Everyone has, at one point or another, said the wrong thing, made an incorrect interpretation, or misread a situation. The result of this is, at best, a minor misunderstanding and, at its most severe, a conflict of some sort and, ultimately, a burnt bridge. The risk of this happening increases exponentially when you’re working and communicating across cultures.
Intercultural communication is rife with uncertainty that makes it really hard to successfully navigate. It’s easy to interpret the words and actions of people from other cultures differently than they intend. And when that happens, it can wreak havoc on cross-cultural relationships that may be crucial to a global business’s success – sometimes without you even realizing it.
But you can prevent these misinterpretations and steer clear of the “unknowingly burnt bridge” by leveraging what we at CultureWizard call a global mindset. With cross-cultural awareness training, you can more accurately understand and interpret other people’s values, preferences, and actions without even knowing what culture they are from.
Culture, which dictates how we communicate with both spoken and unspoken language, is not random. It consists of logical behavior patterns that can be identified, measured and used as a framework. The ability to do these things is what we call a global mindset. A global mindset helps ensure that your business won’t lose effectiveness due to intercultural communication missteps no matter what different cultures you’re working across.
How to Start Developing Your Global Mindset
The first step in developing a global mindset is to always keep in mind that what’s familiar and appropriate to you may be very different from what’s familiar and appropriate to any client, colleague, or customer you’re working with – even if they’re from the same culture, but especially if they’re from a different one. When it comes to intercultural business communication, simply saying something at the wrong time can hamper potential business dealings.
Having a global mindset means that you understand a range of behaviors that signal underlying values. You’ll be aware that a potential business partner who keeps checking their watch may not be signaling boredom, but simply values sticking to a schedule. They could be German, Swiss, or American – three countries that tend to value careful time management. Or, they might be from a culture with a more fluid approach to time, but as individuals they fall outside that culture’s norm.
The best-practice approach to help prevent unknowingly burnt bridges is to develop a keen awareness of the range of diverse styles and values that exist along the specific cultural dimensions of the people who impact your work. The CultureWizard Intercultural Model® defines eight such dimensions (or characteristics), each one of which you can find described in detail in our Dimensions series of blog posts.
Those posts will fuel your growing global mindset with knowledge about the different ways people from other cultures communicate verbally, and non-verbally, and shed light on the invisible values at play behind those various intercultural communication styles. They will tell you what certain behaviors might mean.
Verbal CuesCan Help Tune Your Global Mindset
For many people, when it comes to intercultural communication, conversations are the most obvious thing to observe. Subtle differences can cause you to misinterpret speech across cultures, but knowing what to look for can help you more accurately understand what people from different cultures are saying.
For example, you ask a colleague “How did the meeting go today?” and they say “It went well. I may need to follow-up to make sure they have what they need.” If you’re a direct communicator, you will understand that the meeting went well and there’s a follow-up conversation potentially needed. Equipped with a global mindset, however, you would be able to pick up on the indirect meaning of that response: The meeting may or may not have gone well. A follow-up conversation is needed to properly answer that question. More precisely, the results of the meeting were mixed. That’s one interpretation and you would then engage your global mindset again to prompt for more information: “What’s needed in the follow-up conversation?” The answer to that question would answer your original question.
Or, if you’re chatting with someone who has talked about her personal life and asked you several non-business questions, if you’re transactional you may think she’s nosy. But, really, she may simply come from a culture that highly values developing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Similarly, if you ask someone “What do you do?” at a social event and he responds with a list of hobbies as opposed to a job description, his culture may prize work-life balance, so work doesn’t necessarily define him. Alternatively, if that person asks you the same question and you respond with what you do for work, he may interpret your response as unusual. The trick is that you have to know who you’re talking to!
Non-Verbal Communication Also Aids Your Global Mindset
Words only convey so much. Non-verbal communication adds to what people are trying to say – in fact, in some cultures non-verbal signals can “say” far more than the words! Silence, for example, is a natural part of communication in some cultures. In Finland, silence can show that the listener is paying close attention to the speaker and taking a moment to contemplate what has been said. Similar silence in North America, however, is often understood as displeasure. When you encounter silence, you should try to first understand who you’re speaking to and if they’ve shown signs of being direct or indirect communicators in order to correctly interpret that silence.
Actions, which are a form of communication, can also tell you if someone comes from a hierarchical or egalitarian culture. People who are reticent to make a decision without the boss’s approval are likely from a hierarchical background, where decision-making is often centralized and specific to high-level roles. Meanwhile, someone willing to take initiative may not be overstepping boundaries but may simply be from an egalitarian culture where doing so is encouraged. Having that information will enrich your interactions with those colleagues and help you manage your expectations more accurately.
Stop, And Think – With a Global Mindset
Exploring and observing our differences can help us interpret human behavior in ways that honor the diversity of styles, perspectives, and values that exist in the world’s many diverse cultures. The more insight we have into others’ preferences, the better equipped we become to understand co-workers and business partners from other cultures, and to develop effective behavior strategies (like ‘flexing’ your own style to adjust to others’ unspoken – or even unconscious – expectations).
Effective intercultural communication is less about memorizing a list of cultural norms and more about taking a wider global mindset perspective to maintain harmonious relationships without unintentionally conveying disrespect or feeling disrespected. By recognizing our own values and inclinations and taking a moment to reflect on how our intentions may be received, or how we might perceive someone else’s actions, we can shift our style to help prevent unintentional misinterpretation.
Using a global mindset to think about the differences between your values and what the verbal and non-verbal communication of others might imply about their values can cause unknown signals to become clear – and thereby help prevent you from burning your cross-cultural bridges.
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