Why Intercultural Communication Matters: Bridging Us and Them

Would you like a donut?

It’s hard to imagine that such a simple question could lead to profound change, but as author and cross-cultural relations expert Laura Kriska shares in her 2018 TEDx Talk, small gestures can have a big impact.

At a Japanese company in New York, Kriska describes how the office culture had become highly bifurcated, with Japanese-speaking colleagues sitting on one side of the office and American English-speaking colleagues on the other. The unspoken rule: stick to your own side.

But when a new employee brought in a box of donuts to celebrate the completion of her first week on the job, she not only shared them with her American colleagues, she also chose to share them with her Japanese colleagues. This simple gesture broke down the invisible barrier separating the office and touched off a wave of curiosity and exchange – a wave that ultimately led to company-wide change with the offering of ongoing language lessons for all employees.

“The us versus them culture in this company is being bridged by small gestures every day by hundreds of employees each time they use a word in the other language,” Kriska says in her talk. “This is how we disrupt the us versus them dynamic.”

Why “us versus them”

At its most simple, intercultural communication is the interaction between people of different cultures. Milton Bennett, Ph.D., of the Intercultural Development Research Institute expands this definition to encompass the study and practice of communication across cultural contexts. “It applies equally to domestic cultural differences such as ethnicity and gender and to international differences such as those associated with nationality or world region,” he writes.

As we interact with individuals whose culture differs from our own, we naturally seek out similarities and differences. What do I recognize? How can I used this to know what to do? Our brains are hardwired for categorization. As researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Germany note, “Categorization is the brain’s tool to organize nearly everything we encounter in our daily lives. Grouping information into categories simplifies our complex world and helps us to react quickly and effectively to new experiences.”

However, sometimes our categorization can lead us astray. Snap assessments can lead to assuming too much similarity instead of difference, which can lead to miscommunication. Ethnocentrism, or judging another’s culture by the standards of one’s own culture, can erode trust and understanding. Grouping through assumption can perpetuate stereotypes, or judgements made about individuals based on observable or believed traits. This can then reinforce prejudice, including racism, ageism, sexism, etc..

Andy Luttrell, of the psychology podcast Opinion Science, further explains how the out-group homogeneity effect compounds these issues. He notes that we all sort ourselves into ingroups and outgroups – ingroups being any group you identify with, and outgroups being groups you don’t identify with. (For example, I’m a runner, so people who run would be my ingroup, and people who don’t run would be my outgroup; I identify as female, so people who identify as female would be my ingroup, and people who identify other than female would by my outgroup.)

“We have this tendency to appreciate the uniqueness and variability within our own groups, but then we assume more uniformity among people in our outgroups,” Luttrell explains. The sneaky psychological bias of the out-group homogeneity effect leads us down the path of assuming 'they' are all the same.?

Categorization then is both essential for us to navigate the world quickly and effectively, and simultaneously predisposes us to fall into the trap of us versus them.

What’s at stake

The rise of globalization has made our world ever more interconnected. As researchers Shum Su Kei αnd Rashad Yazdanifard share the in Global Journal of Management and Business Research, “It is general knowledge that human beings cannot live without communication and due to the influence of globalization communication is no longer confined solely to a community and nationwide level but also on an international scale.”

And as we’ve all experienced, the global COVID-19 pandemic has put a magnifying glass at what happens when global connections become disrupted – from health care systems, to travel, to supply chains, the impact has been significant.

In her book “The Business of We” Kriska notes that all culture gaps aren’t created equal. Some have greater consequences than others. They can be inconsequential – think a Yankees versus Mets sports rivalry. But they can also be consequential – think White versus Black racial disparities, or game-changing – think of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At each level, the outcomes become more and more problematic and significant.

“The us versus them dynamic can be harmless,” says Kriska in her TEDx Talk. “But it can also be harmful, causing people to feel unwelcome or even unsafe. For some, feeling like a them is a temporary thing, a passing situation, but for many people in the United States feeling like a them is a way of life.” Applying lessons from intercultural communications to reduce us versus them gaps can result in fewer misunderstandings, improve revenue, and avoid lawsuits and other negative outcomes.?

What we can do about it

The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity describes six developmental stages that people can progress through to acquire a deeper understanding and appreciation of cross-cultural differences. Sometimes known as the Bennet Scale (yes, the same Milton Bennett, Ph.D.. acknowledged earlier) it begins with denial (the experience that one’s own cultural perspective is the only real, accurate, or valid interpretation of reality) and ends in integration (the acceptance of multicultural awareness and the ability to interact effectively across cultural differences).

“After years of observing all kinds of people dealing (or not) with cross-cultural situations, I decided to try to make sense of what was happening to them,” Bennett explains in a write-up from Organizing Engagement, an online publication dedicated to advancing knowledge and practice at the intersection of education organizing, engagement, and equity. “I wanted to explain why some people seemed to get a lot better at communicating across cultural boundaries while other people didn’t improve at all, and I thought that if I were able to explain why this happened, trainers and educators could do a better job of preparing people for cross-cultural encounters.”

Fortunately, there are ways to bridge intercultural gaps. In a blog for UKG, which focuses on human resources solutions and technology, Kriska offers three strategies anyone can use to bridge intercultural gaps and increase belonging without fear of causing harm.?

1.??????Use language that centers belonging

Are you using us versus them phrasing in your organization – “those guys in accounting” or “those people in Houston?” Kriska shares how simply tweaking the words we choose can emphasize connectedness. “’Our partners in accounting’ or ‘The team in Houston’ convey a we culture where everyone belongs,” she writes.

2.??????Cultivate new habits

As many people begin returning to the workplace following the COVID-19 global pandemic, Kriska urges us to resist the urge to return to old patterns of engaging with same people face-to-face. “Make a deliberate effort to seek out one new engagement per week,” she writes. “Creating these opportunities and then listening to others will provide priceless chances to connect on a meaningful level.”

3.??????Ask to borrow something

Need a pencil, tape, a stapler? Asking to borrow something can spark what Kriska calls “a we-moment of connection.” It offers us a chance to get to know our co-workers by asking a simple question or making a comment as an attempt to connect.?

Intercultural communication helps us better understand how we communicate across an array of cultural and environmental contexts. To embrace intercultural communications is to embrace bridging gaps between us and them – to break the circuit of our hardwiring and grow from a narrow frame of cultural reference, to one of broader understanding. And it can start with the smallest of gestures – would you like a donut??

This article is the first in a three-part series on the impact of effective intercultural communication, written for my final project for Foundations of Intercultural Communication, a master’s degree course at the University of Florida. Learn more about the Global Strategic Communication certificate program and the master’s program in Public Interest Communication.?