The more I work internationally, the less I believe in universal communication rules.
What feels emotionally healthy, respectful, professional, or even “obvious” is shaped by culture, often without either person realising it. Many coaching and therapeutic conversations still happen through the practitioner’s own cultural default settings.
Coaching, and therapy too, often has a Western foundation by default, because it assumes ideas like individuality, emotional openness, direct communication, self-prioritisation, and independent decision-making are universal values. As professionals, we need to stay aware not only of our own cultural biases, but also of the assumptions built into the practices, frameworks, and methodologies we use.
One of the clearest examples of this is the relationship with authority itself.
How Cultural Background Shapes the Client-Practitioner Relationship
In coaching spaces especially, we often talk about partnership, equality, and adult-to-adult dynamics. Ideally, that’s the goal. But many clients still see the practitioner as the expert, the authority figure, or someone whose opinion should not be openly questioned, and depending on cultural background, that dynamic can be strong.
In many Middle Eastern, Asian, Eastern European, or Latin American cultures, respect toward authority figures may be instilled from childhood. Challenging a teacher, disagreeing openly with a specialist, or questioning expertise can feel disrespectful or inappropriate.
So a client may nod and say, “Yes, that makes sense,” not because they agree, but because disagreeing directly with the professional in front of them feels culturally unnatural. A coach or therapist from a more egalitarian culture, such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, or Canada, may read that same response as alignment or commitment to action. Both people leave the session believing the conversation was clear, while holding completely different understandings of what happened.
After working with clients from more than 35 countries, and living across multiple cultural environments myself, I’ve noticed that cross-cultural work is rarely about language alone. It’s about meaning. The same behaviour, decision, reaction, or emotional response can carry different implications depending on the cultural context behind it.
Here are five of the most common mistakes I see practitioners make when working across cultures.
1. Mistaking Your Cultural Defaults for Objectivity
Coming from a Russian background, I grew up with a communication style where directness was associated with honesty and respect: say what you mean, be clear, don’t waste people’s time.
When I started working in Latin America, I quickly realised that what felt respectful and efficient to me didn’t always land the same way. I often heard that I was too cold, too aggressive, or too blunt, when from my perspective I thought I was simply being transparent and professional.
I still remember presenting a project idea early in my career in Nicaragua and hearing, “Hm, I think that might be difficult.” In my mind, difficult meant challenging but possible, so I kept trying to convince the person: proposing solutions, clarifying my reasoning, reassuring them I could handle the risks. Only later did I understand that this was the no. Nobody had told me that in many Latin American cultures, preserving harmony and avoiding direct confrontation can matter more than explicit clarity.
This happens constantly in coaching and therapy. A German or Dutch client may appreciate direct challenge and feedback. A Japanese or Colombian client may experience that same communication style as emotionally harsh or confrontational. Directness may be read as aggression, indirectness as avoidance, emotional restraint as disconnection, while both practitioner and client believe they are being clear and respectful.
2. Forgetting That Decisions Don’t Happen in a Vacuum
Practitioners often underestimate how much culture shapes decision-making itself, not just communication.
Take relationships and divorce as an example. In many Western societies, conversations about marriage centre on individual fulfilment, including:
- happiness
- emotional support
- compatibility
- personal growth
- intimacy and sex
- respect
- love and romantic connection
Divorce, while painful, is generally seen as a socially acceptable option once a relationship no longer feels aligned.
Apply that same framework to a client from a more collectivist background, for example parts of India or the Middle East, and the situation can become far more layered. For some clients, divorce may involve:
- family shame
- loss of community
- social isolation
- religious implications
- financial dependency
- impact on extended family systems
- loss of identity or belonging
The decision is no longer only about the romantic relationship. This is where practitioners need to be careful not to unconsciously project their own assumptions about autonomy, freedom, boundaries, family roles, or “healthy choices.” What sounds obvious through one cultural lens can be far more complicated through another.
3. Misunderstanding Different Relationships With Time
Time is another cultural continuum that shows up constantly in international work.
For one person, “the session starts at 5pm” means being connected by 4:59. For another, especially in cultures where relationships and flexibility are prioritised over rigid scheduling, arriving within the first five or ten minutes may still feel on time. Neither side necessarily sees themselves as disrespectful; they simply hold different internal relationships with time, structure, and urgency.
I experienced this constantly while adapting from a more structured Russian environment into Latin American cultures such as Colombia and Nicaragua, where relational flow often mattered more than punctuality. It shows up everywhere: coaching sessions, business meetings, deadlines, follow-ups, and communication expectations generally.
This goes beyond scheduling. Cultures also differ in their relationship with long-term planning, life structure, and the invisible “shoulds” around life paths. Some cultures hold a linear view of how life should unfold: education, career, marriage, children, stability, retirement, often with strong pressure around age milestones. Others take a more flexible, present-oriented approach, where relationships and circumstances shape decisions organically over time.
