Important Factors in Intercultural Communication

For every overseas assignment, a source of both anticipation and dread is the opportunity it presents to communicate across cultures. What, however, is intercultural communication exactly? We first have to define for ourselves both "culture" and "communication." Condon and Yousef (1975) remind us that "we cannot separate culture from communication, for as soon as we start to talk about one we are almost inevitably talking about the other, too."

The essence of culture is not what is visible on the surface. It is the shared way groups of people understand and interpret the world. It can also be defined as the way groups of people solve problems. Culture, as defined by Dutch sociologist Fons Trompenaars (Riding the Waves of Culture), is a repetitive problem-solving process. Not only individuals but countries, regions and organizations also have cultures. Aspects of cultural diversity, such as religion, gender, age, class, regional differences, all play a role not only in individual culture, but in organizational culture. International managers beware!

Dutch professor Geert Hofstede defines culture as being "the collective programming of the human mind." In other words, culture is to a group what personality is to an individual. It's good to give some thought to how you would define your own culture, and how you see that of others: how would you describe culture? Think in terms of social beliefs, values, symbols, rituals, the combined characteristics of a group of people. How are these characteristics formed?

Communication is, in a sense, inevitable. We are always sending messages, consciously and unconsciously, for example through posture, clothing, skin colour, remaining silent, etc. Most importantly, communication occurs in a context. You can't separate the content of your message from the context in which it falls (for instance, attempting to hold a business discussion with a French manager over dinner will be very poorly received; in Asia dressing poorly and driving an economical used car will convey an unsuccessful image). Communication is a continuous and interactive process: for communication to take place, two or more people have to be involved. During this process we are both sender and receiver.

In communication, certain cultures consider the content, or explicit message, to be most important. Other cultures place far more emphasis on the context, or surrounding characteristics. According to sociologist Edward Hall, "context is the information that surrounds an event." High-context cultures rely on covert and implicit messages, with a great deal of non-verbal coding. They have strong people/relationship bonds, and are open and flexible with time. Low-context cultures are very verbal and extremely specific. Reactions are on the surface and bonds between people are fragile. Time tends to be highly organized.

Sociological and behavioural studies have determined that, across cultures, the total impact of a message on the receiver (the effect of the communication, often determined at a later date) is only based 7% on the actual wording of the message. 38% of the impact comes from how the message was conveyed (tone, accent, emphasis) and 55% from non-verbal communication (facial expressions, gestures, etc.). In low-context culture, non-verbal communication is still very important (impact). In high-context cultures this is even more important, and counts more than the actual content of the message.

"High-context people are apt to become impatient and irritated when low-context people insist on giving them information they don't need, and conversely, low-context people are at a loss when high-context people do not provide enough information. One of the great communications challenges in life is to find the appropriate level of contexting needed in each situation. Too much information leads people to feel they are being talked down to; too little information can mystify them or make them feel left out." Hall. E.T., & Hall, M.R. (1990). Understanding cultural differences . Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, Inc.

What is the most important requirement in dealing interculturally? To remember that we are always (unconsciously) referring back to our own cultural programming, viewing new situations through our own cultural filters. As Anaïs Nin put so well "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."