Throughout the course of a business day, we may communicate via email, one-on-one phone calls, conference calls, and in person conversations. Our communications can be with direct reports, indirect reports, specialists, superiors, and customers. On the customer level, we may be interacting with potential clients, existing customers, or end users who need assistance with our products.
We are both the sender and receiver of communication on an hourly basis. As a sender, I am more fully aware that I must be mindful as I am encoding my communication. Am I being clear? Have I provided enough or too many words? What channel am I intending to communicate my message: email, phone, or in person? Am I aware of my receiver’s level of understanding? In addition, errors that can be created when people are from different cultures or linguistic backgrounds. My company was recently acquired by a French corporation. As a non-French speaker, I must be aware when communicating with people that present as fluent English speakers or writers but are not culturally American. Certain messages could be lost in the decoding process and I should be aware of my own egocentrism as I encode.
Throughout the day, we may find ourselves interacting with customers who are immigrants from various countries, Looking further into the concept of communicating between cultures and found an interesting concept of affective versus neutral cultures. The article by Dr. Carole Kinsey Gorman, Ph.D., explains that certain cultures are accepting of showing emotion (affective) in the context of business whereas other cultures, neutral, are not (Gorman, 2011). It is possible that in the decoding process, our customers, both internally and externally could interpret responses differently.
Gorman, C. K., Ph.D. (2011, March). Communicating Across Cultures. Retrieved February 11, 2019, from https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/business-communication/communicating-across-cultures.
Zhane Woodall says
Nicholas, I was really interested reading your blog post because I also have to communicate via email or on the phone with multiple people throughout a work day. The inability to see the person I am communicating with can sometimes put a hamper on our conversation as we struggle to understand something as simple as the other person’s mood. I happen to work with people from different backgrounds and not everyone I work with can say that English is their first language. I can only imagine the difficulty that you experience when dealing with the French speaking top level management in your organization where every communication is important. I would be interested to discover if other cultures take the time that we seem to in America to understand the message sending process. I believe that it is more comfortable in an exchange when both sides understand that there is a need to be cautious for misinterpretation and not jump to hurt feelings.