Practice Understanding beyond the borders: Asia and western world

Cross-cultural communication in international teams and during negotiations for sure requires time and attention to make a working process smooth and productive. In fact is it not enough just to translate literally from native language to another language. For Real understanding vocabulary knowledge is just a small part, and big part is understanding of mental patterns, what is common, what is different, unwritten rules and niceties of perception of person or group with who you communicate.

i feel sad when western people (business, managers, officials) come to Asia - and they feel themselves kind of higher in certain way, smarter and faster - but to be honest it is just short-sighted approach. i can say this after 9 years developing business in Indonesia, building local team here, arranging international deals.

i found way how to build longterm business relationships here and glad to share things which need to master. And actually western world can learn a lot from Asian people and Indonesian people specifically - but this is a topic for the next article.

For now lets have a look closer to see Communication models and how can they help to build longterm relationships and make a proper negotiations.

Languages can be classified depends on 2 different communication model which shapes significantly way of thinking and way of perception for whole nations

1. explicit or implicit communication model

*explicit languages. - where responsibility of understanding belongs to person who explains, who gives information (american, german languages) - direct and straightforward expression

*implicit languages - where responsibility of understanding relies on listener (most eastern languages, including russian, chinese) and meaning can depends on ton of voice, gestures, context and many other unspoken things.

And the funny thing. - even when 2 person with implicit communication model but from different cultures/ islands meet each other - they also can misunderstand things cause what has been unspoken can be read in a very opposite ways.

2. on other scale communication model describes a relation to conflict in communication model

*tolerant open conflict (american, german, russian)

*avoiding conflict (chinese, most asian languages)

• Try to figure out and share - what kind of communication model is common for the region where you live) ?

What about Indonesian language itself? What kind of communication model here?

We simply can categorise it as implicit and avoiding communication - but what does it give us then? how can we apply this knowledge? and more over - is it flat like this?

Fortunately indonesian language is young and it has a strong advantage comparing to other languages = simplicity. While whole world is trying to simplify and on the way continues to over complicated - Indonesia implemented their model to speak clear and with very beautiful logic. So from one hand - it could be purely explicit communication model.

But! as soon as Indonesia has more than 200 nations within 1 country, and very deep roots of their own island traditions as well as connection with different cultures such as indian, chinese, european, arabian - it creates actually a very sophisticated cocktail where not everything as explicit as it could look like.

No doubts that indonesian society has a communication model avoiding conflict - but regarding explicit or implicit we should look at circumstances and navigate there.

How to navigate?

1. First of all, focus on person with who i interact. from which island, which culture, and for what kind of reason. Operator in bank will try to be as much explicit as possible, but if something goes beyond his responsibility - it is no sense to struggle in attempts to get everything. If i am during negotiations - i can not expect explicit approach, but i can try communication in this way - and offer something from my side first. I dont rely on knowledge about people and culture here, but i rely on my skill to give full attention to person and situation to establish warm and clear connection.

situation 1. when i am as a speaker or i give a task - i can not rely that someone will guess what i mean. i should extract from my mind as maximum as i can - and pronounce even that things which in my world can be considered as obvious. On the same time i include in my communication everything what can help me: pictures, images, video - so to make my speech as visual as possible.

*yes Indonesia has a design thinking in their own way - as I call it . when you give images of what you want or demonstrate what you offer, - it works much better than any words.

and yes - same as everywhere, if people dont ask anything. - probably they dont understand. so better ask them to explain what did they take as a plan.

and remember - they will read also what i did not say but show. how polite am i, how honest, is my voice respectful, am i with patience or arrogance.

situation 2. when i ask why something goes not according with our plans or why any problems have occurred >> i can not expect explicit answer. so i need to prepare some additional questions to get a real reason. what was not easy? what kind of obstacles you have got? are you scare? is it for the first time? have you seen something like this before? is it hard? are you tired? do you need support of another person? can other person help you with this task? can you fix it by yourself? what can help you?

situation 3. when i am listener, i accept that there is a filter which makes them speak with me more formal, or less detailed, or miss some of the specifics. so again i can give them more space to explain themselves - to let them speak between each other and just listen, to ask softer, to let them express opinion, show initiative, give ideas. My way is to give space for team but cut hierarchical distance so they feel it safe to share as maximal as they are able to share.

situation 4. i learn from them. Setiap orang seperti guru untuk saya. Each person as a teacher for me - in my team, and partners. of course and always not scare to clarify, to ask and to show that there is something that i don't know. and what i have learned during these 9 years - it is truly beyond the words, but i will try to share in my next articles.

Hope you like this one and find something useful for you. Share what was surprising and new. any questions? any of your cases?

as a closing word here i would like to say - yes, we move fast and learn how to communicate right and understand each other, lets become responsible listeners and speakers and most important - what AI can not do instead of us - it can not give a feeling of respect in communication. on the same time people from all over the world can understand and feel respect even without any words. so these are 2 things to start with in any cross-cultural communication.