Greek Business Meeting Etiquette

Meetings can often appear to be noisy, boisterous affairs to those from cultures more accustomed to a reserved, calm approach where everybody politely awaits their turn to speak.

In Greece, meetings are designed to allow a lively airing of views where strong personal opinions, passionately expressed are appreciated. Everybody is allowed to speak but you have to expect that you may be strongly and emotionally disagreed with. Such open, emotional debate is seen as both stimulating and essential if the correct decisions are to be arrived at.

Formal meetings with set agendas are arranged only for the most important of issues and normal meetings are much more likely to be spontaneous and designed to keep everybody abreast of developments, plans, information etc. In these types of frequent, informal meetings agendas will rarely be produced and minutes are unlikely to be circulated after the meeting.

Author

This country-specific business culture profile was written by Keith Warburton who is the founder of the cultural awareness training consultancy Global Business Culture. 

Global Business culture is a leading training provider in the fields of cross-cultural communication and global virtual team working.  We provide training to global corporations in live classroom-based formats, through webinars and also through our cultural awareness digital learning hub, Global Business Compass.

This World Business Culture profile is designed as an introduction to business culture in Greece only and a more detailed understanding needs a more in-depth exploration which we can provide through our training and consultancy services.