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What to do if Koreans “Fall Asleep” During Your Presentation
By Heejeong Haas | August 7, 2007
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A few days ago, I was talking to my husband who is now working for a Korean company in Korea. He told me about an incident that happened during an executive meeting in his company. They were in a meeting, and one new American executive member started making his presentation. At one point he stopped for a while and looked at my husband and gave him a hint to look at the Korean executives. As my husband looked, the Korean executives were all closing their eyes. He smiled and gave him a signal to just keep going on with his presentation. Later on, he explained to the American executive what was going on.
My husband’s story made me chuckle a little as it happens a lot between American and Korean businessmen, so I decided to write about the particular behavior of Korean businessmen’s closing eyes during a meeting. In business meetings, I also see this happen a lot–Korean executive members closing their eyes appearing to fall asleep. It can completely look like they are falling asleep or they are not paying attention to what you are saying. The older the Korean business partners are, the more of this you can find in meetings. However they are not sleeping or ignoring you. This is rather an expression of deep concentration on your presentation or what is going on at that time, and can be the sign of respect as well.
So, when they close their eyes, do not panic or be irritated. Just know that they are paying attention to you and trying to grasp what is going on at the moment. Go on with your talk or presentation as you have been doing.
Heejeong Haas
Topics: Korean Business Meeting |
August 7th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
This is such a great story about how simple behaviors have such divergent meaning depending on the environment!! :o)
(but I don’t think I could’ve convinced any of my former professors that I was emulating senior Korean businessmen ***grin***)
August 27th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
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