As soon as the Chinese were finished talking, the American CEO jumped in and reworked the proposed schedule to include significantly fewer family and cultural events and more time to talk numbers. The Chinese politely responded with a request to include the events they’d outlined. But despite their requests, the American’s just didn’t see how “business was going to get done” without “more time at the table.” After about 25 minutes, as the American CEO was wondering if anything “substantial” would ever actually be accomplished and the Chinese were second-guessing their choice of people to work with, I asked if I could make a comment or two.

I wasn’t supposed to be in this meeting, but had arrived early for another meeting and was invited to attend and listen in. As an invited observer, I was aware of my position and simply tried to be helpful by cautiously but directly pointing out that neither side was really hearing what the other was prioritizing. The American CEO quickly retorted that the investor meeting was turning into a family vacation. So I started with her first.

I pointed out that that the Chinese were already committed to investing money—likely as much as was expected (turns out, more even), but that they needed security in the form of personal relationships in addition to contracts to move forward. To accomplish this they wanted the time with employees, families, professors, and they wanted to know more about the university where things were located. They wanted to spend time and build relationships with their new American counterparts. The content of “at the table” meetings, while important, was deemed to be secondary by the Chinese side—not because it wasn’t the most important but because they already believed that their American counterparts were competent and that the business plan was sound. The point of the trip for them was to confirm that they could trust them and give the Chinese partners the prestige (photo ops) to continue to sell/support the deal back home. The Chinese nodded vigorously as I explained to the Americans what they were missing.

The second part of my comments then focused on what the Chinese missed. The American’s didn’t need to have any personal relationship or specific trust in the Chinese investors; the US legal system gave them ample coverage if something went wrong. And the US business environment, with significantly more social trust than in China, meant that a level of honesty was already assumed. That the Chinese had money was nice, but their business competence was not known—no one on the US side had ever heard of any of the Chinese companies that they owned. Doubt increased as the Chinese seemed to be actively avoiding the technical discussions about the business plan that the Americans were convinced were the most important of the trip.

To be honest, this was a little harsh for the Chinese, but the American’s were anxious and I bet that the Chinese trusted me because of how I had explained their position minutes before. Eventually, the two sides agreed to extend the trip an extra day and include most of the family events and also schedule additional hours for discussions of numbers.

Take away: These two groups were literally the proverbial two ships passing in the night. There were two different conversations happening at the same time—Dueling Monologues. Both thought they were helping the other move in the direction that they themselves deemed best. Neither was understanding the other, even though they were speaking the same language and thought they were listening well. And to their credit, they were both honestly trying to understand—but they were trying to understand their own priorities, not their partners’.

The people involved in this venture are professionals with decades of global experience and who work for companies with scores of global offices and thousands of employees. They are all highly successful professionals who are well-educated multi-millionaires who head tech, investment, legal, education, and other service-sector corporations. But they didn’t realize that they were having the same meetings for different reasons. Neither realized that the other side in the negotiations didn’t understand what was thought to be “fundamental” and “basic” about “doing business” to them.

Even when both sides agree to a meeting’s format and content and actively discuss the same things, both initial expectations and final understandings can be very different. This meeting, called by the Chinese side, was supposed to be a personal sit-down with the US CEO. The Chinese expected it to be a chance to get to know each other, talk strategy, discuss goals, ideas and build trust. The American CEO brought all the data that she expected a first meeting would require—quite literally a stack of documents to make sure that they were both on the same page in terms of numbers and schedules. The Chinese were looking for trust and assumed competence while the Americans assumed trust but were concerned about details and business acumen.