The Importance of Strong Inter-Cultural Communications Skills in the Context of Business

Inter-cultural communications is an important topic that exporters should pay close attention to. In my role I communicate daily with individuals around the globe, and over the past fifteen years have particularly supported the interaction between Israelis and non-Israelis.

According to Wikipedia, "Inter-cultural communication principals guide the process of exchanging meaningful and unambiguous information across cultural boundaries, in a way that preserves mutual respect and minimizes antagonism." In business contexts, if the goal of those communicating with each other across cultural boundaries is to achieve positive results, they must strive to achieve mutual respect and leave as little room as possible for interpretation.

Written communications in particular could be risky, especially when the communication language, usually English, is not native to one or both sides. Here are some issues that could be challenging in the context of written business correspondence:

- Translating from our native language: Using English characters in sentence structures that reflect our native language grammar

- Modeling our speaking habits: Ignoring context and emotions that accompany verbal discussions

- Conveying emotions: Cultures vary in the type of emotions they share with others and in the way they do so

- Using humor: Cultures vary in what they consider humorous, leaving a lot of room for misinterpretation

- Ignoring cultural taboos: Certain statements could be taken as offensive or hurtful if they touch on issues which are considered sensitive

- Involving politics: People's political opinions and level of understanding of political circumstances vary and are usually unpredictable

Ignoring these and other important aspects of textual (and verbal) communication across cultures could result in confusion, anger, misinterpretation and ultimately in missing the desired goal of the communicators. Therefore, when communicating across cultures it could be helpful to consider the following Best Practices:

- Try to learn a bit about your colleague's culture in advance

- Before sending a written message, review it several times from the perspective of the recipient, preferably by a native English speaker (if that's the language in which you're communicating…). In doing so, ensure that it is simple, clear, and structured correctly

- Unless you have already established a close and open relationship with your colleague, avoid discussing politics, do not make sexist comments or for that matter tell jokes, and keep humor as light as possible. It's always a good idea to add a "smiley" if your intention was to be funny

- Never joke about cultural attributes or mention historical contexts

Clearly there is much more depth to inter-cultural communications, but by necessity we cannot know all that should be known about all cultures that surround us and with which we strive to do business. The important thing is to know the basics, and to understand that how we communicate plays an extremely important role in our success. If we recognize our weakness in this respect, we should seek support from others with greater cultural sensitivities, experience, and knowledge about cultures and how to communicate properly with them.

Ilan

ilan@ncompas.net