As I have mentioned at length in my previous posts, the overall structure of my host company was rather unconventional, from my limited American perspective. There are only about ten people who work at the company, myself included. Aside from my two supervisors, the entire company works remotely from home, in other parts of the world. At the two week mark of my internship, both of my supervisors had left the office for their midsummer vacations leaving me and the other intern alone at the office. Because of this, my primary form of communication with my supervisors and the rest of the company is handled through Slack, a professional communication platform. Aside from Slack, we have three company wide meetings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. These meetings are of the utmost importance as far as relaying any crucial information to my supervisors, as well as any pertinent happenings between the rest of the company.

In contrast to what I have found in the United States’ work environment, communication is sometimes delayed due to a few different things. I think overall, Swedes are far more relaxed and slower paced in the workplace. Because of this, I don’t think that many are particularly hard pressed to respond to messages immediately. But I also think that there is more consideration taken into people’s responses since communication seems to be streamlined between everyone, where only necessary information is relayed in messages. They are far more direct with their communication in Sweden and cut out anything unnecessary that does not pertain to the topic at hand. In addition, I think that the remote nature of the company allows people to go about their daily lives and routines without being glued to their screen, causing a delay between messages. I think it is healthier this way in all honesty.

Within the first few days of starting my internship, I realized that it was very important to pay more attention to what is being said, not so much how it is being said. As I mentioned before, the Swedes are far more direct with their communication, both in written and verbal communication. I received an email from my supervisor, who was sitting directly across from me, with instructions for a task. I thought that the message was slightly ambiguous and had asked for clarification to which he responded, “just look at the email again, and do it.” At first I was slightly taken aback and thought that he was angry or frustrated. But again, as one of my first bosses in construction told me, “it is not how things are said, it is what is being said.” So I just took a step back, looked at the email again, and proceeded how I saw fit. To my lack of surprise, I had done the task incorrectly and had to do part of it over. But to my surprise, there was no negative feedback or anger that followed. My supervisor realized that the wording of the email was ambiguous and further explained what had to be done.

Overall, the communication style among the Swedish workplace is far more direct than its American counterpart. I have found that it has both its pros and cons, just like anything else. I would say that one of the pros would be that there is more clarity (my previous example excluded) in everyone’s orders. I would say that one of the cons would be that because the communication is streamlined, there is often more follow up messages that are needed either for clarification or for feedback.