An American word for the informal route people use when the official one does not work, and it is largely neutral in tone. It is discussed openly, sometimes documented, occasionally adopted as the new official route.
words
Rapport
An American sales and negotiation term, taught explicitly, with techniques attached: matching pace, finding common ground, remembering personal details. It is treated as a skill that can be learned and improved, not as something that either happens or does not.
Good faith
Treu und Glauben. Section 242 of the German Civil Code requires performance according to good faith, with regard to common usage. One sentence, and it is among the most heavily used provisions in German law.
Courts apply it to strike down conduct that is formally within a contract but unacceptable in substance. The agreement being signed does not settle whether it is enforceable.
Saving face
Gesichtswahrung. Face-saving. German conflict resolution attends to it explicitly, and the word is used openly in describing how a settlement was constructed. A resolution that humiliates one party is understood to be unstable, and constructing the exit is part of the work.
Keeping to the matter
Sache is the matter, the thing itself. Sachlich means pertaining to the matter and nothing else.
English has no clean equivalent. Objectivity suggests neutrality of the observer. Matter-of-fact is a description of manner. Sachlich is neither — it names a discipline: keeping to the substance and out of everything around it.
A German asking you to be sachlich is not asking you to be calm. They are asking you to talk about the problem.
Thinking with
To think with. Said of a colleague who anticipates what is needed, and said of a product that does the same. Das Gerät denkt mit. The same verb praises a person and a machine, and it is the highest praise either receives.
Total compensation
An American term of art covering salary, bonus, equity, retirement contributions and the employer’s share of insurance. The employee is encouraged to think of the whole package as one number, and comparison sites publish it that way.
Named after getting along
The German word for a contract comes from vertragen — to bear, to tolerate, to get along with one another. Sich vertragen is what quarrelling children are told to do. The contract is named after the state of getting along, not after the bargain that produced it.
Empowerment
An American management word, and companies built programmes around it: front-line staff authorised to resolve a problem up to a stated amount without approval. The Ritz-Carlton figure, widely reported at two thousand dollars per guest, became the standard illustration.
Intuitive
The standard American compliment for a product, and it is a claim about the absence of learning. Its opposite, counterintuitive, is a criticism of the design rather than of the person who was confused.