“I don’t like him. He’s rude.”
That was the office chatter circulating about a recent addition to the team—an IT specialist recruited from Ankara, Turkey. For leadership, hearing such immediate friction is never easy, but it rarely comes as a surprise. The individual who voiced the complaint was American, embodying the eternally upbeat, outgoing communication style that underpins much of corporate and social culture in the United States. The new hire, conversely, approached the workplace with a more introverted, subdued demeanor. While unfailingly polite, he simply did not prioritize the lighthearted pleasantries and high-energy small talk that his American colleagues expected as a baseline of professional interaction.
Incidents like this highlight a fundamental reality of modern global organizations: what often appears to be a clash of personalities is actually a collision of cultural norms. Company leaders who manage multinational teams frequently find themselves mediating these subtle behavioral differences, transforming potential friction points into opportunities for organizational growth and deeper mutual understanding.
The executive leadership team at Jotform, a software company with operations spanning five countries, knows this dynamic well. Even within individual regional offices, the employee base is remarkably diverse, bringing together individuals from dozens of different backgrounds and professional traditions. While this multicultural tapestry is a primary driver of innovation and creative problem-solving, it also creates fertile ground for everyday misunderstandings.
For leaders operating in international spaces, navigating these nuances requires a deliberate strategy. Rather than letting cultural friction erode team cohesion, successful organizations actively build frameworks that leverage diverse perspectives instead of suffering from them. Experience shows that achieving this balance begins long before a candidate ever sets foot in the office—it starts with the hiring process itself.
Hire open-minded people
For many executives, delegation is the primary key to scaling a business. However, recruitment remains one area where key decision-makers often refuse to fully relinquish control, viewing it as too foundational to the company’s long-term trajectory. By the time a candidate pool has been narrowed down to a final handful of applicants for an open position, qualifications and technical competencies are usually a given. Any of the remaining finalists possess the baseline skills required to execute the job effectively.
Consequently, the final hiring decision often hinges on a deeper exploration of cognitive style and worldview. Among the most critical traits sought by forward-thinking leaders is genuine open-mindedness.
Open-minded individuals do not operate on the automatic assumption that their default way of thinking or behaving is universally correct. When they encounter a perspective that collides with their own, their instinct is not to dismiss or invalidate the difference. Instead, they exhibit curiosity and a desire to understand the underlying reasoning.
To identify this trait during evaluations, interviewers frequently probe past behavior, asking candidates to describe instances where they were proven wrong. The resulting responses provide vital insight: do candidates become defensive and deflect blame, or can they articulate what changed their perspective? This adaptability serves as a reliable indicator of whether a prospective hire will extend grace and flexibility to teammates who approach challenges differently than expected.
Get your teams together
The debate surrounding remote versus in-office work continues to evolve across industries. Beyond discussions of productivity and operational efficiency, many leadership teams emphasize physical workspace proximity for reasons deeply tied to employee well-being. Data suggests that remote workers frequently grapple with heightened levels of isolation, stress, and diminished overall well-being compared to their onsite counterparts.
A primary driver of this disconnect is the flattening effect of screen-based communication. A substantial majority of human communication relies on nonverbal cues, including subtle shifts in body language, facial expressions, and vocal tone. When interactions are confined to digital channels, these critical nuances are often lost. Anyone who lived through the era of mandatory virtual happy hours and forced online team-building exercises understands the distinct fatigue that accompanies flattened digital engagement.
To combat the isolation of distance, some international organizations implement large-scale, in-person gatherings, bringing together employees from dozens of countries for several days of shared experiences. To avoid the pitfalls of forced fun, these retreats are typically shaped by employee feedback, ensuring that participants have a meaningful say in how their time is utilized.
These periodic face-to-face gatherings help bridge the gaps created by geography and time zones. A written message on a corporate chat platform that initially read as cold or abrupt often takes on an entirely different meaning when discussed over a shared meal. Similarly, a prolonged silence during a video conference—initially interpreted as disagreement or disinterest—is frequently revealed to be simply how a particular colleague processes information before speaking.
During one such gathering, members of an American team discovered that their seemingly stern Turkish IT colleague was not unfriendly at all. In person, his dry, understated sense of humor quickly became a defining characteristic that regularly brought his peers to laughter. While organizing and funding comprehensive in-person retreats requires a significant financial investment, the resulting genuine connections among globally distributed teams are viewed by leadership as invaluable.
Leave less room for interpretation
In the absence of clear information, people naturally fill in the blanks. Ambiguity is one of the most reliable catalysts for workplace misunderstandings, capable of quietly eroding the trust and culture that organizations spend years cultivating.
To prevent misinterpretation, transparent leadership is essential. Core company values must be clearly articulated in writing and made easily accessible to all staff members. Furthermore, these principles require consistent reinforcement through visible channels, such as company-wide newsletters and regular all-hands meetings.
Clarity is equally vital when establishing operational expectations. Progressive companies actively encourage employees to disconnect outside of standard working hours, explicitly advising them to sign off during nights and weekends. When staff members take paid time off, they are frequently encouraged to remove communication applications from their personal devices to ensure they can fully unplug, rest, and recharge. This policy eliminates the low-level anxiety of wondering whether checking in from a family vacation is secretly expected. When the expectation is unambiguous, no guesswork or interpretation is required.
Practices of this nature do more than simply protect work-life balance; they foster a profound sense of psychological safety across the organization. Clear, uniform rules establish a predictable environment where all employees are treated equitably.
Cultural misunderstandings are an inevitable reality in any diverse, multicultural workplace. However, effective leadership can successfully navigate these complexities by encouraging teams to approach differences with curiosity, investing in intentional opportunities for face-to-face connection, and relentlessly minimizing ambiguity in daily operations.
