Maryna Starodubska is an adjunct professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, a consultant on management and cross-cultural interaction, and the author of the book “Understanding Ukrainians: Cross-Cultural Perspective.” In her column for Yellow Blue, Starodubska discusses five common mistakes Ukrainians make when working with multicultural teams and explains how cultural differences affect collaboration, decision-making, and productivity.
Imagine a work meeting with a team from different countries. A Ukrainian woman disagrees with her manager’s decision and suggests her own; to her, this means being engaged in the issue. A Japanese colleague quietly takes notes and never once speaks up; to him, this is a form of respect. An employee from southern Italy speaks in a raised voice, and this is how he shows engagement. Each of them interprets the outcome of the meeting differently, because each sees it through the lens of their own culture. This ends up affecting the team’s results and productivity.
National culture (mentality) is a stable construct. It forms in childhood and cannot be changed through willpower or a company’s organizational policies. For example, the most important value for Ukrainians is freedom, according to 90.7 percent of participants in the 2023 study “Values and Rights of Importance for Ukrainians in Times of War,” conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation together with the ZMINA Human Rights Center.
This also affects our behavior in cross-cultural interactions. Time and again, we try to change things in colleagues or clients that we need to accept as a given, and to find approaches rather than remake people. Here are the five missteps Ukrainians most often run into in multicultural collaboration.
Misstep No. 1. We ignore rules we consider “unimportant”
Ukraine is a relationship-oriented culture. We tend to bend the rules for the “right people” and an “important result,” and to let small slips slide for high performers. Not everyone operates this way. In the United States or Australia, most rules are impersonal and mandatory, and the approach is “nothing personal, just business.” The same applies to the habit of taking on “someone else’s work.” In Ukrainian companies, this is more likely to be seen as a virtue and a sign of commitment, while in English-speaking, German-speaking, Baltic, and Nordic cultures and in the Netherlands, it is considered bad form and “encroaching on another’s territory.” In Asia and Africa, it is customary to do only what your boss has assigned. Picking up an “unclaimed” task is seen as a violation rather than a show of initiative.
I once encountered this in my own practice: a Ukrainian development team was working on a project for an American retailer. After IT budgets were reallocated, the project was transferred to an Indian team, which formally took the lead. The Indian colleagues began assigning tasks to the Ukrainians and adjusting their work, but the Ukrainians continued to insist on their own approach: “We know better from experience.” The Indian team saw this as an unwillingness to work and complained to headquarters. In fact, the American retailer’s decision meant only one thing: the Indian team was now managing the project, while the Ukrainian team was supporting the processes and carrying out tasks. The Ukrainians ignored this. In the end, productivity suffered, and the project took longer to complete.
Misstep No. 2. We compromise the quality of decisions for the sake of speed
For the sake of results “here and now,” Ukrainians are often willing to tolerate inaccuracies and disruptions and to postpone approvals from other teams involved in a project, only to lose the time they saved at the start to those very approvals. But it does not work this way everywhere. In Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Latvia, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland, for example, employees are expected to maintain a steady pace without sacrificing reliability or accuracy.
Cultures also differ in how they view follow-up questions about the work. In Ukraine, it is considered normal to ask something verbally, but in many other cultures such questions must also be put in writing, while in some they are not welcome at all. In Estonia, Norway, and the Czech Republic, tasks are expected to be handled in one step; additional discussions will only hurt the impression you make. In China, Korea, India, the UAE, Egypt, and Japan, attempts to discuss or “add context” to tasks that are already being worked on may even cost you your reputation.
Misstep No. 3. We speak too confrontationally and bluntly
Ukrainians value sincerity and often see direct disagreement or criticism as the highest expression of trust. The problem is that “direct” is not the same as “confrontational.” There are cultures where the two go together (they are a minority), and others with only one of the two. The dignity, honor, and face framework, which describes culturally rooted behavior in conflict, can help here.
- In “dignity” cultures, the problem is separated from the person, so in the United States, Britain, and Australia, impersonal directness is appropriate. In Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, mistakes are discussed as “lessons learned,” without value judgments or making things personal. The moment directness shifts toward “what I personally think of you,” it is immediately read as confrontation.
