Personal Development In Cross-Cultural Communication – Day 3

Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge – Personal Development

This is Day 3 of the 30-day challenge to focus on your personal development in cross-cultural communication. Each day there is one short topic to reflect on and try to improve.

Day 3 – Empathy for Cross-Cultural Competence

Empathy is the cornerstone of all cross-cultural skills.  Before you can connect with people from different cultures who do things differently and think differently, you must be able to understand them.  In practice we  are not always lucky to fully understand everyone.  But empathy leads us along this path that brings us to understand different cultures.

Business is done between people. You need to connect to people. In international business, the cross-cultural differences can make it difficult to make that connection. Empathy is what we need on a personal level to make this happen.

The Foundation Of Cross-Cultural Communication

Empathy is always part of the foundation of effective cross-cultural communication.  It is a core interpersonal skill. Yesterday we saw how curiosity can help us to move towards empathy.

Steps Towards Empathy

Here are a few more tips to help you develop a stronger capacity towards empathy: 

• Personal commitment to develop cross-cultural skills
• Understanding yourself
• Developing the ability to temporarily put aside certain personal preferences that interfere with communicating well with others
• Feeling enough self confidence to accept people who are different
• Making the personal effort to understand others

Empathy Opens Your World

Here are a few reasons why you should spend time developing your skills towards more empathy.  Empathy

• Helps you understand different people
• Improves your international skills
• Changes you as a human being, makes you wiser
• Brings you more friends as you open up more towards others
• Improves your cross-cultural communication

Personal Barriers

Once again, this is a reminder that our own personal barriers are the roadblocks to most cross-cultural development.

One Step At A Time

Like most of the tasks in this month’s perosnal development challenge, you cannot expect miraculous results.  Some people will need more time to work on each of these tasks than others.  Many will need to come back and reflect on these steps again after different cross-cultural experiences.  Here are a few tips:

• Your cross-cultural experience counts
• Travel if you can it will help you see things differently
• Meet people in different contexts and find the easiest place for you to connect with them

Your Actions Today

• Acknowledge who you are and accept this
• Accept that others are different
• Look for similarities in others
• Find ways to connect with people

Where To Get Your CCCC Tips Every Day:

• Here on this blog: Four Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges In 2009
• Follow me on Twitter in March, June, September and December

Need Cross-Cultural Business Coaching?

Do you need help in navigating the cross-cultural minefields of international business? Sign up for confidential one-on-one coaching sessions.  Email me and ask to set up a call.

Tagged as: academia, challenge, competence, cross-cultural, Cross-Cultural Communication, cross-cultural competence, cultural, cultural anthropology, cultural competence, cultural skills, cultural studies, culture, education, empathy, global business, helping behavior, human communication, international, International Business, international skills, interpersonal skills, people skills, personal development, psychology, science, skill, social psychology, soft skills