No Agenda, Firm Handshake: Meetings in Saudi Arabia vs. Hungary

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia · 🇭🇺 Hungary

By Priya Mehta, The Global Office

A meeting in Riyadh may have no fixed agenda, no designated chair, and three unrelated conversations happening around the same table at once — and it will still, eventually, arrive somewhere useful. A meeting in Budapest will start on time, proceed through whatever was on the agenda, and feature a level of blunt, faintly pessimistic honesty that a newcomer might mistake for hostility. Both are functioning systems. Neither will resemble the meeting culture you left behind.

Do's & Don'ts

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia

🇭🇺 Hungary

Saudi Arabia's meeting culture is best understood through the lens of relationship-first business: Rivermate's cultural guide describes communication as polite, indirect, and deeply concerned with preserving dignity, to the point that a proposal is rarely rejected outright in words — refusal is usually signaled through body language and non-verbal cues instead. World Business Culture notes meetings often lack a formal agenda or designated chairperson, unfold with multiple overlapping conversations, and are scheduled around the day's prayer times, pausing entirely if one falls mid-discussion. Hofstede Insights records Saudi Arabia at a Power Distance score of 95 — among the highest in the world — meaning decisions flow from authority without much expectation of justification, and hierarchy shapes not just who speaks but in what order. Add a very high Uncertainty Avoidance score of 80, and you get a meeting culture that tolerates open-ended process precisely because relationships and trust, not fixed procedure, are what actually reduce risk in the room.

Hungary runs on almost the opposite theory of what makes a meeting trustworthy. BusinessCulture.org describes Hungarians as emotive, direct speakers who dislike euphemism and expect the same bluntness returned — a style that can read as pessimistic or cynical to outsiders but is, per Commisceo Global's guide, simply the normal register of doing business there. Meetings are formal on first contact, built around firm handshakes and correct use of titles, but the tone loosens as trust develops through genuine personal conversation, often about family or football. Hierarchy still matters — decisions are made top-down and seniority is respected — but the communication style itself is unusually candid for a high-power-distance culture, closer in spirit to Germanic directness than to the more diplomatic indirection common elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Hungary's masculinity score of 88 on Hofstede's framework reinforces this: a culture that values assertiveness and material success tends to reward speaking your mind rather than talking around a problem.

The Reckoning

The instructive contrast is that both cultures maintain steep hierarchy, yet arrive at opposite communication styles as a result. Saudi Arabia's high power distance produces deference and indirection — you don't contradict someone senior, so disagreement gets encoded non-verbally. Hungary's hierarchy, just as real, still permits — even expects — direct verbal pushback once trust is established, provided it's aimed at the argument and not the person's standing. A foreign manager who imports Hungarian-style bluntness into a Riyadh meeting risks being seen as disrespectful of rank; the same manager importing Saudi-style indirection into a Budapest meeting risks being read as evasive or untrustworthy, since Hungarians specifically distrust vague, hedged language as a sign someone isn't being straight with them.

Structure is the other axis. Saudi meetings are fluid by design — flexible timing, layered conversations, business interwoven with hospitality — because the relationship is the mechanism that gets things done later, often outside the room entirely. Hungarian meetings are comparatively procedural: an agenda, a start time worth respecting, and a preference for resolving things through sustained face-to-face conversation rather than the written memos and circulars Hungarians are, by their own business culture's admission, not especially prompt about answering. Ironically, both cultures share a preference for live conversation over written correspondence — they just structure that live conversation on entirely different clocks.

The Part the Brochure Left Out

Quora — Someone reflecting on lessons learned as a long-term expatriate in Saudi Arabia said the biggest adjustment wasn't the language but recalibrating how to read a room — learning to notice hesitation, a change in tone, or a shift in body language as the real answer, long before anyone said the word "no" out loud.

Quora — A respondent describing the overall work culture at Saudi companies noted that the experience varies enormously by employer and by how many Saudi nationals work alongside expatriate staff, cautioning against assuming any single company's meeting style represents the whole country.

Quora — Someone answering "What is it like to be an expat in Hungary?" pointed out that colleagues can be candid to the point of teasing and dry humor in meetings, and that newcomers who mistake this bluntness for unfriendliness often miss that it's a sign of comfort, not hostility.

Quora — A respondent asked whether Hungarians are friendly to foreigners and noted that professional relationships in particular tend to warm up meaningfully once a shared personal interest, like football, comes up in conversation — a detail several other answers echoed independently.

Quora — Someone answering a question about working hours in Budapest noted that while the office day itself is structured and punctual, decisions discussed in meetings are rarely rushed, and Hungarian colleagues will openly say they need more time to evaluate something rather than agreeing just to close the meeting.

Conclusion

If you're deciding between the two, ask yourself which discomfort you can better absorb: ambiguity or bluntness. Saudi Arabia will ask you to slow down, build trust before business, and learn to read a room that communicates mostly through what isn't said. Hungary will ask you to say exactly what you mean, arrive on time, and not flinch when a colleague says exactly what they mean back. Both are, in their own register, more honest systems than they first appear — Saudi indirection protects the relationship that makes the deal possible, and Hungarian bluntness protects the accuracy of what's actually being decided. The line I'd give a friend over a drink: in Riyadh, listen for the meeting that's happening beneath the meeting; in Budapest, just listen to the one they're actually having out loud.