After nearly 1,500 hours working across Asia, I learned a counterintuitive truth: communication is not about clarity alone—it’s about context, restraint, and cultural intelligence. These were not easy lessons. In fact, they were among the hardest I’ve ever learned.

Some of my most influential teachers were not in classrooms:

• Khun Som in Bangkok taught me how much can be communicated through evasion—and how silence can speak volumes.

• Miyazaki in Osaka showed me that in certain cultures, giving the right answer takes years, and until then, silence is wisdom, not avoidance.

• Emma in Malaysia and Felipe in the Philippines taught me that some topics are best left untouched—so that communication itself can continue.

• Ji in Shanghai helped me understand how what we label as “lying” can, in context, be a deeper form of truth-telling.

• Igor in Moscow made it clear that when the arguing stops, the relationship—not the debate—has ended.

Across Asia, something remarkable happened: people understood how different I was—and never tried to change me. We didn’t communicate despite our differences; we thrived because of them.

My frustration begins elsewhere.

When communicating with some Americans (not all), I often sense an expectation to conform: to speak the same way, think the same way, value the same forms of directness. At times it feels as though the message is: be like us, and then we can communicate. I am acutely aware of this, perhaps because although I was born in North America, and have lived in the Middle East for 56 years. I sound like a North American, but when you scratch a bit, accent aside,  my roots are not that evident.

Perhaps that’s just my perception in talking with Americans—but it often feels as if true dialogue is postponed until one has “outgrown” their cultural instincts.

Organizational development consultants must practice humility. The world is not populated by one communication style. It is full of Soms, Miyazakis, Allons, Pierres, and Hans—many of whom find the efficiency, sterility, hyper-directness, and occasional face-losing tendencies of U.S. communication deeply uncomfortable.

Alignment comes from learning to sit down with a certain amount of discomfort—and listen anyway.