"I don’t like him. He’s rude."
That was the recurring chatter circulating around the office regarding our newest hire, a talented IT specialist recruited from Ankara, in my native Turkey.
Dismayed as I was to hear this initial assessment, I was not entirely surprised by the friction. The person who made the remark was American—embodying precisely the sort of eternally upbeat, outgoing demeanor upon which the country’s cultural reputation is built. Our new hire, on the other hand, presented a stark contrast. He was introverted, subdued, and strictly professional. While he was unfailingly polite, he was simply not overly focused on the casual pleasantries that often characterize everyday interactions in American offices.
What was happening in that moment was not a fundamental clash of personalities as much as it was a collision of cultural norms. I experienced this exact phenomenon firsthand when I first moved to the United States. Initially, the omnipresent friendliness of the people around me was almost unnerving. It took me a considerable amount of time to realize that this cultural friendliness was not fake, but neither was it equivalent to deep personal closeness.
In American social dynamics, people will frequently ask how you are doing, genuinely mean it for the few fleeting seconds it takes to give a standard response, and then seamlessly move on with their day. In contrast, cultural communication in Turkey operates differently: you typically do not ask how someone is doing unless you have the time and availability to actually hear, process, and engage with the answer. It took time for me to understand these subtle distinctions, decode the unspoken rules of engagement, and ultimately adapt to them.
At Jotform, our organization maintains physical offices distributed across five different countries, and even within those specific locations, our operational teams are incredibly diverse. Our organizational strength fundamentally derives from these differing backgrounds, varied life experiences, and unique perspectives. However, this same diversity can occasionally lead to moments of friction, much like the misunderstanding that occurred with our new IT hire. As leaders navigating the complexities of global business, it is incumbent upon us to build a robust corporate culture that actively leverages these cultural differences rather than suffering from the inevitable misunderstandings they can cause.
Hiring Open-Minded People
Hiring is one of the critical business areas that I resolutely refuse to delegate completely to human resources or recruiting agencies. For
our organization, it remains simply too important to hand off entirely. By the time our hiring managers have successfully narrowed the candidate field down to a final handful of applicants for a specific open position, it is generally clear that any one of them possesses the baseline technical qualifications and professional competencies needed to do the job well. But when it comes time to make the crucial final hiring decision, my objective is to look deeper and understand how candidates fundamentally think.
One of the most vital qualities I always look for during this evaluation process is open-mindedness.
Open-minded individuals do not operate under the assumption that their default way of thinking or viewing the world is automatically the correct one. When a new situation collides with their pre-existing perspective, they do not reflexively dismiss it. Instead, they exhibit genuine curiosity and want to know more about alternative viewpoints.
To uncover this trait during interviews, I like to ask candidates to tell me about a specific time they were proven wrong in a professional or personal setting. How they handle that question is telling. Do they become defensive and attempt to shift the blame to others, or do they thoughtfully walk me through the situation and explain what ultimately changed their mind? The answer to that question provides valuable insight into whether they will bring that same intellectual flexibility and grace to a teammate who approaches problems differently than expected.
Getting Your Teams Together
There are several pragmatic reasons why I strongly advocate for having our teams work together in an office environment, not the least of which is that fully remote workers tend to struggle significantly more with isolation, chronic stress, and professional burnout than onsite workers, often experiencing lower overall well-being.
That phenomenon is driven in part by how much is lost when human beings interact exclusively through digital screens. Nonverbal communication, including physical body language, facial expressions, and vocal tone, makes up the vast majority of how we present ourselves and interpret intentions, much of which gets completely flattened out in digital communication formats. If you recall the distinct feeling of emptiness, detachment, and profound exhaustion that frequently accompanied pandemic-era online happy hours or virtual team-building exercises, you understand precisely what I am describing.
At our company, we address this by hosting what we call Jotformers Week, an annual event in which employees from nearly two dozen countries gather together in person for several days of genuine camaraderie. Because no one appreciates mandatory, forced fun, we actively survey participants beforehand to ask what would make the experience truly meaningful for them, ensuring everyone has a direct voice in how the shared time is structured and spent.
These in-person retreats build a deep sense of organizational cohesion, helping to fill in the communication gaps that physical time and geographical distance inevitably create. A professional tone that previously seemed cold or curt over Slack messaging gets naturally clarified over a shared dinner. A moment of silence in a meeting that may have once seemed like passive-aggressive disagreement turns out to simply be the way a colleague pauses to thoughtfully gather their thoughts. For example, our American team quickly discovered that our new Turkish IT hire only appeared stern at first glance; he actually possesses a quietly wicked sense of humor that regularly leaves the entire group in stitches.
Making the financial and logistical investment to prioritize in-person team building is certainly a significant corporate expense. But having your global employees feel genuinely connected to one another, even when separated by vast oceans? That outcome is ultimately priceless.
Leave Less Room for Interpretation
In the absence of clear information, people will inevitably make up their own narratives. Ambiguity tends to breed misunderstandings, which can quickly erode the foundational culture you have worked so hard to establish within your organization.
Effective leaders do not leave room for misinterpretation. It is essential to write down explicitly what your company stands for and ensure that every employee sees and understands those principles. These core values should be reinforced regularly in visible, public forums such as company-wide newsletters and recurring all-hands meetings.
Furthermore, leadership must remain exceptionally clear regarding operational expectations. At Jotform, I actively encourage employees to completely sign off from work duties during nights and weekends. When team members take scheduled paid time off, I explicitly instruct them to delete workplace applications like Slack from their mobile devices and truly take the necessary time to refresh and recharge. This approach ensures no one has to spend their precious family vacation stressing or second-guessing whether they are expected to covertly check in—they already have a definitive answer, requiring no interpretation or guesswork.
Not only does this deliberate practice foster a profound sense of psychological safety throughout the workplace, but it also closes the operational gaps where cultural misunderstandings tend to take root. The rule is simply the rule, applied transparently and identically for everyone reading it.
Misunderstandings are bound to happen from time to time, particularly within organizations that embrace culturally diverse teams. Effective leaders actively encourage their employees to approach these differences with intellectual curiosity, create meaningful opportunities for authentic team-building, and systematically reduce ambiguity across every level of the enterprise.
