Differences in high-context and low-context communication styles

Differences in high-context and low-context communication styles across cultures influence the way people perceive information. For a multinational organization, it’s essential to know the difference between high and low-context cultures in order to communicate effectively and avoid making embarrassing or offensive mistakes. A full understanding of these differences will effectively improve both outward, client-focused communication as well as inter-business relationships.

“A different language is a different vision of life” - Federico Fellini

Nowadays, even for the companies that are not multinational, there is a necessity to pay attention to the importance of “intercultural communication” or “cross-cultural communication”. Knowing that native speakers are attuned to cultural differences at levels that even fluent non-native speakers could never be, we at RCM Technologies recently took a look at a key cultural differentiator: ‘high-context’ and ‘low-context’ communication styles – and the unintended influence these differences can exert if not properly understood.

There’s an old play on cultural stereotypes that probably predates the Internet: “In Heaven, the police are British, the cooks are French, and the engineers are German. In Hell, those roles are switched around.”

Most people live with the danger of generalization at the expense of considering individual behavior and performance, yet somehow there’s still enough truth in the above statement to raise a smile. Anyone who works in an international business environment will soon notice differences – some subtle, some more pronounced – in the communication styles favored by personnel, depending on their location or origin.

These discrepancies can be brought into sharp focus wherever a global campaign or quality program is in place and can translate into dramatically different outcomes. These differing outputs may then be used by Operations to lead different regional teams in varying directions.

At RCM Technologies, our cultural awareness matures with establishing a centralized ‘International Client Center’. Consequently, we recognize the potential for problems to arise where companies impose a ‘one size fits all’ approach without full consideration of possible issues.

Our salespeople are in the continuous training program so we’re now delving a little deeper, taking a closer look at some of the communication differences we see between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ business practices – and specifically, their effects on Customer Experience when US / UK customers contact offshore, Asia-Pacific region customer service agents.

The piece provides vital food for thought for anyone managing teams across differing regional communication styles, for a more in-depth look at high context vs. low-context cultures follow the below links.

Before we take a look more into cultural context differences, just imagine how powerful knowledge this might be.

Former US president Jimmy Carter understood the importance of high-context communication with his colleagues from Israel and Egypt during the peace talks at Camp David. When Prime Minister Menachem Begin was about to leave the unsatisfactory negotiations, Carter presented him with pictures of the three heads of state, with the names of each of Begin's grandchildren written on the photographs. The prime minister repeated the names of his grandchildren out loud as he looked at the pictures, reflecting on the importance of the peace negotiations to his grandchildren's futures. Carter recognized that a high-context reference to future generations would induce the prime minister to return to the negotiations.

High-Context Communication

• Situational and relational knowledge
• Less is verbally explicit or written or formally expressed
• More internalized understandings of what is communicated 
• Mostly used in long term and well-established relationships
• Decisions and activities focus around personal face-to-face communication, often around a central, authoritative figure
• Strong awareness of who is “internal” ie accepted/belongs vs. "outsiders"

Association

• Relationships are build up slowly, thus stable and depend on trust,
• Execution heavily depends on relationships with people and attention to group processes.
• One's identity is rooted in groups (family, culture, work).

Interaction

• High use of nonverbal elements; voice tone, facial expression, gestures, and eye movement carry significant parts of a conversation.
• The verbal message is indirect; one talks around the point and embellishes it.
• Communication is seen as an art form-a a way of engaging someone.
• Personalized disagreement, one is sensitive to conflict expressed in another's nonverbal communication. Conflict either must be solved before work can progress or must be avoided.

Learning

• Rely on multiple sources of information. 
• Deductive oriented thinking proceeds from general to specific.
• Learning occurs by first observing others as they model or demonstrate and then practicing.
• Groups are preferred for learning and problem-solving.
• Accuracy is valued. 

High context cultures are more common in the eastern nations than in western and in countries with low racial diversity. Cultures where the group is valued over the individual promote group reliance. High context cultures have a strong sense of tradition and history, and change little over time, such as tribal and native societies. 

Higher-context culture: China, Korea, Japan, other Asian countries, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Oman, and Yemen, Africa, India, Latin America, the Pacific islands, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. In the United States, Native Americans and Hawaiian islanders are also considered high-context. 

Low Context Communication

• Rule oriented
• More knowledge is public, external, and accessible.
• Shorter duration of communications
• Knowledge is transferable
• Task-centered. Decisions and activities focus on what needs to be done and the delegation of responsibilities.

Association

• Relationships begin and end quickly. Many people can be inside one's circle; the circle's boundary is not clear.
• Things get done best if being procedural 
• Attention to the goal is critical
• Decentralized social structure; responsibility goes further down (is not concentrated at the top).

Interaction

• Words matter: the message is carried more by words than by nonverbal means.
• The verbal message is direct; 
• Communication is seen as a way of exchanging information, ideas, and opinions.
• Depersonalized disagreement. One withdraws from conflict with another and gets on with the task. 
• Focus is on rational solutions, not personal ones.

Learning

• One source of information is used to develop knowledge.
• Inductive thinking proceeds from specific to general. 
• Focus is on detail.
• Learning occurs by following explicit directions and explanations of others.
• An individual orientation is preferred for learning and problem-solving.
• Speed is valued. 
• The efficiency of learning is important.

An individual from a high context culture has to adapt, and/or be accommodated when shifting to a low context culture. High context cultures expect small close-knit groups, where professional and personal life is interrelated. Therefore, a high context individual is more likely to ask questions than an attempt to work out a solution independently.

Lower-context culture: United States, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Canada, and other European nations

To make things even harder, high- and low-context aren’t best used to describe entire countries or even particular people. Instead, they describe situations and environments. 

Ritualized events like weddings or trials in the courtroom are relatively high-context. It’s difficult to understand them unless you’re familiar with their constraints on what is said and how. Even so, all individuals have baseline expectations of how high- or low-context communication should be, and these expectations absolutely do connect to their cultural backgrounds. Japanese communication is generally very high-context, while U.S. communication is very low-context, and German communication maybe even lower-context. When individuals with different expectations communicate, there are significant pitfalls that can arise.

Low-context communicators need to pay extra attention to nonverbal messages and gestures, face-saving and tact, and to building good relationships over time. Meanwhile, high-context communicators need to remember that what they say may be taken at face value, that direct questions are intended to advance the conversation rather than to offend, and that indirect messages may be missed entirely.

Remember that in business, communication is everything, so make sure you know not only what to say, but also how to say it.

What should be the lesson learned:

• Recognize different communication styles 
• Write emails (communicate in general) according to the recognized cultural context