“When things don’t go as planned, Italians want to modify their plan at the last moment”
David Trickey is a senior partner and co-founder of TCO International. The company is located in both the UK and Italy, and focuses on change management at an individual, team and organizational level. He has lived in Italy since 1980 and currently lives in Turin.
Does Italy still have strong local identities rather than a national one? Apart from when the national football team is winning, there is generally not a strong sense of Italian identity. People still have a strong local identity. Regionalism is very strong and people often have a strong sense of their roots. They have a network in their home environment and their family unit is still very closely linked together. From an intercultural perspective, Italy is a relatively high-context culture, in which people rely on friendship and extended family networks in order to get things done.
Can most Italians communicate well in English?
The younger generation has developed a reasonable level of competence and confidence in English. I don’t think as many people get to the level of English mastery people acquire in places like Germany. People also believe they can just get by. This is part of the Italian cultural assumption that they can improvise — do quite a lot with very little. They have a strong belief that they are very communicative, very relationshiporiented. They believe they don’t necessarily need to focus on textual accuracy. What they need to get across is their commitment and enthusiasm.
Generally, however, if you’re talking to people working for multinationals in Italy, you can almost always have a discussion in English. Where Italian becomes useful is in coffee-machine conversations. These “offline conversations” are important. The negotiating table is maybe where northern Europeans think the deal is done but, fundamentally, Italians are looking also at wider issues, such as: “How much can I trust you?” and “Who do we have in common?” This kind of conversation happens offline. Always accept a coffee, and always accept an invitation to lunch or dinner, because in those informal moments, you’re going to provide many — not all — Italians with what they need to trust you.
How important is food culture?
A couple of months ago, I was involved in a team-building process with a group of Americans visiting Italy. In the evening, we had dinner and the Italian CEO wanted the Americans to have a great experience of Italian food, particularly his local regional food, and we went to the best place in town. The Italians spent most of the evening talking about food: the food that they’ve eaten, how their mother cooks it, recipes and whether the food on the table was up to standard or not. I think the Americans found themselves a bit lost, wondering especially about how long this conversation, this focus on food, would last. It lasted two and a half hours. Yes, Italians have a great fascination with food. Are Italians generally direct communicators?
When I first came to Italy and ordered coffee in a crowded bar, I’d try to form a queue. You shouldn’t do that. In my broken Italian, I would say, “Excuse me, I was wondering if you could get me a coffee when it’s convenient for you?” They thought I was taking the mickey. You can go to an Italian bar and say: Un caffè! For most Brits, that would be considered a bit pushy and rude. In the UK, the politeness needs to be actually stated, otherwise it’s not there. For Italians, politeness is in the context, and the context is the relationship between the customer and the barman.
Italians are famous for being excellent waiters. That is because they treat every customer as though they’re special. I did a one-on-one programme in Cambridge with an Italian manager and at the end of the programme, he said: “That was great, David. Do you do that for everyone?” I said, “Yes, of course. We aim for that high standard of quality for everyone.” “Wrong answer!” he said. If you’re dealing with Italians, everything is special, everything is for you, everything is customized for you. You’ve got to make the customer feel special. An important word in Italian is particulare. It means “special” or “particular”. Italy is a highly individualistic culture.
How do Italians deal with the more direct Germans?
We have a simple email activity where we get people to ask for information that has not been provided. A German colleague might write “urgent problem” in the subject line and include
somewhere “to be clear”, because clarity is perhaps a much stronger value in Germany than it is in Italy, where there is an assumption that the world is grey, not black and white. There can be misunderstandings about the need for clarity on the German side, and the need to maintain — and certainly not to damage — the relationship on the Italian side.
When things don’t go as planned, Italians want to modify their plan at the last moment in order to adapt to an evolving context. Italians learn very early to constantly adjust and adapt to what’s happening. The slightly stronger requirement in Germany to reduce anxiety by creating the illusion that you have prepared for the future through a plan causes clashes when there is mutual planning between Italians and Germans.
Is Italy’s reputation for corruption fair? In places like the UK, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, you have a relatively strong sense of trust in institutions — and the belief that rules, processes and procedures are there to help you. In Italy, people are generally allergic to rules, simply because rules historically were introduced by invaders. Even paying taxes was considered paying taxes to the invaders. It was not seen as particularly bad not to pay taxes. It was often considered positive. With a lack of institutional trust in Italy, who do you rely on? Who do you trust? It’s your extended family, the people you have relationships with, your network. Because you favour strong networks above broader universal rules, you’re going to get favouritism to some extent — with the potential for nepotism and corruption.
Compounding Italy’s problems is corruption, with an estimated €150 billion in unpaid taxes in 2018. The European Commission said that in 2014, out of a total of €159.5 billion in lost VAT revenues across the whole of the EU, Italy was responsible for €36.9 billion.
Right-wing populism
A few months after the March 2018 Italian election, the radical right-wing League joined the antiestablishment Five Star Movement (M5S) to form an uneasy coalition government. Ostensibly, the government is led by M5S’S prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, and one of his two deputies, the M5S leader, Luigi Di Maio. In reality, the main driving force is the second deputy prime minister (and interior minister), Matteo Salvini, head of the League.