The United States of America has become a “melting pot,” a nation composed of people from different countries, and with diverse cultures. Although these patterns of different values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors makes this a wonderful country, sometimes it brings problems between the forms of communication between parties or groups that contain people with these distinctive backgrounds.
One situation where I was involved, and in which I felt that I was not communicating very well with my group due to cultural differences, was when I was in a group project in one of my ESOL classes during high school. Since this was an ESOL class composed of students who were trying to learn English, it was composed of people with different backgrounds and cultures. An example of what made the communication process difficult was the power distance. I come from a South American country with a high power-distance country culture, where I grew up with the awareness that the authority of those with power should not be questioned. At the beginning it was problematic for me to partake in a participative leadership style, because I was used to simply conform to the decisions and desires of high-status members, rather than contributing my own opinions. This obviously bothered some of my group members, as they were expecting to get some sort of feedback from me, while I expected to get directions from them.
Another fact that contributed to communication problems was the uncertainty avoidance. The culture where I come from is not a low uncertainty avoidance culture where we have a high tolerance for ambiguity and less rigid rules. On the contrary, my culture is that with high uncertainty avoidance, since we rely on clear rules, with the leader is expected to structure the work for the group. Again, the problem was the way the group worked: it was very ambiguous and did not have any kind of rules. Over time, I found out that I work better when I follow instructions, and following rules rather than guessing where the project will go as we work on it. Not having guidelines that explain how to work on something made me uncomfortable, and not able to concentrate on the project. The structure that I was hoping went along Tuckman’s notion of developmental stages of a group. The fact that we did not follow these stages might explain why we failed as a group.
Additionally, I should have tried to communicate with my group in a way that extended empathy and respected all of the members of the group. For a while, I was stuck with both my ideologies, and I did not really took into account the other people’s cultures and the way they wanted to work. We could have met before we started working on the project, so that we could get to know more about each others’ cultures, similarities and differences equally, as well as the expectations they had. Also, it would have been helpful if we had worked to incorporate the key cultural values of all members into the group’s procedures. For example, we could have established goals that made the people with high uncertainty avoidance cultures, so that they are more comfortable completing their tasks. Finally, just simply recognizing, respecting, and accepting these cultural differences would have made the communication within our group work more easily.
I really enjoyed reading your post and it was very interesting to hear your perspective about power. My husband is from Central America and he too has talked about how there is very little, if any, questioning of those who are in power; but that mentality has since caused him to always question authority because of the potential for corruption. He is not aggressive in his questioning but he does routinely observe the power dynamic of those who out rank him at work in order to be aware of potential threats to his own job. I have also noticed that he tends to put in extra work in order to outperform his coworkers in order to “secure” his position within the department. It seems as though his awareness of the potential for abuse of power causes him to present the best possible work in order to avoid falling victim to the abuse. I do not think he has ever witnessed any serious abuse of power since moving to the United States but it appears as though he is always preparing himself for the possibility.
I like how you were able to recognize both the faults of others in your group as well as yourself and didn’t fall prey to the actor-observer difference that most do and just blame it on the others. I also admire that even though you state that you need structure and need to be told what to do for projects and assignments, you are doing very well with the creative liberties of picking any topic and applying it in anyway possible. It’s shows that you have a creativeness and are able to create your own structure, even if you may have struggled a little or made you slightly uncomfortable. You seem to be very good at it and it is said that with practice, you are bound to get better. So while it may have taken extra effort now, it may not in the future. And if it didn’t take any extra effort because you’ve already overcome that un-comfortableness in your class, then congratulations. Continue to apply what you’ve learned about group communications in your future endeavors and keep up the wonderful applied knowledge skills.