Jotform’s playbook for turning cultural friction into teamwork

By Nathan Brooks

My company, Jotform, has offices across five countries and brings employees from nearly two dozen countries—roughly 24—together for several days at Jotformers Week.

Our differing backgrounds make the teams stronger, but they also create friction. One example involved a new IT expert from Ankara, in my native Turkey. An American colleague with an upbeat, outgoing manner offered a blunt assessment: “I don’t like him. He’s rude.”

The new hire was introverted and subdued. He was polite without making an extended show of pleasantries, which left the colleague interpreting restraint as rudeness. We were looking at different cultural expectations, not simply different personalities.

My experience moving to the United States sharpened that distinction. I initially found American friendliness almost unnerving before realizing that it was not fake, nor did it necessarily mean closeness. People there ask how you’re doing, mean it for the few seconds it takes to respond, then move on.

In Turkey, I learned that people do not ask unless they have time to hear the answer. It took me time to understand and adapt. The same adjustment helped our American team see that the Turkish IT expert only seemed stern; he has a quietly wicked sense of humor that regularly has the group in stitches.

What does this change for leaders?

The answer is a set of operating choices: hire for open-mindedness, create shared time, and remove ambiguous expectations. None eliminates cultural differences. Each gives colleagues a way to interpret those differences without turning them into personal judgments.

Hire for open-mindedness.

I keep hiring decisions close because the choice is too important to delegate completely. Once a candidate group narrows to a handful of finalists, each has the qualifications needed to do the job well. The final decision also depends on how the candidate thinks.

I look for people who do not assume their default way of thinking is automatically right. When another perspective conflicts with theirs, they want to learn more instead of dismissing it. To test that quality, I ask candidates to describe a time they were proven wrong.

I listen for whether they become defensive and shift blame, or walk me through what changed their mind. That answer signals whether they will bring the same flexibility to a teammate who handles a situation differently than expected.

Bring teams together.

I have my teams work in-office for several reasons. One is my view that remote workers tend to struggle more with isolation and stress than onsite workers and experience lower overall well-being.

Another reason is what screens flatten. Nonverbal cues, including body language and tone of voice, make up the bulk of how we present ourselves, yet online interaction removes much of that information. My memory of pandemic-era online happy hours and team-building exercises includes the emptiness and exhaustion that often followed.

Jotformers Week gives us a countermeasure. Employees from nearly two dozen countries gather for several days, and we ask participants what would make the experience meaningful. Everyone has a say in the activities because no one likes forced fun.

The retreat builds cohesion across distance. A tone that seems cold on Slack gets clarified over dinner, while a silence that may look like disagreement can turn out to be the way someone gathers their thoughts. These settings reveal information that a screen can obscure.

In-person team building has a real cost. I put no price tag on employees feeling genuinely connected, even across oceans.

Remove ambiguity.

My experience is that absent information, people make it up. I believe that ambiguity breeds misunderstandings and can quickly erode the culture a leader has worked to create. My instruction to managers is direct: “Don’t leave room for misinterpretation. Write down what your company stands for, and make sure everyone sees it.”

That means putting company principles in writing, making them visible and reinforcing them regularly through company-wide newsletters and all-hands calls. Clear expectations matter just as much, especially where one person reads a message differently from a colleague.

At Jotform, I encourage employees to sign off on nights and weekends. When they take PTO, I tell them to delete Slack from their phones and truly use the time to refresh and recharge. That removes the need to spend a family vacation wondering whether anyone expects them to check in.

The rule gives the same answer to everyone: no interpretation or guessing required. I see that consistency as support for psychological safety and a way to close the gap where cultural misunderstanding takes root. It also keeps the company rule the same for every employee who reads it.

Across a culturally diverse team, misunderstandings will recur. The practical response is to cultivate curiosity, create deliberate opportunities for team building and state expectations plainly. The forward test comes with the next cross-cultural gap: teams should resolve it with shared context and clear rules, not with a personality verdict.