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Five variables FMs needs to consider for effective contract negotiation.

The FM industry in the region is projected to skyrocket in the next five years as today's designed projects are quickly becoming tomorrow's built ones.

From pest control and interior furnishings to labour shortages, executive searches and financial asset management, all of these services become available to organisations only after successfully negotiating a contract between the players.

As Middle Eastern cities continue to expand and lure professionals from every corner of the globe, a solid understanding of how to recognise cultural differences and understand differing value systems is paramount when negotiating across cultures.

In the Arabic world, for example, never show the sole of your shoe to anyone or attempt to shake hands by offering your left; and always look directly and intently into a French associate's eye when making an important point.

A signed contract in China represents the beginning of a relationship, not the finality of a business deal; while negotiators in Russia should be prepared to dress formally for meetings and offer their own toast to friendship and cooperation.

Touching the side of one's nose in Italy is a sign of distrust; while putting away a host's business card before the end of the meeting in Japan is a sign of disrespect.

These examples offer a small glimpse into how behaviours that can seem perfectly natural in one culture, become causes for offence in others. Cultural factors inevitiably affect behaviour and thus, the direction of business, so some degree of cultural understanding is crucial for FMs hoping to demonstrate respect, enhance cameraderie, strengthen communications and avoid giving offence.

To that end, FMME looks at the five most important variables for FMs to consider before entering the negotiating room.

Time orientation

Without getting too technical, the world consists of cultures that are monochronic and polychronic. Put simply, different cultures approach the concept of time differently.

According to Michelle LeBaron, director of the dispute resolution program at the University of British Columbia (Canada), if monochronic cultures approach time as linear and sequential, polychronic ones see time as involving simultaneous occurrences of many things and the involvement of many people.

Generally speaking, monochronic cultures tend to be the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, where Mediterranean and Latin cultures as well as some Middle Eastern and African cultures tend to be polychronic.

Negotiators from polychronic cultures tend to start and stop meetings at flexible times, be comfortable with a high flow of information, read each others' thoughts and sometimes talk over one another. Monochronic negotiators, on the other hand, prefer prompt beginnings and endings, address one item at a time, rely on explicit communication, talk in sequence and view lateness as disrespectful.

Space orientation

According to John Paul Lederach, professor of international peacebuilding at the Unversity of Notre Dame (US), space orientation includes everything from divisions between private and public space, to comfortable personal distance, to attitude toward physical contact and expectations about where and how contact will occur.

A German or Swedish person, for example, might think Italians or Greeks get too close; an American businessman might be offended by Indian or Mediterranean men holding hands; a Japanese negotiator might be put off by Middle Eastern men looking to kiss them on the cheek as a form of greeting.

Space orientation also relates to comfort with eye contact and attributions related to eye contact or lack thereof, explains LeBaron.

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