Every successful business person knows it: building strong relationships in Poland requires you to be aware of your own culture and to be very knowledgeable about the Polish culture if you would like to build good work relations in this country.
At first, Poles can sometimes appear to be over serious and unsmiling until they start opening up, at which point they suddenly start to become amazingly hospitable and friendly people. As you can guess, building these relationships take time and effort, and a lot of face-to-face contact. A human dimension to any deal is important and being caring and approachable is a positive thing when conducting business in Poland. The most important aspects to retain are that Poles are formal and polite, with a strong sense of loyalty and an ability to listen.
What things should be considered when building relationships based on trust and how does the working atmosphere looks like? Well, here you go:
1 Hardworking
Young, educated Poles are generally seen by employers as hard-working, intelligent, loyal and technically competent. Therefore if you want to build great work relationships with Poles, you should always work hard, show your enthusiasm and meet deadlines.
2 Team-player
Poles can and do work well in teams, but have a strong individualistic culture. Poles have a solid sense of individuality and may not naturally fall into the role of a team player who will freely share information with their colleagues and manager. But if you build relationships based on mutual trust (which will take some time for sure), you will have a friendly atmosphere and a work efficient team.
3 Communication style
Poles favor direct communication and may almost seem too direct in some cases, asking personal questions and thus catching their foreign counterparts unaware. Intentions, feelings and opinions are openly expressed. But despite their directness, Poles are often subtle in their communication style. Thoughts are often expressed in an indirect and roundabout way in the expectation that the real meaning will somehow be understood.
To summarize, one who wants to build relationships in Poland must be polite, with good manners, to take into consideration that in the beginning Poles might be closed but later on they will open up. It is also essential to build the trust of your Polish counterpart and as this is essentially a very polite society, missing deadlines is a sign that you lack respect. Therefore you should always consider your time management skills and assure you are on time with our deliverables.
If you want to find out more about building relationship across cultures read this article:
“Building Strong Work Relations Across Cultures”
