Communications abroad? Be smart!

Recently I had a discussion with my team, does corporate communication vary from one culture to the other? Having worked in a global corporation, gave me a glitch of insights to truly say - yes it does. Diversity is what makes us richer, but also requires broadness of thought and perspective while communicating - written or spoken.

This quote really stuck with me: "There was once a Finn who loved his wife so much that he almost told her". As we all know, a joke always has an ounce of truth in it. If you want to master the communication of a certain language, you have to get to know its true culture of it. Maybe it's more in the WAY we communicate, than WHAT we communicate.

The term "intercultural communication" was first mentioned by social psychologist Geert Hofstedem, who defines three main cultural types:

• the linear active, dominant in Western Europe and the USA. They talk as much as they listen. Their body language is fairly restrained. They are polite, but direct and like to deal with facts, rather than emotions.
• the multi-active, like Mediterraneans and Saudi Arabi who have a lot of gesticulations, are emotional and tend to do many things at once.
• the reactive, like the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans. They speak less, with subtle body language, are indirect, and don't like confrontation. What they value the most is face-to-face communication.*

Of course, these are no "set-in-stone" behaviors, only a spectrum of them. And most of us today is a hybrid of all of the mentioned above, no matter the cultural background. But having to know all these cultures and experiencing their ways of collaborating and information exchange, makes you more competent, and in the end - a more successful communicator, with a lot more empathy and understanding of one another, no matter the background.

*The Communication book, Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschappeler