Have you ever got in trouble in the workplace because of some miscommunication caused by cultural differences? Misunderstandings sometimes are caused by cultural differences and language barriers, while being able to speak a language is not equal to fully understanding
a language. It might sound a bit tricky and complicated as you might be questioning why has the person become cold or not reacted the way you wanted. Did you lose a deal or was there awkwardness during the meeting?
Understanding business culture – will this make a difference for your business?
We easily get confused with the business norms if we are not familiar with the local cultures when doing business internationally. Let’s take negotiation skills as examples, the ways people negotiate, view and interpret the negotiation process, closely vary among local cultures.
 For instance, from a Chinese perspective, negotiations exist primarily as a mechanism for building trust so that two parties can work together for the benefit of both. In business meetings or other situations, you want to build up the relationship and avoid embarrassing or even raising your glass above your Chinese guest. What is disrespectful to Chinese culture? Do not touch, hug, lock arms, back slap or make any body contact. Furthermore, clicking fingers or whistling is considered very rude. Never put your feet on a desk or a chair, and Never gesture or pass an object with your feet. Blowing one's nose in a handkerchief and returning it to one's pocket is considered vulgar by the Chinese.
 If you deal with  German business people instead, always show data and analytics above all.
 It can come as a surprise for some of us that, from a Japanese perspective,
“Yes” doesn’t mean “Yes”, it means  I understand instead due to its disciplined social system.
So it is crucial to take into consideration that cultural differences may result in misunderstandings when doing business. Moreover, Japan is a more relationship-oriented culture than countries such as Australia, particularly when it comes to doing business. Japanese want to know and trust someone before they do business with them. Relationships are developed through informal social gatherings and generally involve a considerable amount of eating and drinking. I would say that it’s the same if you wish to build up a  work relationship in Italy or Spain.
 If you are meeting Italians, always make sure you invite them to a good restaurant. It’s important for Italians to build a trust prior to doing business. Relationships are very important in Italian business culture. In the ‘Bel Paese, business people want to be familiar with their business contacts, so I suggest you work with a local representative to arrange introductions and appointments before your trip. Italians expect formality. When meeting contacts for the first time, address them a “Signor(e)’ (Mr.)” or “Signora’ (Mrs.),” with their surname. Wait until you’re invited to use their first name in subsequent meetings to be safe. It’s important to show respect for elders, people in positions of authority and people with professional titles such as “Dottore/ Dottoressa (Doctor).” Italian companies often employ a horizontal chain of authority, called “cordata” (which literally translates to a team of mountain climbers on the same rope). To fully understand this concept, maintain a good relationship with contacts who can educate you on theinternal structure of the companies you wish to do business with. Also, bear in mind that anticipate those negotiations often take time. Trying to rush the process or conveying urgency can weaken your bargaining position. For all these reasons we have to be very cautious of how different cultures behave during meetings
and deals can be facilitated overseas. Apart from negotiation skills, being able to express your opinions and writing business
reports are also very important.  Having proficient language skills help you overcome early difficulties in the workplace. B2 Business Vantage exam qualification can demonstrate that you are capable of doing business tasks in business English as it is a globally recognised exam. This test, in fact, is one of the three Cambridge English Qualifications for business  exams. Each of them is targeted at a different level. B2 is a middle level, which shows employers that you are ready to work successfully with international business companies.
The content for the exam is based on real everyday work and business tasks and is designed to develop your business English skills. By getting a B2 certificate, you will improve your career opportunities and easily be accepted globally by top international companies. According to statistics, employees are 18% more likely to have a faster progression than their peers, while 17% more likely to have pay rises.

Sharing our experience with you
One of our business students Leon, a senior engineer at Qualcomm, in charge of developing Ads and writing code, did his online preparation for the B2 Business Vantage exam at La Dante in Cambridge.  When the course started, our business English trainer Alexis immediately
got to know his background, including his English level and the goals he wanted to achieve. So, Alexis started preparing teaching material to improve Leon’s skills, and realised that being Chinese he needed to be introduced to small talk that is
something British love prior to starting a business conversation. It was really interesting to see how Chinese and British need to learn on simple sentence building that makes them comfortable during the meeting. English business culture was introduced with real-life examples, and Leon’s presenting and communication skills greatly advanced. As language learning is of high importance for export as well as for establishing businesses overseas, at La Dante in Cambridge we pride ourselves of having taught highly regarded firms since 2010: Birkets, Qualcomm, ETT Solutions, and Corepixx among others with promoting business, and language culture in Italian, Spanish and English.

