Working with a multinational company in Tokyo, I was training a group of managers in creative thinking and problem-solving. It was a mixed group of Japanese and expat Europeans.
One of the Europeans, a Brit, got irritated with his Japanese colleagues and announced: “The trouble with you guys is that you don’t tell the truth.”
Shocked silence in the room.
I encouraged the Brit to say some more about what he was thinking. “Well, you guys endlessly say ‘Yes’ when you mean ‘No’,” he blundered on. “It’s very confusing.”
In the break that followed, I took him aside. “Like you, I notice that our Japanese colleagues have multiple ways of doing this,” I said to him. “But haven’t you noticed that we do too?”
“Like what?”
“Well, a regular standby for us is ‘In principle I agree with you’. We know it means “No”, but do you suppose that everyone else knows that?”
Do you have some good yeses that mean no?
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