To increase awareness of hidden misunderstandings, university educators and studentsinvolved in intercultural education should clearly communicate their intended learning goalsand expected learning behaviors at the start, for example by talking about students’ prioreducational experiences and how the students envision themselves to be when they finishtheir overseas study. It is then important to establish an environment to sustain open andongoing communication, so that either the teacher or the student is prepared to acknowledgewhen a possible misunderstanding has been experienced. The specific implicit misunderstandingsreported in this study can be a helpful resource for identifying likely areas that need ongoing communication (e.g. educational goals together with program organization,expected student–teacher interactions, evaluations of student progress, preferred level ofstudent regulation of learning).The sources for the implicit misunderstandings in relation to the cultural and educationaldifferences as we have extensively discussed in this study, offer insights into the work ofacademics and educators who are involved or interested in supervision of internationalresearch students. A first insight relevant for others in similar contexts, is the relevancy ofexplicitly addressing the issues of cultural and educational similarities and differences. Ourinitial tendency was not to address them out of a respect for each other’s culture, and alsoactually a fear for doing so due to a lack of knowledge and skill to make this a point ofconversation. Knowledge of and a dialogue about each other’s cultural and educationalbackground is a necessary condition for intercultural supervision. It would be recommendedto start the supervision with explicitly addressing these cultural and educational differencesand similarities.A second insight is that many of the intercultural differences are embedded in concretebehaviors, interactional patterns and expectations about supervision, which, if not perceivedin terms of intercultural differences, might lead to misunderstandings, biased judgments, anda poor quality of the supervision. For instance, supervisors might perceive certain behavioras poor academic behavior instead of part of someone’s cultural background, such as students’reluctance to express their opinion, or a hesitancy to question teacher’s knowledge,or a tendency to be guided by teachers rather than taking initiative. Being aware of thebackground of this behavior, supervisors can make their international students aware ofhow such behavior is perceived in a Western academic environment and invite them to tryto adjust themselves to this different environment.To go back to the start of this article, as for Klaas, in his role as Ph.D. supervisor of internationalstudents, he was strongly reminded of the complexity of intercultural communication,even though in advance he saw himself quite capable based on many previous experiences.His subsequent approach to supervising international students, and even Dutch students,is to be more articulate about expectations and to conceptualize them explicitly in culturaland educational terms.At the start of our collaboration we assumed that there were many differences betweenus. At the same time, these assumptions made it difficult to notice the many similarities ofwhich we gradually became aware as we discussed our misunderstandings. In internationalcollaboration, celebrating cultural differences while also perceiving them as challenges isan absolute necessity.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.