The American at heart is a salesperson, committed to convincing others of his or her own point of view.

E. C. Stewart and M. J. Bennett(1)

The way Americans communicate with each other in business reflects both the social needs that we discussed in Chapter 4, and the particular demands of business situations. Can we describe a particularly American way of communicating, an American “comfort zone” in communication? Yes we can, if we understand that, as with any of our generalizations, each individual American will differ in some respects.

In this chapter, we look at the most important characteristics of this style, what these characteristics mean to Americans, and how Americans may react to others who have a different approach.

You can then begin to compare your own style, your “comfort zone”, with what Americans are used to and expect from others. This in turn will help you:

• (1)To understand why Americans may respond to you in a particular way;
• (2)To see how you can modify your style to be more effective in communicating with Americans, whether in explaining, requesting, persuading, proposing or negotiating.

Simply speaking good English will help, but it will not be enough. The question of language, however, is a good place to begin.

DO YOU SPEAK AMERICAN? – THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE USA

Our discussion of business communication with Americans starts with the obvious: English is the language of business, and the native language of the majority of us Americans. We assume that everyone in business speaks it as well. Our American education system does not attach a high priority to learning foreign languages, although there are ample opportunities to do so. A great many of us grow up, or indeed live our entire lives, without ever needing to speak another language. Our ear is so tuned to American English that we are not accustomed to hearing strongly accented English (with the milder exceptions of the American South, and some of our British friends). We do not generally appreciate sub-titled films or those that are “dubbed” (voiced over) into English.

Learning a “foreign” language

On the other hand, there are many Americans who do learn a foreign language to a very high level, because they cannot function in the USA without it. That foreign language is – English. Many thousands of non-English speakers emigrate to America each year. If you have spent time in the southern tier of the USA from Florida, across Texas and the southwestern states to California, or in the larger cities of the Northeast, you have probably heard Spanish spoken by local people. If you are going to be living in those areas, especially in Texas or southern California, it will do you no harm to learn some Spanish (unless of course, you already speak it!).

In the USA, you will find speakers not only of Spanish, but also of almost of every other living language. Where there are large concentrations of non-English speakers, government agencies will publish documents, notices, and forms in the languages spoken by those groups, such as – in addition to Spanish – Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Korean, to name but a few.

American English

But with those exceptions, American English is the language you will be hearing. If you are a non-native speaker yourself, Americans will appreciate your ability to speak English, and may regret their lack of foreign language skill. They may not, however, make any concessions to your abilities to understand them, either in the speed with which they speak, or in the expressions they use. American business English is not significantly different from the Standard English spoken in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and other former British dominions. Note the emphasis. There are well-documented variations in vocabulary and usage, which can at times affect comprehension. But what is remarkable is not the variation; it is the fundamental similarity.

The American English you hear and read in business nevertheless has particular characteristics. It is a strange mix of punchy directness and soft imprecise cliche. It changes quickly in response to political, social, commercial, and technological trends and developments. New words and phrases, constantly created, pass quickly into everyday usage, despite the regrets of those who would like to see a sharper and richer language. As recently as 1994, an excellent book on business writing listed e-mail and sound bite as terms to “avoid or consider carefully” when using.(2) Both are now part of current business-speak – in America and around the world. I know no one who “avoids” or “considers them carefully” before using!

It is not within our scope here (a good example of business-speak, which actually means “We will not”) to provide a glossary of American idioms, slang, and new terms. If you are going to be living in America, you will find it helpful to have a good dictionary or phrasebook of American English, even if you come from a country where a more “civilized” version of English is spoken.(3)

We would, however, like to indicate here two areas of difficulty in American business English that are rooted in American culture. The first is the use of metaphors and other figures of speech drawn from American sports. The second is the matter of sexism in vocabulary, grammar, and usage.

Playing hardball: sports terms in American business language

Many common expressions originate in the three most popular spectator sports in America: baseball, basketball, and American football. Even if you are familiar with these sports, you may not be ready to hear them applied to everyday use in business, as in the examples that follow.

Play hardball. This means competing with all the skills, resources, and tactics that one has, without making any allowances for other people’s needs or feelings. It is a baseball term, denoting the highly competitive standards of professional (Major) league baseball, which uses a hard tightly packed ball as compared to a non-professional game (or “amateur”) in which a softer and larger ball is used. (”Softball” is played with all the fierce competition of the professional hardball game, and there are indeed professional associations in which the players are paid.)

We dropped the ball on this one. This is another baseball expression, best translated as: “We made a serious mistake” or “We failed to do what we were supposed to do.” This refers to an error on the part of a fielder, who is normally supposed to catch or pick up the ball after it is thrown or struck without dropping it.

