Anthropology makes a useful distinction between low and high context cultures; understanding it is essential for anyone who wants to do business in the Middle East.
In low context cultures - the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia - business tends to be transactional. Contracts are exhaustive, communication is direct, explicit, and functional. The relationship, while valued, tends to be secondary to the agreement.
In high context cultures, meaning lives in silence, setting, in who is present or absent, in the history between the parties. The Middle East is a high context culture. So is China, Japan, and much of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. If you attempt to do business in the Gulf as though you are closing a deal in Chicago or Frankfurt, you will be, at best, misread.
I have spent my career in this region - forming contracts and conducting negotiations across 17 countries, from Morocco to Iran. Let me tell you what high context means in practice.
It means that the first meeting is rarely about business. It is about who you are, where you come from, what kind of person you appear to be. In the Majlis tradition of the Arabian Peninsula, leaders gather not to transact but to listen, to exchange, to understand. I have sat in many such gatherings. The quality of questions matters more than the polish of your presentation. Patience is not a just courtesy; it is the measure of your seriousness.
It means that relationships precede agreements. In the West, we tend to close a deal and then build the relationship. In the Middle East, the relationship is the foundation on which any deal must be built - and if that foundation is not there, no contract will hold it together. It is a sophisticated understanding of how business actually sustains itself over time. Relationships absorb shocks that contracts cannot.
It means that hierarchy and protocol must be respected. Who introduces you often matters, sometimes more than what you propose. So investing in getting the right introducer matters, and could make or break a deal or a business relationship. Clearly, the introduction alone is absolutely not enough. You still have to deliver.
It means that in meetings, who speaks first in a room communicates who matters. Who is invited into a meeting - and at what level - signals your assessment of the other party. Get this wrong and you communicate disrespect without ever meaning to.
It also means that no is rarely said directly. A deflection, a long pause, a sudden change of subject, an expression of needing more time - these are refusals, expressed in the register of a culture that values harmony and face. The Western instinct is to push harder when resistance is sensed. The right instinct is to pause, to listen, and to find a different path.
And it means that once trust is established, ambition can be breathtaking. Mr Majid al Futtaim - the man who built the company I was privileged to lead - had a vision to build an indoor ski slope inside a mall in the desert. Many thought it impossible. But he had spent years earning the relationships, the credibility, and the institutional trust that allowed bold ideas to find their backers. Ski Dubai opened in 2006 and has since become one of the UAE's most iconic experiences.
And trust can help us through tougher times. Now in the Gulf conflict the Force Majeur of war throws contracts into abeyance. Some of the many things required of a CEO in a wartime economy are to do with maintaining relationships, extending favours or latitude, and really understanding customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. My experience of this with Majid Al Futtaim during Covid was a case in point: we relied on the goodwill we had accrued with our stakeholders, and they relied on ours.
And yet I want to offer a qualification. Corporate life is increasingly global, and the differences between doing business in Dubai or London or Singapore are, in many respects, smaller than the high/low context distinction might suggest. The same financial disciplines apply. The same governance expectations, the same pressure on margins, talent, and technology. A CFO in Riyadh or Rotterdam is navigating the same quarterly pressures, the same ESG requirements, the same AI-driven disruption.
Equally, the language of modern corporate life has become genuinely universal. The executives you encounter in the Gulf are as globally sophisticated as any you will meet, many educated internationally, fluent in global business culture, capable of operating in low context mode when the situation calls for it. And the cultural changes in gender and inter-generational reforms across the region - for example as part of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 - mean that gender and new social dynamics are now part of the cultural context.
The practical implication: do not overestimate the distance, and do not underestimate the time required. None of this makes the Middle East opaque. Quite the contrary. Once trust is established, partnerships here are among the most durable I have encountered anywhere in the world. The same cultures that take longer to open are the ones that, once open, remain so through difficulty and disruption.
I grew up in Beirut, in a society where reading between the lines was not a skill but a survival requirement. That formation gave me a fluency in the unspoken that has served me throughout my career. Such fluency can be learned. Like much in business life it requires humility, curiosity, and the self-awareness.
Leading through the new realities by Alain Bejjani is published by Whitefox Publishing