- In “face” cultures (China, Japan, India, Malaysia), a person is inseparable from their actions, so open criticism causes deep shame, and mistakes are concealed until the last possible moment. The kind of directness Ukrainians are used to is read there as rudeness, while phrases such as “we will try,” “we have a few questions about the plan,” or even “yes” may mean a polite refusal, but Ukrainians do not pick up on it.
- In “honor” cultures (Latin America, Southern Europe, Africa, except South Africa), employees are prepared for open discussion, but without sarcasm or accusations and only within a trusted circle. In Brazil, Colombia, or Argentina, the kind of “postmortem” we are used to conducting in front of ten people will cause serious problems in future interactions. And in southern Italy and most regions of Spain, trying to cut short chatter about someone’s vacation will be seen as disrespectful and will result in your emails and requests being ignored.
Misstep No. 4. We fail to consider the appropriate level of emotional expression
There are no cultures where people do not show emotions in a professional context; what differs is the level of expression and what is considered appropriate. In expressive cultures (Italy, Spain, Brazil, Georgia, Mexico, Portugal), a raised voice during a team discussion does not necessarily mean conflict. It can signal: “I care about what we are doing together.” Here, people play with emotion through volume, intonation, and the pace of conversation. In other cultures, the same behavior may mean something entirely different. In Turkey, the UAE, Kazakhstan, Egypt, and India, people may “mirror” your emotional behavior out of politeness. A Ukrainian can easily read this as agreement and then feel offended when the “arrangement” does not work out. Romanians, Poles, and Hungarians, by contrast, may hold back their emotions until they feel they can trust you, and then expect warmth and emotional engagement rather than purely formal communication. In moderately emotional cultures (Israel, Ireland, Australia, France), warmth and light humor can be a way of getting a point across. So when we push too hard or raise the “temperature” of our demands, it is read as aggression.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are neutral cultures, where emotions at work are mostly restrained. This makes it easy to mistake the composure of Japanese, Chinese, Norwegian, and Finnish colleagues for coldness or detachment. In Germany, genuine emotions are more often shown among friends, while people tend to be restrained at work. In such cultures, flaunting friendships with the right people is considered inappropriate, although in Ukraine this is common. The United States is a story of its own: professional communication there often begins with small talk. Ukrainians can find this confusing. We tend to take the question “How are you?” as a sincere invitation to talk about how things are going, while for Americans it is often simply part of polite interaction.
Misstep No. 5. We expect “initiative” and “pushback” where they are not customary
Ukrainians are used to horizontal interaction, especially when it comes to productivity: for us, a professional arguing with a manager over the substance of a task is normal. The same approach exists in Denmark, Finland, Estonia, and Norway: a professional’s argument matters more than their title, and active discussion “from below” is expected, but without emotional judgments, accusations, or making things personal.
There are also cultures where the distance between manager and subordinate is much greater. In Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Romania, Bulgaria, India, China, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, or Nigeria, for example, openly opposing a manager is simply inappropriate. So when we expect “initiative,” “bottom-up decisions,” or direct “pushback” from teams in such countries and get silence instead, it is easy to read it as passivity. In reality, confrontational behavior is simply not part of their cultural norms. Openly disagreeing with a manager is considered normal in only a few cultures, among them Israel, Ukraine, and Hungary. In Denmark, Norway, Britain, Germany, Austria, Finland, and Estonia, open disagreement is also possible, but only when based on facts, arguments, and figures, without emotion or making things personal.
None of these missteps are about us being “wrong” or them being “strange.” They are all about the “water that fish cannot see,” to borrow a phrase from cross-cultural expert Richard Lewis.
Culturally rooted patterns of behavior run so deep that we do not notice them until they begin to slow down teamwork. So it is worth treating cross-cultural interaction skills as a set of keys to doors we previously tried to force our way through. Getting a team aligned is work that comes before carrying out tasks and achieving targets. Invest in it, and productivity will not be far behind.
