How To Communicate With Your Colleagues

You can be excellent at your job and still feel that working with colleagues in Germany is harder than it should be.

This is something I hear particularly often from international professionals in IT, data, AI, engineering and other technical roles.

You deliver. You know your field. You are reliable.

But sometimes you are still unsure:

Was my colleague annoyed with me?

Was that criticism or just a normal technical discussion?

Should I have told them about the problem earlier?

Am I expected to ask before making this decision — or am I expected to just do it?

Why did my colleague say “Das sehe ich kritisch” instead of simply telling me what they want?

Why does nobody tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do?

And one of the most difficult questions:

Why do I sometimes get the feeling that my colleagues don’t completely trust me, even though my work is good?

Very often, the problem isn’t your technical competence.

It is that you and your colleagues may be working with different unwritten assumptions about what “good collaboration” looks like.

Imagine you’re a software engineer and discover a potential problem with a release.

You don’t immediately tell the team because you’re already working on a solution.

Your intention:

“I don’t want to create unnecessary concern. Let me solve it first.”

Your colleague may interpret exactly the same behaviour as:

“Why didn’t they tell us earlier?”

Or your colleague strongly challenges your proposal in a meeting:

“I don’t think this approach will work.”

You may hear:

They don’t respect my expertise.

Your colleague may simply mean:

I see a technical problem and want to discuss it.

Neither side necessarily has bad intentions.

But these small differences accumulate.

And over time, they can influence how colleagues perceive your reliability, independence, seniority and ability to collaborate.

This becomes even more important when you want to move from specialist to senior, lead, architect, product or management positions.

Because at that level, people don’t evaluate only whether you can do the work.

They evaluate whether they can depend on you, disagree with you, make decisions with you and trust you with responsibility.

In Part 4 of my 25 Unwritten Communication Rules in Germany, we’ll look at five rules that are particularly important when working with German colleagues:

16. Disagreement is not automatically conflict
    How to handle direct criticism without becoming defensive — and how to disagree professionally yourself.

17. Raise problems early — don’t wait until you have the solution
    Why trying to quietly “fix everything first” can actually reduce trust.

18. Don’t say yes when you really mean probably not
    How to negotiate deadlines and workload without sounding uncooperative.

19. Don’t wait for someone to tell you everything
    What colleagues often expect when you’re hired as an experienced professional — and how to demonstrate ownership.

20. Make ownership explicit
    How to avoid the classic project problem: “I thought you were doing it.”

Let’s look at what these rules mean in real IT, data, AI and engineering situations.