Spending a month in Italy has been such a learning experience. Conducting business and engaging with individuals is very different in Italy than the United States. Italy’s business practices are dependent on strong personal relationships. When conducting business, it is imperative that you establish a personal relationship with each other before business is even discussed. Even though I was only there for a month, the meeting with Antonio, who was the owner of the company my group was working with, started out with some questions about life in general to get to know each other. Then, we got to talking business. I had no idea that the timeframe for establishing projects in the business world is so long because of the aspect of personal relationships before business practices. Usually there are meetings just based on building personal relationships, but since we were on a time crunch, we had to condense it to only the start of the meeting.
Italians are generally very loud and outgoing as well. I was not expecting the people in Italy to be so passionate and engaging when just talking to strangers in the street. Italians are very energetic with their words and are often very friendly, so don’t get surprised when an Italian comes up from behind you and touches your shoulder in order for them to get by. I got used to it after the first week. Part of why they speak so intensely is that they are very passionate about everything they say. I remember Antonio when he was talking about his business, and his voice just kept on getting louder and louder because he wanted to share his intense passion with us. I was expecting Italians to not be so friendly towards Americans because I thought they didn’t like tourists. Turns out, it was the opposite.
Punctuality is a big thing for Italians but so is flexibility. You are expected to be very timely when it comes to arriving at a meeting on time. However, it is expected to be flexible with the content or aspects of the meeting. I was very surprised to learn about this because I feel like flexibility and punctuality go hand in hand. I also thought that since Italians were more easy-going, then they wouldn’t be as concerned with punctuality. I was wrong. All in all, when conducting business in Italy, there is a good mix of strict business etiquette and personal relationship building in the Italian business world.
