Cindy King's International Business Blog » miscommunication

7 Steps To An Open Mindset For More International Business

Cindy King — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 23:00:49 +0000

Culture impacts international business in a wide variety of ways. I’ve been taken by surprise many times by the extent of its impact. It’s difficult to identify all of the ways culture impacts business because culture evolves over time. This means different cultures are evolving at different speeds and in different directions.

The advice given in books written only a decade ago can be counterproductive today. And the cultural insights we picked up on our trips after university may not help us in international business today.

So what can you do in an environment where cross-cultural miscommunication and blunders pop up unexpectedly. Well one of the best tactics to work effectively in an international environment is to develop an open mindset.

Open Mindset

What is an open mindset? It’s not always easy to grasp and it can have a slightly different meaning to different people. But I’ll have a try at explaining what an open mindset means to me in international business and the steps you need to get there.

Self-Examination For An Open Mindset

There are several steps in the process of self-examination. I’ve put these steps first, but in reality I believe our path to opening our mindset is an on-going one.

It’s not really something you can pick up once and then assume you’ll always have an open mindset.
It’s a learning process and some steps take more time than others to absorb.
Sometimes we need more time or experience to be ready to be able to learn more.

So you’ll also need to come back and revisit these steps as you grow your mindset.

#1: Recognize Your Own Focus

It’s important to understand where you are, what occupies your mindset and how different your viewpoint can be when compared to other cultures. How you set your own vision will determine what you see and how open your mindset is.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong about having a narrow focus for certain activities. We might even need this. But when you are meeting with people from other cultures it’s important to realize just how limiting your own focus or vision is. It’s up to you then to open up or alter your reactions and come back when you are more able to meet people on their level.

#2: Identify Your Assumptions And Question Them

Many “mistakes” in international business begin with our own assumptions and culturally specific expectations being out of sync with another culture. Unfortunately it’s not always easy to identify the assumptions we make because we get so used to our own way of doing things and our own habits.

As you encounter a bit of cross-cultural friction, stop a second and question your assumptions. Take the conversation slower and try to ask the other person the right questions to find out where the friction came from.

#3: Free Yourself Of A Negative Outlook

When we are confronted with different cultures human nature rears it’s head. We tend to view ourselves as being “good” and “right” while others who do things differently to us are quickly labeled as being “bad” or “wrong”. Negative reactions are commonplace.

As soon as you recognize any elitist behavior recognize this and give others to the time you need for them to show you where they are coming from.

#4: Avoid Negative Judgment

People are usually good at understanding why it’s good to avoid quick judgment, but they have rather short definitions for “quick”. In my international business experience I’ve learned to compartmentalize professional from personal expectations and to avoid all negative judgment of people from other cultures. And this has come from making mistakes because there were too many times when I thought I was right passing a negative judgment only to discover my error much later on.

Most negative judgments stem from our incapacity of understanding another culture. Instead of focusing on the negative aspect I see in others, I focus on my own preferences and this usually leads to the right place.

Actions To Open Your Mindset

Once you have looked internally at all of the cultural baggage you bring with your own mindset, then you can work on opening and developing your mindset.

#5: Encourage Interaction

The next step is simply to cultivate interaction and open your mindset further. It’s also about cultivating an open attitude in your actions and making sure your actions are perceived as inviting interaction. So you’ll also hone your cross-cultural skills as you stimulate more interaction from others.

#6: Open Your Communication

When you interact more with people, you’ll probably see ways to open up your own communication a bit more to provide others with a deeper understanding of yourself and your ways of doing things. This is fine-tuning your own communication to come across as more open to communication.

#7: Get Curious And Eager To Learn

An open mindset is a curious mindset. It means you are eager to learn about others in order to understand people from different cultures fully and communicate on a truly one-to-one level. People from other cultures seem to do strange things, but often when we get to know the reasons behind their “strange” behavior, it all makes sense. Different ways of doing things appear normal when they are set in context.

How do you get curious? Questions are important, but adapting your questions to find the right ones to ask people from different cultures is even more important. You’ll need a broad international experience to fully develop your skills in curiosity.

