meetings that directly discusses the matter at hand rather than stalling. On the other hand, Thais seem to be the complete opposite. The first pointer shows that they favor getting to know their business partners on a personal basis and that they are much more open to mixing their work and personal life together. Along with that, they are hesitant with expressing their true thoughts out loud which leads to them avoiding confrontation, where most of the tips given in the article show the true message that the Thais are trying to convey with their certain actions and reasons.
ReplyDelete