Global communication is changing
According to Moran, et al. (2011) most organizational leaders spend upwards of 70 to 90 percent of their time communicating with others, and only about 25 percent of their time alone. One can only imagine though that trying to communicate across cultures and be effectively conveying a message intended can be challenging even for the best communicators. Culturally based biases, assumptions, and messages that are often truncated to 280 characters can result in misunderstandings, misinterpretation, and confusion.
Apart from quick outgoing messages through social media, website blurbs or potent power point slides leaders must often navigate the processing of internal communication between employees, which can be just as difficult.
In order to facilitate effective global communication, leaders should:
Understand the culture and listen
Communication is a circular process of interaction. If the message is not received properly, a proper response is not likely and misunderstandings can happen. Spoken language as well as non-verbal communication, tone and intention/perception are all crucial parts of exchanging messages. Different cultural backgrounds result in different levels of directness, politeness, eye contact and so on. in addition, keeping communication simple and free of slang or jargon is a must while crossing cultural barriers. Using common language and using terminology that resonates with everyone in the organization despite their background is a must (Everse, 2011). Global leaders must, therefore, educate themselves on different cultural variables if their goal is to communicate effectively across continents and extract the diversity of thought that can give the desired edge.
Avoid groupthink errors
Decisions made in groups should not be attributed to only one individual, but rather to a collectively made decision of the alternatives at hand. This situation invites a few positive aspects of decisions made by groups-such as brainstorming new ideas, sense of organizational belonging and ownership, or combining of perspectives. On the other hand, group decision making is also a prime ground for pressuring members to unanimity and self-censorship as well as vulnerable to a phenomenon of groupthink -or inability to critically evaluate individual contributions. Rather than new information or ideas coming to light, the already available information is frequently discussed ad nauseam.
To avoid the traps that group decision making can present, employees should be encouraged to submit their ideas before reading abstracts of others. Providing a clear agenda of the topics for discussion and including everyone’s individual contribution before bunching up ideas is another way of bringing new information to surface.
Continue face-to-face interaction
Despite the impact the digital exchange of information has on our communication, it cannot often convey the tone of voice or body language that make communication complete. Though video application based meetings make global communication much easier and are definitely more cost effective than face-to-face meetings, they also present some challenges. Time of such meetings is often limited and void of casual exchange or small talk. It can put a significant amount of pressure on participants. Face-to-face meeting on the other hand, while can be more complex in planning and execution, as well as often much more costly, can bring a lot more background information into the picture. Casual interaction over lunch between meeting sessions or group dinner can build important report between partners and leaders. It is important that leaders maneuver through organizational dynamics and choose the appropriate mean of communication to cultivate trust and to enhance innovation.
References
Evers, G. (2011). Eight communication traps that foil innovation. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2011/01/eight-communication-traps-that
Moran, R., Abramson, N., & Moran, S. (2011). Managing Cultural Differences (Ninth Edition). New York, New York: Butterworth-Heinemann
Dana Ward says
Like the poster above me, I have trouble with balancing the increased use of technology with maintaining personal attention through face to face communications. I too tend to multi-task when on a faceless conference call. These truly seems to be a struggle of the times, and one that my CEO has taken on as his personal mission. We recently moved all of our web meetings to ZOOM (we previously used Skype). The new technology allowed teams of up to 50 people to share their webcams in a gallery view. Not only where we able to see who was actually paying attention during meetings or training sessions, we were also given the ability to ‘look each other in the eye’ when speaking with one another. This has completely changed the way that we interact with one another, and has become the new norm for all group training across geographically dispersed offices. The feedback has been largely positive – those that do not speak English as their primary language have reported deeper understanding of the topics and concepts presented, and we spend less time trying to ‘interpret’ each other’s meanings.
Cassandra Maris Landis says
Face to face interaction is definitely important in not getting stuck in communication traps. I have found that when I am in phone conferences I am not always fully engaged. It makes it easier for me to work on something else while on the phone call and not give my full attention to what is going on. When you are face to face you have no choice but to be engaged and it forces you to focus. I actually prefer face to face conversations because I am a facial reader and love to look at peoples reactions as conversations are happening because I feel it says so much more than the words people are speaking.