A Japanese engineer emails a question to his German counterpart. The German technician knows the answer and replies the same day, problem solved. Later in the project, the German has a question of his own for his Japanese counterpart. This time, it takes up to a week to get a reply.
Neither person is lazy. Neither person is incompetent. By the end of the project, they believe exactly that about each other anyway.
This is a quiet, common kind of chaos on international engineering teams: two skilled people getting each other completely wrong, without a single grammar mistake between them. The real problem is that response times can vary from culture to culture, not language skill. Fast and slow replies mean different things depending on where you learned to work.
I talked through this exact case with Ama Zbarcea, who I interviewed on my podcast. She's a legal expert with over a decade of experience negotiating contracts across borders. She sees this pattern constantly: two competent teams, reading the same behaviour and drawing opposite conclusions about each other.
Here's the case study, and what it actually means for your next international project.
Why the Fast Reply Looked Lazy, and the Slow Reply Looked Incompetent
Compared to Japan, Germany runs a more egalitarian workplace culture.* If you know the answer, you give it. Nobody expects you to check with your boss first just to prove you are allowed to know your own job.
Japan works differently. Even when someone already knows the solution, it is normal to double check with a supervisor before replying. Ama Zbarcea has over a decade of experience negotiating cross-border contracts, and she sees this exact pause flip how both sides read each other, again and again.
To the Japanese engineer, the German's same-day reply did not look like competence. It looked like recklessness. No check-in with a superior means either he did not do the job properly, or he does not respect the hierarchy.
To the German engineer, the week-long wait did not look like thoroughness. It looked like incompetence. If you actually knew the answer, why would it take this long to say so?
Neither engineer had done anything wrong. Both were following the exact communication norms their own workplace culture had trained into them. It was not a language problem, and it was not a technical problem. It was a cultural misreading of behaviour.
One Straight Arm or One Raised Finger: How the US and UK Read "Speaking Up" Differently
Same pattern, different pair of countries. In the US, "time is money" is not just an expression. Every minute of the working day is treated as money gained or lost. The unspoken rule is: if you know the answer, you say it, and you say it fast. In business, a reply is expected within roughly 24 business hours, and working late or through the weekend is not unusual if the situation calls for it.
The UK runs on closer to the opposite instinct. Speaking up is something you are invited to do, not something you rush to do.
You can see the exact same pattern trained into children at school. In the US, pupils are taught to raise their hand as high as possible when they know the answer, arm straight, hand touching the ceiling. If a child does not raise their hand high enough, they are marked down for it. In the UK, the more common gesture is a single raised finger.
That difference follows people into meetings. In the US, if someone has something to say, they volunteer it straight away rather than waiting to be asked. If it needs to be said urgently, they will interrupt. Among Americans, that is not read as rude. It is read as being direct, and as not wanting to waste the group's time on the wrong answer.
In the UK, the same behaviour can land very differently. Jumping in before your turn, or answering before anyone asked, can come across as showing off. Neither reading is wrong. Each one is the accurate reading inside its own culture.
The useful skill is not deciding which culture has it right. It is noticing that somebody's directness, or somebody's silence, might have nothing to do with confidence, competence, or manners, and everything to do with what they were taught was polite.
For more on how these patterns show up specifically in technical teams, see How Engineering Communication Styles Differ Around the World.
Find the One Colleague Who Will Actually Tell You the Truth
You cannot memorise every culture's unwritten rules before your next international call. What you can do is ask.
Ama's advice, after years of working on international projects and living abroad, is to find one colleague you trust and ask them directly. Tell them plainly: if I get something wrong, if I make an odd gesture, if I say something that lands strangely, tell me. Do not just think I am weird. Tell me.
She calls having a person like that a luxury, and she is right. Not every culture makes that kind of direct feedback easy to give. Ama worked with Chinese colleagues across multinational teams and asked them, more than once, for exactly this kind of honest correction. Even when they agreed to give it, they often would not. Pointing out someone's mistake directly can feel rude in that same cultural context. It can risk hurting feelings, even when it is exactly what was asked for.
That is worth remembering on both sides. If you are the one asking for honest feedback, you might need to ask more than once, and be specific about what kind of feedback would help. If you are the one being asked, know that offering it, even gently, is a genuine favour, not an insult.
Either way, the fix for most of what looks like rudeness, laziness, or incompetence on an international team is not a better vocabulary. It is one honest conversation, with one person willing to tell you what is actually going on.
If you want the fuller picture on working across languages and cultures day to day, International Team Communication: What Non-Native English Speakers (and Their Colleagues) Need to Know covers more of it.
Ready to Stop Guessing?
Do you ever second-guess a colleague's tone, or wonder whether your own directness lands the way you mean it to? That is not something a vocabulary list fixes. It is a communication skill, and you can build it.
That is exactly what I work on with engineers on international teams: not more grammar rules, but the confidence to ask the right question and communicate clearly across cultures, without guessing.
If that would help your team, book a free 15-minute call and let's talk through what might be getting lost in translation on your side.
Book your free 15-minute call.
FAQ
Response speed is often tied to how hierarchical a culture is at work. In more hierarchical cultures, checking with a supervisor before replying is normal, even when the person already knows the answer. In more egalitarian cultures, people are expected to answer directly and quickly. Neither approach is wrong. They just come from different assumptions about who should confirm an answer before it goes out.
It depends entirely on the culture in the room. In the US, jumping in to share information right away is normal and read as direct, not rude. In the UK, it is more common to wait for a natural pause before speaking. If you are working across both, watch how the room behaves rather than assuming your own norm is universal.
You often cannot tell on your own. The most reliable way is to ask one trusted colleague directly for honest feedback, and be specific: tell them you want to know if something you say or do lands strangely. Not every culture makes that kind of direct feedback easy to give, so you may need to ask more than once.
It rarely means someone misunderstood a word. Usually, it means someone judged a behaviour, like a fast reply, a slow reply, or speaking up early, by the wrong culture's rules.
A Note on the Framework
*The egalitarian-versus-hierarchical framework referenced here comes from Erin Meyer's book The Culture Map. Ama credits it with helping her make sense of patterns from her own corporate career.
Original Post from 4 January 2022; latest update: 24 August 2026.
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