The quarterly review meeting was going well until it wasn’t.
Thomas, the German engineering lead, had been listening carefully to Sarah’s proposal for restructuring the testing protocol. She’d spent three weeks on it. She’d consulted with teams on both sides of the Atlantic. She was proud of the work.
Thomas raised his hand. “The logic in section three doesn’t hold. You’re assuming a failure rate based on last year’s data, but the supplier changed in January. The numbers aren’t comparable. And the timeline you’ve proposed—it isn’t realistic given current capacity.”
He said it calmly, clearly, looking at the slides, not at Sarah. For Thomas, this was a straightforward professional observation. The analysis had a gap. He named it. That’s what colleagues do.
Sarah’s face changed. A tightening around the eyes. A slight pull back in the chair. She responded carefully: “Thank you for that feedback, Thomas. I’ll take another look.”
The meeting continued, but something had shifted. Sarah said little for the remaining forty minutes. Afterward, she went directly to her office and closed the door.
Thomas noticed nothing unusual. He’d raised a valid concern about a proposal. That’s what meetings are for.
That evening, Sarah called a colleague in Chicago.
“He tore my proposal apart in front of everyone.”
“What did he say?”
“That my logic didn’t hold. That my timeline wasn’t realistic. In front of the whole team.”
“That’s rough.”
“Three weeks of work, and he just dismissed it.”
Her colleague asked the question Americans always ask: “Do you think it was personal?”
Of course it was personal. It was her proposal. Her analysis. Her timeline. Saying the work was flawed was saying she was flawed. That’s how it works. You don’t get to separate the dancer from the dance.
The next morning, Thomas stopped by Sarah’s office. He wanted to discuss a related technical question. Sarah was polite but clipped. Short answers. No eye contact. He left confused.
Over the following two weeks, their communication thinned. Emails instead of calls. Brief replies. Sarah rerouted two questions through a mutual colleague rather than going to Thomas directly.
Thomas mentioned it to a German colleague. “Sarah seems off. I don’t know what happened.”
“Did you criticize her work in the review meeting?”
“I pointed out a problem with her analysis. It was a factual issue.”
“In front of the team?”
“Yes, in the meeting. Where else would I raise it?”
His colleague, who had worked with Americans for years, exhaled slowly. “Thomas. For her, that wasn’t about the analysis. That was about her.”
Thomas stared. “That’s not what I said.”
“It doesn’t matter what you said. It matters what she heard.”
Two different logics were operating in that meeting room.
In Germany, the professional and the personal are separate. You can argue vigorously about work—about proposals, decisions, quality—without it touching the relationship. In fact, engaging critically with someone’s work is a sign of respect. It means you take them seriously enough to be honest.
Holding back criticism would be patronizing. Germans can debate fiercely in a meeting, then go to dinner together as if nothing happened. Because, from their perspective, nothing did happen—not to the relationship. The debate was about the work.
In America, the professional and the personal are linked. A critique of your proposal is a critique of your judgment. A critique of your analysis is a critique of your competence. You and your work are not separate entities. To say the work is flawed is to say the person behind it fell short. And in the American business context, falling short has consequences—for reputation, for advancement, for standing among peers.
This linkage means that criticism must be delivered carefully. Diplomatically. With attention to tone, timing, and setting. Not because Americans can’t handle the truth, but because the truth, delivered bluntly, damages something Americans consider essential: the working relationship.
Thomas didn’t attack Sarah. He didn’t intend to. He addressed a factual problem in a proposal during a meeting designed for exactly that purpose. In a room full of German colleagues, his comment would have prompted a productive back-and-forth. Sarah would have defended her assumptions. Thomas would have challenged them. They would have arrived at a better solution. Then gone to lunch.
But the room wasn’t full of German colleagues. And Sarah didn’t hear a factual observation. She heard a public judgment of her professional competence. She responded the way Americans often do: she withdrew. Quietly. Without explaining why.
Thomas will spend weeks wondering what went wrong. Sarah will spend weeks avoiding him. The testing protocol that brought them together will now keep them apart. And the real cause—a cultural difference in how criticism functions—may never surface.
Unless someone names it.
To Germans: your directness is a strength. Keep it. But understand that for your American colleagues, work and self are connected. Critique the work carefully, and you keep the person. Critique it bluntly, and you may lose them—not because they’re weak, but because their cultural logic links the two.
To Americans: not every critique is an attack. When a German colleague challenges your work, they are engaging with your ideas—not diminishing your worth. If you can learn to separate the two, even partially, you’ll discover something valuable: a colleague who will always tell you the truth about your work. That’s rarer than you think.
Thomas said: “That’s not what I said.”
He was right. But it didn’t matter. Because what Sarah heard was something else entirely. And in cross-cultural collaboration, what is heard matters as much as what is said.
Based on my analysis. Written by Claude (Anthropic).