CSuite AI Series: How to Use AI for Culturally-Sensitive Negotiations
Picture this: You're in the most important meeting of the quarter, presenting to a potential client from another culture. You deliver what you think is a compelling pitch, but their faces remain unreadable. The silence stretches. You try again, this time with more enthusiasm, more data, more urgency. Still nothing. You walk away feeling like you just spoke two completely different languages—even though you both spoke perfect English.
As an American who lived overseas for 14 years, I learned the hard way, through a lot of trial and error, that a one-size-fits all, U.S.-centric mindset and style of communication will not resonate, and it could even offend others, especially when you're in a high stakes negotiation.
AI can now help you navigate cultural nuances, often in unexpected ways.
Let me give you an example.
Over the last several weeks, I have been working with my partner Rama Zomaletho, founder of IntinereCloud. We used a negotiation expert custom GPT I created that was inspired by the teachings of Chris Voss, author of "Never Split the Difference" and founder of The Black Swan Group. We called it VossGPT.
The results were very impressive, and we learned a few really interesting things about using AI as a fulcrum for cross-cultural communication and customer relationships.
Bias Busting
I worked with Rama in a collaborative coaching session and started using the first version of our custom GPT. The idea was to have a 3-way conversation — Rama, me and our VossGPT — and create our negotiation strategy. What quickly emerged were 3 different types of bias:
User Bias: I was the one with the "hands-on keyboard" which meant we were interacting with the VossGPT with my user account. I use Chat GPT every day, and have customized it to my preferred way of communicating and thinking. The implicit "cultural default setting" is set to "Western", and "American" in particular. If I am asking for advice, a strategy or a messaging framework, it will default to this cultural perspective. Therefore, the negotiation plan was great for engaging an American customer, but not well suited for our customer in Ghana.
Persona Bias: Using a persona can be an easy way to get the best results from Chat GPT. In this instance, the persona was Chris Voss, an exceptional negotiator with international experience. While his technique is broadly relevant across cultures, as a former FBI negotiator, his voice is distinctly American. Again, this made the response skew towards American culture and communication style. The problem was that we asked for a negotiation strategy based on our scenario, we neglected to mention that the customer was from Ghana.
Personal Bias: The third and arguably most important bias in this instance was my own. Whether you are a therapist, coach or confidante, you have unconscious bias. We all have a tendency to project our belief systems and experiences onto others in a variety of situations. In this instance, I was offering Rama advice on negotiating with customers based on my own experience and perspective…and I had zero experience in his market. What works in New York, London, South Korea, or Singapore isn't necessarily going to work in Ghana.
Here's the thing: recognizing these biases was actually the breakthrough moment. Once we understood what was skewing our results, we could engineer our way around them.
Context is Key for Chat GPT
So how can we adjust Chat GPT in a way that accounts for bias? Design your prompt so Chat GPT always asks questions to get more context before responding to you.
"Clarify-First" prompting: Teach the model to pause and ask only what matters, then proceed. We call this a "clarify first" instruction. Here is an example:
Before drafting, check if any of these are missing: goal, audience, must-include facts, constraints, success criteria. If something is missing, ask up to three precise questions. If everything is present, produce the draft immediately.
Background context: Rama and I have been working together for 9 years, and I have been a board advisor to his company since 2021. We spent 3 hours deep diving on this specific scenario before incorporating AI into the process. All of this context proved to be invaluable. I took the transcribed notes from all of our previous sessions, and uploaded it to Chat GPT. The plan it provided was personalized, insightful, and right on the mark.
Cultural Context: To mitigate the Western bias, we needed to teach our AI about Ghanaian business culture specifically. We drew on two well-established cultural research frameworks—Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions and the World Values Survey—that help explain how different cultures approach things like hierarchy, directness, and relationship-building.
For example, Ghana tends to have higher "power distance" than the U.S., meaning there's more respect for hierarchy and formal relationships. Knowing this helped us craft our approach. This is what we added to the system prompt for version 2 of VossGPT:
For the counterpart's perspective, be sure to ask about their country of origin and cultural mindset. Adjust the guidance you provide based on a deep understanding of cultural nuance. Anchor cultural assumptions in Hofstede + WVS for the country I provide; adjust tone, power distance, directness, and examples accordingly.
The Results
After uploading our notes and waiting for 30 seconds, the plan it created was better than any we have seen from Chat GPT until now. It included:
Pre-Call Check-List describing the top 4 negotiation points to focus on, why it matters, and the actions we needed to take to prepare for the meeting
Opening Sequence (Tactical Empathy) with specific examples of what to say and how to say it based on Chris Voss' best practices
Calibrated Questions to Guide the Talk related to the key focus areas
Ackerman Numbers (Seller Version) to structure our price negotiations
Packaging Non-Monetary Levers that provided high value concessions that didn't dig into our profits or ARR
Black-Swan Radar to highlight pieces of information, often unexpected and hidden, that would have the power to significantly alter the course of a negotiation
Cultural Nuance Touch-Points to educate our team on how to address each member of their team according to local customs, themes to emphasize based on their perspectives, and sensitive issues
Day-Of Script Snippet with examples of how we can effectively express ourselves during the conversation while maintaining a natural flow of conversation
This briefing doc became the foundation of a much deeper conversation with our customer. It shortened our sales cycle from months to less than 2 weeks, and it helped us win a key account in a fast growing market.
More importantly, with VossGPT, it gave us a tool we can apply to any cross-cultural negotiation process, streamlining our research and planning process, and creating opportunities for better customer relationships based on a common understanding of cultural differences.
The 90% Rule of AI Automation
Like many things in AI, especially when you are communicating with customers, the goal is not full automation. It is about a 90% solution.
What do we mean by that? We want to get AI to automate everything up to a state of 90% completion, and then hand it over to the human in the loop.
Based on my experience working overseas, the human-in-the-loop was always the local partner. You need someone you can rely on who has strong relationships and a deep understanding of the local culture, customs, and market. If you are a CEO or a CRO, this person may be a reseller, advisor or your first in-country hire.
As the visiting executive, your superpower is not your status; it's your curiosity, your desire to learn more about the country, the people and the local culture. You will ask a lot of questions. Now with AI, you can ask better questions.
Taking our example of the negotiation strategy. Instead of coming in cold, and putting the burden of research on your partner, you can leverage your AI-generated briefing document as the starting point of your conversation with your local advisor, validating it and adjusting accordingly based on their feedback.
What's Next?
The beauty of this approach is that it's scalable. Once you've built a culturally-aware negotiation framework, you can adapt it for any market, any deal, any high-stakes conversation where cultural nuance matters.
We're continuing to refine VossGPT based on real-world results like these. If you're heading into your own cross-cultural negotiations and want to explore how AI can give you that edge—or if you just want to try out our latest Culturally Responsive Negotiation Expert—I'd love to hear about your specific situation.
Drop me a line at richard@found42.com or visit us at https://found42.com. The best part about AI-assisted negotiation? Every conversation teaches us something new.
