Cross Cultural Communication

2 Pages 547 Words

Communicating Across Cultural Barriers

All international business activity involves communication. Within the international and global business environment, activities such as exchanging information and ideas, decision making, negotiating, motivating , and leading are all based on the ability of managers from other cultures. Achieving effective communication is a challenge to managers worldwide even when the workforce is culturally homogeneous, but when one company includes a variety of languages and cultural backgrounds, effective two-way communication becomes even more difficult.
We think that the major obstacle in international business is in understanding the foreigner, the difficulty involves becoming aware of our own cultural conditioning . We are generally least aware of our own cultural characteristics and are quite surprised when we hear foreigner’s descriptions of us. For example, many Americans are surprised to discover that they are seen by foreigner as hurried, overly law-abiding, very hard working, extremely explicit, and overly inquisitive.
Projective similarity refers to the assumption that people are more similar to you than they actually are, or that a situation is similar to yours when in fact it is not. Projected similarity involves assuming, imagining, and actually perceiving similarity when differences exist. Projected similarity particularly handicaps people in cross-cultural situations.
At the base of projected similarity is a subconscious parochialism. I assume that there is only one way to be: my way. I assume that there is only one way to see the world: my way. I therefore view other people in reference to me and to my way of viewing the world. While it is important to understand and respect the foreigner’s point of view, it is not necessary to accept or adopt it. One of the best exercises for developing empathy and reducing parochialism and projected similarity is role reversa...