Article written by Dott.ssa Giulia Portuese, Director and founder at La Dante in Cambridge
and contribution from Alexis Loizou, English teacher for professionals

By Giulia Portuese

Background of La Dante

It all started with the passion and dissemination of promoting my language and culture. I am Italian of Sicilian origins and with two sons Lorenzo and Luca born in Cambridge, my goal was to let them feel the richness of my Italian culture by giving them the gift of being bilingual. It wasn’t easy at all as in those days when they were just 5 and 2 years old (1997) there weren’t any good Italian schools in Cambridge. Just one with crowded classes of all levels with more than 30 children and one teacher paid by the government. There was a clear need for helping the Italian community and those families whose children were bilingual like mine.

After over 10 years spent at Cambridge University Press, the need for a cultural centre more than a school started to form in my mind and a strong need to make a difference in disseminating a great Italian culture and language in a country that has always had a fascination with Italian language

Think of Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Lady Morgan, Percy Shelley, John Keats, George Eliot, John Ruskin, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence and W.B. Yeats to think of just a few. Think of the fascination of the Montalbano TV series that most people who study Italian know about.

The Eurovision context won by Maneskin is one of the newest groups that bring Italian at a European level.

I left CUP and with a project approved by the Dante Aligheri Society in Rome, I started La Dante in Cambridge, in September 2008 with just 6 students learning Italian. It was such fun and we joined forces with the then Director of the Alliance Française Francine Rouanet-Democrate in a dream that went beyond the dissemination of Italian (in my case) and French (in her case) but in building up and creating a European Cultural Centre based in Cambridge.

Well, I am very proud to say that, although we changed paths along the way and the AF passed on to other hands, I was able to create such a European Cultural Centre, La Dante in Cambridge which now offers language and culture in three languages: Italian, Spanish and English.

We got about 400 students per year, a nice achievement, and the knowledge that we help not just the community of Italian and Spanish but whoever is interested in these cultures. Our students are from age 5 to 90.

Yes that is right 90: we had a student who was 90 MaryAnn and came with her stick, borrowed books in Italian, attended her classes with our native speakers. That was a wonderful moment. She stayed with us for two years.

We help students who wish to learn for fun, for their exams (including my sons who did their GCSE and A-levels in Italian), business people improving their language proficiency and University entry exams. Some need languages just for travel.

This year in 2021, we were part of
East Anglia’s high-growth business programme

at Future50 for 2021.

With this interview, Kieran Miles, Programme Director at Future50

Highlights the journey of La Dante from an Italian Cultural Centre In 2010 to a European Cultural Centre with more than 400 students. The difficulties through the Covid-19 pandemic, the resilience of a great team and the transformation to carry on making an impact in language learning. He also mentioned the prestigious honorary award OSI given by Sergio Mattarella, Itaian president of Italy for the dissemination of Italian language and culture in the UK since 2010.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zY0EbJFcU&list=PLfSuGNtVNgzzbLzxWmKWlmH5HtFvnFvhE&index=30

Since 2011, I also started the Radio Dante programmes with original podcasts, also on social media FB, spotify, buzzsprout and mixcloud. We have had prestigious collaborations with the Fitzwilliam Museum for Italian Art series, the Department of Italian and Spanish at Cambridge University as well as journalists, interns that collaborated in disseminating programmes in Spanish, Italian and English over the years. Lately we have two themes which are being developed:

Radio Dante Viaggi for those who travel to Italy

Radio Dante Racconta for children stories in Italian

the same for Spanish

Radio Dante Viajes

Radio Dante Cuentos

Forthcoming there is our Ryze APP The Pocket Learning APP, for learning Italian and Spanish to begin with, later we will add English, with the following functions

• text
• videos
• podcasts
• games
• exercises
• articles

which aim at attracting a younger audience for language learning.

This will reinforce our Online school Platform which started in March 2020 due to the pandemic. We had to renew and with hard work, determination, after over 10 years of being a face-to-face school, we transformed and enriched what we offered to our students by switching online for adult courses. This was a difficult time for us at La Dante, huge transformation, but with the dedication and understanding of my team, teachers and most importantly our wonderful students, we were able to do just that, and I am pleased to say that the 400 students stayed with us, some were new and mostly were those that started their language journey along the way.

In 2021, I was also blessed with an OSI Honorary title for the Order of the Star of Italy from the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella for the work done disseminating Italian language and culture in the UK.