Indirect Communication Styles
How people communicate is a vital part of understanding a culture. It’s crucial to recognize an indirect communication culture because the words someone uses are only a small part of the message being conveyed.
Cultures such as India, Thailand, and Japan are quite indirect in their style. This means that individuals often speak in a roundabout way by adapting the language to be somewhat non-specific and extremely tactful. Nonverbal communication, such as facial expression, tone of voice and posture, take on a very important role as clues about the full message. While the goal of the communication is the information, at the same time the person looks to maintain harmony, avoid confrontation and allow all parties to save face.
If you recognize that you’re working with indirect communication styles in your business activities, be very careful to pay close attention to all of these signals.
- taken from RW3′s CultureWizard™
