Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge
- Get Extreme With Clarity
Do you want to improve your cross-cultural communication for more international sales? Here is a two step approach:
- First follow the cross-cultural communication tips
- Then see how these communication tips fit into international sales best practices
Now, let’s go one step further to make it even easier to improve your skills…
Let’s break the cross-cultural communication tips into 4 different layers or steps and concentrate on one angle of cross-cultural communication at a time while you fit this in with your international sales strategies.
The 4 Steps
There are four different Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges scheduled this year. Each monthly challenge approaches one specific angle of cross-cultural communication.
Good cross-cultural communication is complex. It takes practice, good people skills and personal commitment. And even experienced and gifted cross-cultural communicators are never immune to a communication blunder.
Even if cross-cultural communication skills are not easy to learn, there are some easy guidelines for businesses to follow that eliminate the bigger risks and improve cultural skills in the process. These 4 monthly challenges break up the process of learning cross-cultural communication skills into easy steps.
Apply These Skills To Get More International Sales
After each monthly Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge, there is a second monthly challenge.
The following month will expand on each of the cross-cultural communication tips to show you how this fits into international sales. This is the International Sales Best Practice series you can find here.
It is a good way to bring your cultural skills into a business perspective. And it is not boring. Each International Sales Best Practice month we will use corresponding little sales book by Jeffrey Gitomer as an easy reference point.
If you are not familiar with Jeffrey Gitomer’s little sales books, they are easy to read, straight to the point and full of sales wisdom. Although some of the sales practices in these books need some adjustment for international sales, most of them are very useful.
Step 1 – Expand Your Mindset
The first Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge was last March. There were 31 cross-cultural communication tips to help you expand your mindset for good international communications. There was a new tip available every day, here on this blog and on twitter. At the end of the month these 31 tips were then:
- Summarized into a mini-poster so you can follow them at your own convenience.
- Expanded on with International Sales Best Practices the following month
Expanding your mindset is the first step a business should be aware of when entering new markets.
Step 2 – Get Extreme With Clarity
The second step in improving your cross-cultural communication is to become aware of how important clarity is in your communication… and to become aware of your own lack of clarity.
The problem is that it is very easy to think that everyone can understand your own communication. After all, you understand it yourself, right? And, usually, so do the people around you. Well, this assumption leads to trouble. The truth is that people from other cultures probably do not find your communication as easy to understand as you do.
Improving the clarity of your communication will benefit all of your clients… and your communication with everyone. It is even more important with your international and cross-cultural communication. Cross-cultural communication difficulties often pop up and when they do one of the first things to do is to bring even more clarity into your communication.
There is another reason why you must focus on clarity:
- Clarity is a primary trust-building factor
Trust can be an elusive element in cross-cultural exchanges. If you want international sales you need to develop and maintain trust-building communication.
Get extreme with the clarity of your cross-cultural communication. You will improve your more international business.
Second 30 Day Challenge
This is why the second Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge is on clarity.
- June – Get Extreme With Clarity
Improving the clarity of your communication to an extreme is one of the easiest ways to improve your cross-cultural communication. It also eliminates many potential cultural hurdles, difficulties and blunders.
Each day for the 30 days in June, you will get a cross-cultural communication tip to help you get extreme in communicating with clarity.
These tips will help you even if you do not have much direct communication with international clients. They will help you even more when you are in direct communication with international clients.
Steps 3 & 4 – Later This Year
There are two other monthly challenges scheduled later in the year:
- September – Trust
- December – Personal Development
Follow each of these monthly challenges and at the end of the year you will have improved your cross-cultural communication on four different levels.
Where To Get Your CCCC Tips Every Day In June:
- Here on this blog
- By following me on Twitter @CindyKing
- By using the Twitter hashtag #cccctips
Use these tips as inspiration to improve clarity of communication with your international clients.
Get All CCCC Tips:
Read 2009 Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges to find out more about:
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Cindy,
Your post reminds me of the training period I had in Japan in earlier days. Clarity is very important due to different cultural practices and language barrier experienced. Even if it means you need to listen and repeat several times to get the message correctly, do so, it’s better to be right rather than create misunderstandings.
Come to think of it, even in our daily lives we tend to ‘assume’ sometimes rather than asking for ‘clarity’, isn’t it? Something to ponder.
@wchingya
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Hello Ching Ya,
Great to hear from you!
Yes, you can really go deep when you start thinking about clarity. And you do need to go fairly deep to become masterful in cross-cultural communication. And it’s crazy how many assumptions we all make. I think it’s also interesting how we “tune in” when listening to people close to us – I guess that’s part of the reasoning behind the phrase “on the same wavelength”. Unfortunately we often only think about these things after we’ve experienced a major communication breakdown or blow up.