Can You Prevent All Cultural Blunders?

Cross-Cultural Communication Blunders

Unfortunately the answer to the question above is no.

All cultures evolve in time. Languages evolve. Businesses evolve. The world economy evolves. Too many variables come into play in cross cultural business communication.  No one is able to prevent all cultural blunders.

So, what can you do?

Here is the one thing that will help you most:

• Open your cultural understanding.

And how can you do this? There are two things you can do.

1 – Learn From Past Cross-Cultural Mistakes

Accept mistakes as part of the path you need to travel on.  Learn from all of your international business mistakes and cultural blunders. This will help you to open up your understanding of how things go wrong and where they are likely to go wrong.

When mistakes happen here are two thing not to do:

• Don’t focus on the outcome. Sometimes this is just too much.
• Don’t focus on the differences with the other culture. Sometimes the gap can be daunting.

And here are two things to do:

• Focus on what the company did wrong.
• Find the additional step the company could have done to avoid this blunder.

Very often cultural blunders were caused by wrong assumptions made in one culture that were not true in the other culture. This is where you can find similarities in the reasons why mistakes happen.

As you look at the reasons behind past blunders and as you gain cross-cultural experience, you will also naturally start to question whether your own cultural responses interfere with your communication. When this happens you know you are on the right track.

2 – Cultivate Your Capacity To Recuperate From Cultural Blunders

You will never be able to prevent all cross cultural communication blunders. Just like you can’t prevent all communication difficulties around you. In your everyday life, you have honed your soft skills to get along well with those around you.  This is part of  growing up. You need to work on your cross cultural skills in the same way.

How do you cultivate your capacity to recuperate from the cultural blunders you will encounter?

• The first and most important step is to see them.

Every day situations can arise around you where you are oblivious to  misunderstandings in your conversations. Fortunately this usually does not happen very often and people usually catch these communication misunderstandings fairly quickly.

In international communication misunderstandings happen frequently and people do not always realize there is a misunderstanding.

When two people are new at cross cultural communication and do not speak a common language, it is possible for a whole conversation to be totally misunderstood by one or both of them.

So you need practice in cross-cultural communication to acquire these same basic communication skills, similar to the ones you picked up as a child when learning to communicate within your environment. The difference is that this is a different environment.

You also need to be sure to:

• Communicate clearly, with absolute clarity.  Do not assume that your communication is absolutely clear to everyone.  Do not underestimate this either. It is one of the best skills you can acquire, and it takes consistent effort.
• Stay focused on the communication. Note what is said, how it is said and what is not said. This is one of the key skills in seasoned international professionals: their ability to take in everything.
• Validate what you understand. Ask questions to confirm your understanding at the slightest twinge of uncertainty.

The more practice you have in communicating across cultures the more you will develop good cross cultural communication skills.

• You will notice the slang and cultural expressions you use that confuse other cultures.
• You will learn to sharpen the clarity of your own communication to avoid confusion.
• You will learn to identify the things you need to give better explanations.
• And you will learn to follow a conversation from both angles, to pick up when you need to confirm understanding of what is said.

Experience Helps You Stop Most Cultural Blunders Before It’s Too Late

No, you can’t stop all cultural blunders. However, the more exposure you have with other cultures, the better you will become at stopping almost all blunders without anyone ever noticing.

Don’t forget the whole picture…

Cross cultural communication is a soft skill. It is also a personal skill. Everyone in an international business needs to acquire this soft skill.  And yet, cultural blunders also happen due to lack of cultural skills within and across a company.

In international business, cross-cultural blunders are not only caused by one-on-one communication.  In fact many of the most embarrassing blunders happen through a series of circumstances or incidences involving different people.

In the very beginning of an international business, the first people too acquire cross-cultural communication skills are those in direct contact with international prospects and clients. Ideally, all of the other people in an international business also gain cross cultural skills as the international business grows. This is because most international business has far reaching effects within a company.  Departments involved often include: purchasing, customer support, finance, marketing, product development, distribution.

Cultural blunders also happen because:

• It takes time for a whole company to adapt to doing business with people from different cultures.
• Management or key players are unaware of international implications within their usual activity

These collective adjustments to different business habits and different cultures are just as important in preventing cultural blunders as the cultural skills needed on a personal level…

And also another reason why it is almost impossible to prevent all cultural blunders.

More on Cross-Cultural Communication Blunders

• Can You Prevent All Cultural Blunders?
• Should You Be Afraid Of Cultural Blunders?
• A Communication Disconnect Between Two Cultures
• Cultural Blunders In Tele-Sales

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Tagged as: ccc, Cross-Cultural Communication, cultural blunders, International Business, mindset