From American football comes the expression Monday morning quarterback. This is someone who has played no role in a situation, but who analyzes a failure after it has occurred and tells those involved what they should have done instead. The quarterback is the player who directs the team on the field, while Monday is the day after most professional matches take place.

An end run, is an attempt to achieve one’s objective by means of an indirect approach, or by going around an obstacle instead of directly at it. In American football, a team may try to advance the ball by having a runner try to go around the opposing team’s defense, rather than through it.

Basketball is certainly the most popular of these three American sports in Europe. It has given us phrases such as slam dunk. This is an exciting play in which the player with the ball avoids all defenders, leaps up to the basket, and emphatically thrusts the ball through it to score. “This presentation should be a slam dunk for you” means that the presentation will be a visible and easy success.

The above are a small sample. If you are able to get to know these sports, you can more easily enjoy them socially in America as spectator or participant with friends and colleagues. It will also help you understand their language.

Avoiding sexism in American English

Americans have taken particular care to ensure that sexual equality is codified in speech. For the non-American, understanding sports metaphors is a minor problem compared to the danger of appearing “insensitive” in both your speech and writing.

Here are a few guidelines to help to find your way through the minefield.

• When referring to a man and woman together in speech or letter, when using the male title Mr., you should always use the female title Ms. or Mrs. as well.
• Nouns denoting roles or occupations are neutral. American English has dropped feminine suffixes such as –ess from words of this type, and “neutered” others.

Here are a few examples:

• Use server instead of waitress, although actress still survives for some reason.
• Theterm manageress, common in Britain, is unknown in the USA. (It comes up as an error in my American English spellchecker!) Do not use it.
• The terms salesperson, spokesperson, and chairperson or chair, chairwoman should be used instead of salesman, etc., even when the person you are referring to is male. As an example, we have in this book used the term businessperson rather than businessman.
• Avoid using terms such as man-hours which, while not in fact referring to people at all, appear to exclude females. In this case, hours of labor or hours of work is better.

In Chapter 9, under the heading “workplace correctness”, we have more to say about general behavior in this area.

Outside of work, you may not have to be so careful about this aspect of your language. In business situations, however, – and remember, these include socializing with colleagues away from the office – you must be attentive to this, because you risk causing offence.

With that brief look at language, let us now turn our attention to how Americans use their language.

AN AMERICAN’S CONVERSATIONAL COMFORT ZONE

Access – “staying in the loop”

We Americans may like our wide open spaces, but we don’t want to get lost in them. On both a social and business level, we try very hard to make and maintain connections with others and avoid isolation. All people do this to a greater or lesser extent; after all it’s one of the reasons humans communicate in the first place.

If you recall our example of chatty Charlie on the long-distance flight, we can apply the same lesson to Americans at work: we feel a need to stay “in the loop”. We want to be sure that we are not left out or isolated from people, information, or rumor. This need reveals itself frequently in what Americans expect from group meetings, described in Chapter 6, and in the extent to which people copy each other on e-mails, memos, and messages. When I copy you, I am usually expecting you to copy me. In this way, I feel that I am in the loop, even if I never read the copies you send me.

Americans talk a great deal about being “open” and “accessible”, and “exchanging” information and ideas. Because of this, we expect openness and accessibility – or at least the appearance of it – in others. We are slightly suspicious of the person – American or not – who withholds information or who appears to withdraw or stand off from the flow of communication at work.

The importance of friendliness – “Have a great day!”

In an earlier chapter, we noted how many non-Americans, yourself perhaps included, perceive Americans as “friendly” or “chatty” and “superficial”. This characteristic – however one judges it – finds its constant and continual expression in American business (and other) communication in the friendly, or even buoyant tone of daily speech.

There is of course much other communication that is angry, blunt, or aggressive, depending on the situation and the relationship. But – as we noted in Chapter 4 and will re-emphasize here – a certain degree of friendliness is important to Americans for several reasons. First, it is inclusive. Unlike people from other cultures, for example India or China, Americans do not vary their interpersonal approach much when talking with friends and family, compared to talking with a business colleague, hotel clerk, or customer. Remember Michelle, our friendly “server” in Chapter 4?

Second, a degree of friendliness puts everyone on an equal social level. That does not mean that everyone has the same importance in a given business situation, but the appearance of equality is vital.

Finally, to an American, a friendly tone conveys the right degree of personal interest, and the right amount of social distance (or closeness) between individuals, to allow a relationship to develop. The opposite of friendliness is this context is not unfriendliness or hostility, but coldness and indifference. We Americans are often uncomfortable when faced with someone who smiles little, stands or sits too far away, shakes hands weakly, or appears otherwise expressionless. The handshakes, smiles, first names, and friendly greetings are an American’s way of saying, “By appearing to like you in this way, I show that I am willing to see if we can do business together.”

