Conflict Resolution Techniques

Raise it, and raise it early rather than waiting for it to settle. An unexplained cold session that is never mentioned tends to become the whole relationship. The version that works is short, takes responsibility for the ambiguity rather than assigning blame, and asks nothing about feelings.

Something like: last time I asked about the application in a way that may have sounded like I was checking up on you. That was not what I meant and I would rather understand what would actually help. Then stop talking and let the silence run.

Notice what that avoids. It does not ask her to explain her reaction, which requires her to name something she may not want to name in a second language to someone in a position of relative power. It offers her a reading of the event she can accept without conceding anything.

When I did something like this, the answer turned out to be nothing to do with culture at all. The job was on a bus route that took ninety minutes each way and she had not wanted to seem ungrateful by saying so.

That is the most common ending to these stories and it is worth stating as a rule of thumb: check the practical explanation before you reach for the cultural one. Transport, childcare hours, a permit condition, a fear of seeming ungrateful. Cultural misunderstanding is real, but it gets blamed for a great many timetable problems.

Where it is genuinely a misunderstanding of the kind you cannot see from inside, the useful move is structural rather than verbal. Ask a colleague who was not in the session what they make of it, and write down what you assumed at the time. Reviewing your own encounters in that structured way is the method behind the Council of Europe's Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, and it works better than trying to reason it out while you are still uncomfortable.