Communication for most people is about getting a response from the listener. What most people, unfortunately, don't seem to grasp is that communication only exists when all parties receive the same message as it was intended. This is where intercultural communication in the global workplace fails. Cross-cultural incompetence can be costly. Accusations of racism, sexism or ageism, or a lost contract or business opportunity can be the price we pay. Good cross cultural international communication is vital for effective working relationships. Your ability to foster successful communication between people of differing cultures will bolster your success in business and in your career - but you must look beyond the superficial!
Here are my top ten tips to guide you towards better cultural understanding and overcoming diversity barriers:
- Take responsibility for your communication: ensure your communication is accepted the way it was intended. Test everyone's understanding. Ensure offense hasn't been taken. Formality and deference to position may be something you ought to consider.
- Tolerate ambiguity: many cultures cannot say "no". Understand there are 101 ways of saying "yes," none of which mean yes! In some cultures, the intent to please is more important than delivering the outcome. In other cultures where ‘action is the key' and delivering on a promise is vital, the inability to help someone because of circumstances is easily conveyed yet will be interpreted by the former culture as a rejection and personal slight.
- Be patient and persistent: Knowing about other cultures will help you develop your skills. Be proactive when approaching a new culture. This is a learned skill which means it will require research, practice, and growth. People from different backgrounds may have varied approaches to communicating with the boss, conflict management, learning styles, friendship in the workplace, religion, and most other aspects of life. It is impossible to know the varied systems of all cultures, so approach this process one culture at a time as you meet and deal with new people.
- Recognize your own cultural biases: culture impacts each and every one of us as we grow up dictating our attitudes and modes of behaviour. Learn as much as you can about your own culture so you can compare and contrast others. Do you come from an individualist culture where the emphasis is on having opinions, using your own initiative, and being empowered? Or, do you come from a group-oriented culture where the community as a whole decides its opinion with which you should concur and working is always teamwork? Knowing your own biases, which have profound influences on the attitudes we bring to work, will help you manage your won and others' expectations.
- Be flexible: Encourage others to be open, but know that information is integrated when a person is ready to accept it. Form alliances with people from different cultures to know what challenges they have dealing with your culture. Help the general community to grow by raising awareness and promoting fair treatment for all people.
- Emphasize common ground: when dealing with diverse people look for similarities. Our goals, dreams, and aspirations may be more alike than our skin colour. Most people have basic needs in common, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs that suggests all people have physiological, safety, acceptance, self-esteem, and self-actualization needs. Considering these things, though they be different, it is easy to see our essential common ground. And this is where we can begin our comprehension of others.
- Increase your & others' cultural sensitivity: Put your new information about other people into action. Make a personal inventory of your own biases. Where has your ignorance held you back from appreciating other people? What have you learned that makes this old paradigm obsolete? Help to educate people in your team or other work colleagues about your new leanings. Be careful: people become attached to their ignorance, and have difficulty accepting new idea! It's probably taken you a while to gain the knowledge necessary to deal with people.
- Deal with the individual: stereotypes do not represent the population they seek to identify. Evaluate people on an individual basis. Stereotypes often reflect the differences in socioeconomic status, religion, or dialect. These differences are apparent in all cultures and cannot identify just one specific group of people. It is important to suspend judgment, avoid misconceptions, narrow perspectives, and immature reactions. Stereotypes often contain a granule of truth, but this tiny truth cannot characterize an entire culture.
- Learn when and when not to be direct: many hierarchical cultures (e.g. Asian, Indian, some African, Latin) find direct communication challenging. Superiors feel they are losing face because you are not showing them respect. Colleagues may feel there is personal conflict when you suggest different ways of working.
- Withhold judgments & show respect: the mere act of suspending judgement is showing respect.
Remember: you need to look beyond the superficial for effective intercultural communication in the global workplace! It's important to be able to really look at a company's specific needs when it comes to cross cultural communication and implement a very specific plan to develop the right communication structure and skill-set. To find out more about implementing a plan which creates value from intercultural exchanges and is aligned with meeting organisational goals click here.