Cultural Communication
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The world is growing smaller, with business conducted on global scale and international Internet users blurring territorial lines. If you are conducting business online, you are serving an international audience. Conflict or miscommunication often occurs when cultures collide.
Culture is defined by life experience. It is the software our minds use to process input from the world around us. It is learned from the time of our birth. We belong to many groups, large (Nations) and small (Families), which differentiate themselves from other groups with rules and beliefs. Culture includes concepts, skills, habits of thinking and acting, arts, institutions, ways of relating to the world and agreement on what is significant and necessary to know.
There is no "escape" from culture. It permeates every aspect of our lives and becomes so ingrained in our way of thinking you may not immediately recognize a cultural bias.
ETHNOCENTRISM is a belief in the inherent superiority of our own culture, that our way is “right” and others are “wrong”.
“When we witness behavior that is different from our normal expectations, we try to make sense of it by attributing a cause.” Doing Business Internationally, p. 169
Rather than hasty judgments based on erroneous information, be attuned to cultural influences and open minded when differences occur.
Cultural patterns are remarkably durable, but they are also flexible, ambiguous, contradictory and changing. Avoid stereotypes because cultural variations occur within countries of the same region and individual variations occur within the same culture.
Use active listening to validate and clarify the message. Pay attention to the speaker without attending to other activities, and then paraphrases what you think the speaker has said. Active listening not only requires attention to what is said, it must occur without judgment which is especially important during cross cultural communication.
“Truly empathic people suspend evaluation and criticism when they listen to others. Here the challenge is to enter into the private world of the speaker, to understand without judging actions or feelings." According to Richard Salem, The Benefits of Empathic Listening.
According to Stephen Covey, Author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we must “Seek first to understand, so that you may be understood.” For successful communication, check your assumptions. Because of our differences, we must never assume that a person from another culture adheres to our unspoken rules. Seek to understand their perspectives and learn to recognize their values as strengths.
