Understanding Diversity And Intercultural Communication

One of the most fascinating things in life is the duality between our commonalities and our differences. How can these coexist harmoniously?

As we work and live in more multicultural environments, we progress in our actions towards inclusion and better communication. However, our society still sees a huge gap in the levels of knowledge and understanding about other cultures and our own - for example how we relate in terms of values, traditions and behavior.

One of the main challenges of working together with people of different nationalities and backgrounds is that a lot of the time we make judgements and assessments about others in relation to our own culture, looking at it all via our own prism, paradigms, conscious and unconscious biases.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) trainings and facilitations have become more popular over the years as they help bridge these gaps of communication. One of the many approaches in training is to look at “high context and low context cultures” in order to explain biases, behavior, reactions, identities, privileges and therefore look at what we can do better about it all.

According to research “high-context culture and low-context culture are ends of a continuum of how explicit the message exchanged in a culture are and how important the context is in communication. High-context cultures often exhibit less-direct verbal and nonverbal communication, using small communication gestures and reading more meaning into these less-direct messages.Low-context cultures do the opposite using direct verbal communication to convey and understand a message being communicated. It relies heavily on explicit verbal skills."

This model of high-context and low-context cultures offers a popular framework in intercultural-communication studies. In summary, high context cultures are more indirect in communication. They emphasize image and face value, hoping people can read the “in between the lines”. Meanwhile, low context cultures communication style is very direct, having the basis that what you say is exactly what you mean. At times, it may even come across as rude or too straight forward.

Here is an example to illustrate this framework:

Someone from culture A is coming from a high context culture, which means that what is said must be read between the lines and is not very direct. This culture A person works with culture B person. The individual from culture B is coming from a low context culture where he/she is more direct and straightforward in the way he/she speaks. These two people may encounter difficulties in communicating in an effective way with one another and if they do not develop self-awareness, culture awareness and communication skills things could become worse. If an individual of culture B is giving feedback to an individual from culture A, for instance, it may be understood that the culture B individual is rude or too direct.

Have you ever experienced such situations? Most of us have experienced it in one way or another at work and outside. But how can we learn from one another? How can we improve communication and inclusion not so one is better or has the last saying visa vie the other, but in a way that we can be more empathetic and see the value in all cultures?

Is our own culture always perceived the same way by others?? Are the stereotypes of high/low context culture accurate? Are they reinforcing stereotypes? In the end of the day, we all want to bring more inclusion into our day to day but how can we truly do that?

Below are some tips and tools we find useful in understanding and better communicating in an inclusive way across different cultures:

1) Develop your self-awareness: It all starts with us. Do we understand ourselves and our communication styles? Our triggers? Our biases? Preferences? We encourage you to go a bit deeper into understanding yourself. There are several psychometrical tests online that help in this area. Dig in deeper, try to better understand yourself. To quote Mahatma Gandhi, “If you want to change the world, start with yourself”.

2) Ask more questions: If you are not clear about the communication or what the person means develop the habit of asking more questions like: ‘what do you mean by that?’, “why are you saying it?”, “would you say it to people from the same group as you (gender, race, culture)?”. Questions ask with compassion have power to unleash understanding and better communication. These helps to open up and bridge the gaps amongst high and/or low context cultures.

3) Avoid assumptions: Slow down the decision-making process, listen, reflect, avoid making assumptions and jumping into conclusions. According to the book “Culture Map” by Erin Meyer, some cultures when giving presentations like to emphasize the theory behind the tool they are using. In other cultures, the theoretical aspect is not as important and the focus is more into the application and usage of such tools. Be aware of which type of audience you are talking to, try to understand people better. If you are communicating with a diversified audience, learn how to alternate styles, use FELIZ Consulting’s AIMB formula to better know your Audience, your Intention, the key Message and Benefits to our audience before making assumptions and judging.

4) Avoid judgements:? Aim to be at a neutral space for yourself and others. What we mean by that is to ask you to “zoom out” of yourself and avoid being caught up on the “good” or “bad” of someone’s behavior, or your own behavior. As award winning psychologist and author Dolly Chugh says in her book “The Person you mean to be”, try being the goodish person, the better version of yourself. Reflect that we are all humans who are a work in progress. Be humble and adopt a growth mindset.

5) Be more empathetic: Everyone talks about empathy and this is becoming a buzz word especially since Covid, but are we working on ourselves on actually being more empathetic towards self and others? Self-enquiry and self-reflection questions such as: Why am I judging myself? Am I being kind? Why did this person behave the way he/she/they did? Is there a background? How did they land here in this way? What is it that I can’t see that this person may be going through? All these questions help us with empathy. Our curiosity is triggered and we expand in thinking about why and how people act the way they do. It maybe their own culture and the history of their own unique lives who make them be the way they are in that very moment. Research professor and author Brené Brown talks about the power of empathy versus sympathy, vulnerability and more. This is something we can all work on and develop in ourselves and towards others.

Whenever dealing in an environment where there is cultural diversity, be aware of the fluidity of the interactions. Misinterpretations and miscommunication can happen. We are all humans and we all deserve to be understood, included, respected and treated with dignity. We can open up and transform ourselves when we realize that we come from different places inside ourselves where there is more flexibility and understanding towards self and others. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion among humans bring out the best in us - we just need to be open to it.