That affects how clients relate to goal-setting, career decisions, uncertainty, timelines, and what “falling behind” or success even means. Without awareness of these cultural relationships with time, it becomes easy for practitioners to project their own assumptions about what a healthy pace of life should look like, which matters because even small moments around timing and pacing influence a client’s sense of emotional safety and trust.
4. Assuming Trust Is Built the Same Way Everywhere
Some clients need structure to feel safe: how many sessions will we have, what’s the framework, what are the goals, how will we measure progress, what happens next. For clients from cultures such as Germany, Switzerland, or Russia, clarity and predictability often create trust and a sense of professionalism.
For other clients, especially from more relationship-oriented cultures like Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Colombia, or parts of the Middle East, that same level of structure can feel clinical, rigid, or unnecessarily limiting. They may prefer flexibility, conversational flow, relational warmth, and trust that builds through human connection first.
I’ve noticed this particularly while working across cultures where people often enter relationships with a relatively high initial trust baseline, which develops organically over time. Clients from other backgrounds may need more structure, predictability, and explicit agreements before relaxing into the process and leaning into vulnerability.
Neither approach is wrong, but if practitioners only know how to build trust one way, they may unintentionally alienate clients whose relational expectations are different.
5. Confusing Cultural Conditioning With Psychological Patterns
Not everything that looks “off” through one cultural lens is unhealthy or dysfunctional. Not everything is avoidance, poor boundaries, emotional unavailability, people-pleasing, insecurity, resistance, or a lack of self-awareness. Sometimes people are simply operating from a different cultural rulebook.
In cultures such as Japan, Korea, and many Middle Eastern and Latin American countries, disagreement is often softened, authority is not openly challenged, and harmony in the moment can matter more than direct expression. In cultures such as the US, Australia, or the Netherlands, direct emotional articulation may be read as a sign of emotional health and confidence. Neither is universally better; they are different cultural models of functioning.
Without awareness of these continuums, it’s easy for a practitioner to overinterpret or misread behaviour. This is why curiosity matters more than assumption. Questions like these often reveal more than immediate interpretation ever could:
- What feels respectful to you?
- How are difficult conversations usually handled in your environment?
- What communication style feels supportive?
- How is trust usually built in relationships where you come from?
- What would feel uncomfortable or inappropriate for you in this process?
The Cultural Layer Practitioners Often Miss
One of the most important skills for professionals working internationally is learning to distinguish how much of what they’re seeing is about the client as an individual, and how much is connected to cultural background, adaptation, or the context the person is currently living in.
For clients who work in international teams, live outside their home country, or navigate multicultural environments daily, ordinary situations can carry an extra layer of cultural tension underneath. A conflict with a manager may not only be about communication skills, but also different expectations around hierarchy or feedback. Difficulty building relationships at work may not simply be social anxiety, but exhaustion from constantly translating yourself culturally and emotionally. Feeling disconnected, overly emotional, withdrawn, or less confident than before may have less to do with personality and more to do with operating somewhere the social rules no longer feel intuitive.
This is where cross-cultural awareness in coaching and therapy becomes valuable: not only to help practitioners avoid misinterpretation, but to help clients name the cultural layer of what they’re experiencing. Sometimes the moment someone realises, “maybe I’m not broken, maybe I’m navigating two systems at once,” something starts to make more sense.
Final Thoughts
Cross-cultural work requires more than a few cultural dos and don’ts. It requires humility, because the further you work internationally, the more visible your own idea of “normal” becomes.
One of the most useful things a practitioner can do before working with a client from a different cultural background is spend time exploring cultural frameworks, not to stereotype people, but to notice potential blind spots in your own interpretations. A few resources worth exploring:
- The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
- Hofstede Cultural Dimensions
- The Lewis Model
- Edward Hall’s High-Context vs Low-Context Cultures
- Dancing Between Cultures by Tina Stoltzfus Horst
The more culturally aware practitioners become, the easier it is to distinguish between psychological patterns and cultural conditioning. Culture doesn’t only shape how people communicate; it shapes what communication, trust, vulnerability, boundaries, conflict, authority, and healing are supposed to look like in the first place.
If you’re looking for a therapist who understands the cultural layer of what you’re navigating, you can explore therapists on It’s Complicated or use the matching service to be paired with someone suited to your background and needs.
Alexandra Popkova is a Leadership Coach and Somatic Coach based in Bogotá, Colombia, working with clients from more than 35 countries. Her focus is cross-cultural communication, trust, and decision-making, drawing on ICF-certified coaching training, somatic work, and organisational development experience. Find Alexandra on It’s Complicated.
