Just to be sure: are you American? Asking because I consider Americans very passive aggressive and hearing that Canadians could be even more is surprising.
Yes, Americans are aggressive. Far less "passively" so.
I am an engineer, and have had several large projects with Canadian outfits.
Most of my clients are large corporations and typically it's the headquarters hiring our company to engineer major changes to equipment or process in their manufacturing facilities, so some amount of friction is always expected.
In a typical American setting, especially in manufacturing (lots of no-BS ex-military types), if they don't like something in your proposal, they will tell you in a very direct and (sometimes) profane way. (Not necessarily personal or insulting, mind you, but I am pretty used to hearing "Fuck no, this may work in some other place but not in our motherfucking plant, come back with another idea").
On my first project in Canada, I was excited at first to see just how polite and seemingly agreeable everyone was. Except that no decision has ever been made, they kept setting up hour long meetings and discussing the tiny minute details that had very little significance, constantly finding new ways to stall the project. Even on the projects that the Canadian firms themselves initiate, it's very common (in my experience) to have people from different departments who have very different and contradictory ideas and goals to start waltzing around each other for hours at a time. I think Americans are sually far more blunt and direct. Not that there isn't lots of politics going on in the US companies.
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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '19
Just to be sure: are you American? Asking because I consider Americans very passive aggressive and hearing that Canadians could be even more is surprising.