Do not confuse this friendliness with a desire on the part of your American “friend” to get to know you “as a person” on some deeper level. Remember above all that your business relationship with an American customer, supplier, or colleague will be based on the business you can do together, not on how well you get to know each other.

Feedback and participative listening

What was it that caused the English woman to be somewhat put off by her colleague’s short conversational interjections? The conversation was certainly friendly and the two women spoke the same language, but something just did not fit. The English woman’s expectations of appropriate expressions of interest in a conversation clearly did not include those bits of speech coming from her “listener”. And yet, most Americans in her position would not have been at all disconcerted by all that “feedback”. They would have taken it as the common expression of polite interest that it was – in the American comfort zone – and would not have let it disrupt the flow of thought or talk.

As always, we must be cautious when generalizing about people’s conversational and listening habits. These are expressions of individual personality, and so vary greatly from person to person. They may also vary from men to women. There are also some regional variations in this in the USA, between northeast and southwest. Furthermore, as strangers get to know and trust each other over time, they settle into a mutually comfortable style of taking turns in the conversation, and adapt to each other’s way of speaking.

We do know, however, that groups of people differ in what is common and accepted conversational style. At the beginning of a relationship, as our little incident above shows, these differences can cause some discomfort. Because Americans are used to more of this “back-chat” in conversation, they may react negatively to those who do not provide this. German or Japanese people, for example, rarely exhibit this reflex. As a result, Americans sometimes perceive them as impassive, cold, or disinterested. When the lack of “feedback” from one participant is followed by silence when it is their turn, an American may experience some anxiety. Silence means uncertainty.

Many Americans in business have been trained in techniques of “active listening” – the techniques whereby a listener actively responds to a speaker at various times in a conversation with prompting (”Tell me more about your requirements. . .”) or paraphrasing (”So what you’re saying is that user testing will take at least three months. . .”).

These are, of course, useful strategies, and by no means unique to the USA. We Americans may not always practise them, but we are used to them and are comfortable with a conversation style involving feedback from our listener(s). This applies not only to situations of one-to-one communication, but extends as well to more formal situations of presentations or conferences involving a group. A certain degree of participative listening and questioning, for clarification or to obtain more information, is expected.

But not every kind of listener or audience response is welcome to American ears. We are less comfortable with people whose feedback takes the form of quick and repeated “interruptions” to make a point or argue. We often find these characteristics in people from southern Europe, such as the French, Spanish, and Italians, as well as in some people from South and Central America.

Eye contact

A degree of direct eye contact is expected by Americans in both formal and informal dialogue. We are comfortable with more eye contact than are many people from the Philippines or Japan, and with less than many Arabs might be. Too little eye contact, and we may perceive the speaker or listener as hiding something or lacking in confidence; too much and we expect a challenge.

So what is “too much” or “too little”? That is impossible to measure, and as always individuals differ. There is no firm rule for getting this correct in your dealings with Americans. What we can say is if you are comfortable with a lot of eye contact, maintain that habit. If in your culture less eye contact seems more polite, try to make a bit more when addressing Americans. If that is difficult for you you can try looking at the other person’s forehead or nose. In any case, do not constantly or continually look away or down.

Body language

What about physical contact – touching? You may have in your mind an image – or experience – of the back-slapping handshaking Yank. Although it may be exaggerated, there is a grain of truth in that impression. A friendly and constructive business conversation may conclude with a long handshake with the right, while the left hand is on your shoulder. Or your American friend may put his hand on your shoulder as you are about to part. If you’re English, Indonesian, or Japanese this may seem excessive, but it is a way that Americans reaffirm the essentially friendly nature of your meeting. These gestures, however, are not signals of agreement.

You must also bear in mind that American women will not offer or expect the same degree of contact. A handshake of greeting, and one of good-bye are appropriate, nothing more.

How close should you sit or stand when conversing with an American? Here again different habits are found in different cultures. The American physical comfort zone for one-to-one conversation is around a meter to a meter and a half – the width of a desk with chairs, or a restaurant table.(4) Further away than that, and your American friend wonders if you really want to talk to him; closer than that and you are “in his face” – too intimate or too challenging. You cannot, of course, be expected to measure that distance in an actual situation; you will judge it for yourself. Indeed the physical environment of your interaction will influence how close you can or need to be to each other to be comfortable and to be heard.

“But I’m not like that!”

You may be asking yourself at this point, “Do I have to act like an American to communicate effectively with Americans?” The answer in this case is – partly. It is true that many of the elements of our own conversational style are so habitual, instinctive, and reflexive that changing them is difficult. Yet we are capable of modifying our style if we need to; within our own cultures each of us has learned to adapt our style when we are communicating with certain people or to meet certain needs.