A modicum of cultural intelligence would have helped the American realize he was mistakenly equating the merit of an idea with the merit of the person presenting it and that the Germans were able to make a sharp distinction reaction to the engineers' conduct, and proposed a new style of discussion that preserved candor but spared feelings, if indeed anyone's feelings had been hurt. But without being able to tell how much of the engineers' behavior was idiosyncratic
and how much was culturally determined, he or she would not have known how to influence their actions or how easy it would be to do that.