The Meeting Begins Before the Meeting
If you want your meeting with Costa Rican colleagues to actually go well, don’t walk in and launch straight into business. The meeting starts before the official agenda does — it starts with the coffee, the personal questions, the warm catch-up about family and how things are going. This isn’t wasted time; it’s what makes everything else work. Costa Ricans need to feel that you see them as a person before they can engage fully with the work at hand. The trust that powers a productive professional relationship — what they call confianza — gets built through this kind of consistent social investment, accumulated over many interactions. If you skip it or rush through it, people notice, and the meeting will be less productive as a result. Show up a few minutes early, have the coffee, ask about the weekend. That’s where the meeting really begins. Over time, this social investment pays dividends that make every subsequent interaction run more smoothly and produce more stable results.
Reading the Gentle No
Costa Ricans don’t often say “I disagree” directly — not because they don’t have opinions, but because open confrontation feels aggressive and uncomfortable for everyone in the room. Disagreement comes in a different form: a question that implies doubt, a suggestion to think about something further, a careful “vamos a ver” (we’ll see), or a silence that doesn’t feel quite like agreement. Learning to read these signals is essential. If someone says “está bien” without much energy behind it, or starts asking a lot of clarifying questions, or suggests revisiting something at the next meeting — pay attention. That may be a polite no. Don’t push for direct confirmation when this happens; give people space to express hesitation without having to confront you directly. Ask open questions, create room for uncertainty, and listen as carefully to what isn’t being said as to what is. The disagreement is there — it’s just delivered “suavecito,” gently.
A Decision Isn’t Done Until Everyone’s On Board
In Costa Rica, a meeting doesn’t succeed just because a decision was reached — it succeeds when everyone genuinely agrees with that decision. The difference matters enormously, because decisions made without real buy-in will quietly unravel afterward. People won’t push back in the room, but they may not follow through either. So pay attention to whether everyone has actually been heard. If someone has been quiet, invite them in. If you sense hesitation, give it space rather than pushing past it. Be willing to revisit a point if it hasn’t fully landed — that’s not indecision, that’s doing the meeting right. The goal is genuine collective alignment, not just formal closure. A meeting that takes longer to arrive but reaches a decision everyone truly owns is worth far more than a fast meeting that produces quiet resistance in implementation. Decisions that get properly built in the room are the ones that actually get carried out.
Don’t Rush the Room
If you’re in a Costa Rican meeting and it’s taking longer than you expected — more discussion than seems necessary, points being revisited, a slow start before getting to the agenda — resist the urge to push for efficiency. Rushing sends a signal: that you value your own time more than the collective, or that the matter isn’t serious enough to deserve real attention. The pace of the meeting communicates respect. A proper Costa Rican meeting has time to connect, time to discuss thoroughly, and time to close warmly — and none of that is wasted. If you have multiple agenda items and limited time, it’s better to address fewer things properly than to rush through more things superficially. And whatever you do, don’t be visibly checking your phone or signaling that you’re eager to leave. The room will notice, and it will cost you in ways that go beyond the meeting itself.
The Real Meeting Happens Before (and After) the Meeting
By the time a Costa Rican team sits down for a formal meeting, the important decisions have often already been worked through informally — over coffee before the meeting, in a WhatsApp conversation the evening before, in a corridor exchange during a break. The formal meeting is usually where those positions are confirmed and made official. This means that if you want to influence outcomes, you need to be participating in the informal spaces too — being available for the pre-meeting coffee, responding to the group message, joining the conversation in the hallway. Someone who only engages in formal settings is missing where the real work happens. And if you’re bringing something genuinely new to a formal meeting, it will go much better if you’ve already had the conversation with the key people beforehand. Surprising people in the formal room creates resistance that a simple informal conversation would have avoided entirely.
The Best Leaders Listen Most
In Costa Rican meeting culture, the most effective senior person in the room is usually not the one who talks the most or arrives with all the answers. They’re the one who makes sure everyone gets to contribute, who listens visibly and shows they’ve taken input seriously, and who synthesizes the group’s thinking into a direction everyone can follow. Authority is real here — the senior person’s view carries significant weight — but it earns its legitimacy through the quality of its listening. A leader who uses the meeting to lecture, who cuts off discussion before it’s ready to close, or who makes clear that the decision was already made before anyone arrived will lose credibility and engagement over time, even if no one says so directly. If you’re in a leadership role, facilitate first. Ask questions, bring quieter voices into the discussion, and let the group see that their contributions genuinely shaped where things landed.
Start from Yes
Costa Rican meetings run on a tone of warmth and possibility. “Pura vida” — the culture’s defining expression — isn’t just a greeting; it’s an orientation: things are good, we’ll figure it out, we’re in this together. That tone is the baseline of any gathering, and keeping it there is a shared responsibility. This means framing problems as challenges rather than failures, leading with what’s working before getting to what isn’t, and keeping the energy constructive even when the subject is difficult. It also means matching the warmth you’re given — when people arrive with genuine friendliness and personal interest, respond in kind rather than staying in formal transactional mode. The positive orientation isn’t naïve or avoidant; it’s a practical commitment to keeping the meeting a place where good work can happen. When the tone stays warm and constructive, people stay engaged, stay honest in their own way, and stay motivated to find solutions together.