Well - I almost always worked in American companies. The CEO of one company I worked for is a really brazen New Yorker - very direct and loud (McK, Bain Capital, Harvard/Stanford, sold his first company for $ 300M). The guy always complained to me that the Brits were too f**ing polite - to an extent that he wouldn't even understand what the hell they actually wanted - and that he much preferred the German approach in that respect (although he had issues with Germany for other reasons (history)). But yes, I guess we are quite direct sometimes .