Importance of communication across global cultures

A good number of companies are facing a challenge of communicating across cultures. Intercultural communication is the process of sending and receiving messages between people whose cultural background leads them to interpret verbal and non-verbal signs differently. Two trends contribute to the rapidly increasing importance of the intercultural communication in the workplace are market globalization and the multicultural workforce.

The global market place

Market globalization is the increasing tendency of the world to act as one market. Technological advances in travel and telecommunication are the driving force behind market globalization. New communication technologies allow teams from all over the world to work on projects and share information without leaving their desks. At the same time advanced technologies allow manufacturers to produce their goods in foreign location that offer an abundant supply of low cost labour.

In the global market place, natural boundaries and national borders have disappeared, for the most part, as more and more domestic markets open to worldwide competition and as business look for new growth opportunities for their goods and services. Even firms that once thought that they were too small to expand into a neighbouring city have discovered that they can tap the sales potential of overseas markets with the help of fax machine, overnight delivery service, e-mail and internet. Companies know that to be successful in the global marketplace, they must minimize cultural and language barrier among customers and employees. Outdoor equipment retailer uses custom-designed website to recognize and accommodate cultural differences in the global marketplace. UPS has expanded its web-based tracking services so that customers in European countries can check-in their own language—to see whether packages have reached the destination around the world. However, one need not to “go global” or launch a website to interact with someone who speak another language or who thinks, acts, or transact business differently than one does. Even is a company transacts business locally, chances are that it will be communicating at work with people who come from various national, religious and ethnic background.

The multicultural workforce

The US workforce is partly composed of immigrants from Europe, Latin America, India, Bangladesh, African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans. All of them bring their own language and culture to their workplace. As a result today’s workforce is increasingly made up of people who differ in race, gender, age, culture, family structure, religion and educational background. Such cultural diversity is the second trend contributing to the importance of intercultural communication. It affects how business messages are conceived, planned, sent, received an d interpreted in the workplace.

It is estimated that by the first decade of twenty first century minorities would account for fifty percent of the US population. Managing the mixture of such diversified group of people becomes a difficult challenge. A diverse workforce brings with it a wide range of skills, traditions, backgrounds, experiences, outlooks and attitudes toward work that can affect employee behaviour on the job. Supervisors must be able to communicate with and motivate these diverse employees while fostering cooperation and harmony among them. A company’s cultural diversity affects how its business messages are conceived, composed, delivered, received, and interpreted. Managers must be sensitive to cultural differences as one communicates with people throughout the world. One will be exchanging business messages with co-workers, customers, suppliers, investors, and competitors who come from culturally diverse background. Glance at the job advertisements in newspaper and one will find that employment opportunities are everywhere if one has good intercultural skills. However, to do so, one must first understand some basics of culture.

Recognizing cultural differences

When one writes to or speaks with someone from another culture, one encodes his message using the assumption of one’s own culture. However, members of one’s audience decode the message according to the assumption of their culture, so the message may be misunderstood. In this respect, let me cite an example. When an Australian is tired of a discussion on a subject and want to change the discussion subject he would say “could we table the issue for a while” meaning that he would like to switch over to a new topic, the discussant misunderstood the request and continued on the issue that was being discussed. Another example may be cited with the Japanese Culture. Hearing a proposal, Japanese gentleman may say “I agree” but that does not mean that he had approved the proposal. The greater the difference between cultures, the greater the chance of misunderstanding. In a trade show exhibitors at the Chinese booth could not understand why Chinese visitors were not stopping by their booth. The exhibitors were wearing green hats and giving the green hats to the guests as promotional items. They soon discovered that for many Chinese people green hats are associated with infidelity: the Chinese expression “He wears a green hat” indicates that a man’s wife has been cheating on him. As soon as the exhibitors discarded the green hat and stared to give out T-shirt, the Chinese attendees began visiting the booth.

Problems such as these arise when we assume, wrongly, that other people’s attitudes and lives are like ours. One has to realize to treat people the way they like not like one’s own way. One can improve intercultural sensitivity by recognizing and accommodating four main types of cultural differences: contextual, ethical, social and nonverbal. So it is best to treat people the way they expect to be treated.

Cultural context is the pattern of physical cues, environmental stimuli, and implicit understanding that conveys meaning between members of the same culture. High –context cultures rely on implicit nonverbal action and environmental setting to convey meaning, unlike low-context cultures which rely heavily on explicit verbal communication. Ethical choices can be even more complicated when communicating across cultures. For example, bribing officials is viewed differently from culture to culture. Therefore, it is better to keep messages ethical by actively seeking mutual ground, exchanging messages without judgment, sending messages that are honest and showing respect for cultural difference. Formal rules of etiquette are explicit and well defined but informal rules are learned through observation and imitation. People from one country emphasize hard work, material success and efficiency more than many people in another country. Respect and rank are reflected differently from culture to culture in the way people are addressed and in their working environment.

Nonverbal communication is extremely reliable when determining meaning, but that reliability is valid only when the communicators belong to the same culture. The simplest hand gestures change meaning from culture to culture. So interpreting nonverbal elements according to one’s culture can be dangerous.

When communicating across cultures, one’s effectiveness depends on maintaining an open mind. Unfortunately m any people lapse in to ethnocentrism. They lose sight of the possibility that their words and action can be misunderstood and they forget that they are likely to misinterpret the actions of others. One should move beyond stereotypes to relationships with real people. One can overcome ethnocentrism by acknowledging distinctions, avoiding assumptions and avoiding judgments.

The writer is former DG of EPB. He can be contacted at hassan.youngconsultants@gmail.com