Cross-Cultural Communication 30-Day Challenge – Get Extreme With Clarity
Yesterday we started looking at was to simplify our cross-cultural communication to get extreme with clarity. The truth is that simplifying your communication often takes some extra effort and time. International business professionals are just as busy as everyone else, sometimes even more so. It is easy not to take the extra bit of time. This is why simplifying communication reminds me of this quote:
I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. – Mark Twain
This is why it is a good idea to have a few tactics handy to simplify communication. We can often find a way to simplify our communication this by using one or two of these tactics that only take a minute. Do them often enough and they become a habit.
Clarity In Cross-Cultural Communication Tip 17
Today’s tip is again something simple to add to your checklist:
Give clear answers to questions before giving any additional information
This is an obvious thing to do. And yet it is the cause of many cross-cultural hurdles. The key here is to make sure that your answers are clear to someone from a different culture. Here are a two common situations:
- One person may understand one thing and the other understands another thing… and it may take a while for both of you to realize this. Adding additional information onto the table can increase the confusion and raise other issues. It is much simpler to get thing right the first time. This can also happen in everyday communication, but in cross-cultural communication it can be much be difficult to detect when this happens.
- Even if you ask your international client whether he understood you, and he replies yes, he may still like a few minutes to run your communication through in his brain again.
As you can see, you need to get extreme with clarity for effective international encounters.
Use this tip as a starting point. Think about what this means to you. Not sure what you think about this? There are a few links below for suggested reading to get you started. Follow each of these tips this month to improve your cultural skills.
Further Suggested Reading & Viewing
- Adjust Your Own English Communication To Meet Other Language Levels
- Customizing Content For Your Clients
- Internationalize Your English
Get All Cross-Cultural Communication Tips:
- Read more about all of the 2009 Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges
- Cross Cultural Communication Challenge 1 – Expand Your Mindset
- Cross Cultural Communication Challenge 2 – Get Extreme With Clarity
- Cross Cultural Communication Challenge 3 – Build Trust
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-- Chris Garrett, co-author of the "Problogger" book