Nurture Your International Talent

An open mindset is a sign of someone who can identify their own strengths and weakness and open their minds to feedback and question who they are. And this open mindset can give you the upper edge in international business when dealing with different cultures. It’s not always easy, but it is always rewarding both on a professional level and on a personal level.

Now, over to you…

What does an open mindset in international business mean to you?
How do you develop an open mindset for international business?
Why do you think an open mindset is important for international business?

Cultural Differences In Understanding Deadlines

Cindy King — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:00:57 +0000

Cross-Cultural Differences

I recently got myself into a little bit of trouble in misinterpreting instructions on a deadline. Now this is my fault because I tend to scan most of the information I consume online. But the instructions were not very clear and explicit either and I naturally assumed the most obvious interpretation to me. This is the problem with reading like this. Scanning favorizes assumptions and assumptions can lead to errors.

Different Meanings In How You Use The Word Deadline

My downfall came because people can use two ways of giving deadlines:

Deadline December 23rd = meaning this is the last day for you to take action
Deadline December 23rd = meaning you need to take action before this date. In this case your last day for taking action would be December 22nd.

And I navigate almost exclusively in circles where people use the first example with the deadline date given is the last day to take action. But there are people who give the date to mean the first day after you must take action. And this is what happened to me. I had left taking action to what I thought was the very last day, but I was already one day too late.

Different Ways Of Communication

Let’s look at some differences in language:

By December 23rd
Before December 23rd

What do these mean to you? I have actually met different people who use either of these examples with the two different meanings above. This is why setting and interpreting deadlines is not as straightforward as it seems.

Clarify Your Deadlines

When you set deadlines for people who speak a different language, you usually make sure to communicate with extra clarity. But when setting deadlines for people who speak English too, it’s easy to lose that clarity and assume everyone uses your own communication style. This was a reminder to always clarify deadline dates even within cultures where I expect easy communication.

An Inconvenient Outcome For Both Of Us

Fortunately I was able to get this resolved. But this incident was inconvenient to me for 3 reasons:

It required 2 hours of my time to resolve this which I would happily have avoided
It was not resolved properly and brought extra attention to myself
I hate getting myself noticed like this and feel a small degree of resentment for this service provider’s sloppy instructions for putting me in this situation

The embarrassment and inconvenience was slight, but I will remember this incident in any other future miscommunication. And it’s a shame for this service provider to lose trust points through such a small lack of clarity. As it turned out I was not the only one who had a different interpretation for deadline dates. The instructions were simply not clear enough.

Global English To Avoid Miscommunication

Cindy King — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:00:09 +0000

Internationalize Your English

The widespread use of English in international business makes it easy to assume writing your content in English is enough. All you need is to simply avoid slang and culturally specific English language phrases and vocabulary.

But it is not always that simple. Miscommunication can still loom. And through no fault of your own.

First ask yourself these questions:

Do you have a large number of non-native English speakers who read your English content?
Will you need to translate your English language content into several languages?

If you answer yes to either or both of these questions, then you need to take a closer look at your own communication. This will help you avoid miscommunication.

There are two main reasons for the new trends in writing Global English or International English.

1 – Make Communication Easy

The rise in proportion of non-native English speakers online presents a unique perspective.

If you want to communicate well across non-native English speaking cultures, you need to adjust your communication.

2 – Make Translation Easy

An international company today often needs a website in over a dozen languages. In fact, international companies usually have content in well over 20 languages. And this number is increasing every year.

When you invest in multiple translations you will greatly appreciate starting with the right source text.

Your source text is easier to translate
The various translations will be more representative of your original text.

Another Perspective On Avoiding Miscommunication

During the recent Olympics in China examples of translation errors were widely available online. Most were comical, some portrayed bad translation skills or the bad use of translation tools.

In international business you have a choice to make:

Will you or will you not take a step towards other cultures?

And will you do this with your own communication?

Will you communicate as you do at home?
Or will you make an effort to adapt your communication for everyone?

You see, if you really want to connect with different cultures, and especially with non-native English speakers, you need to turn towards them.

You need to be open to other cultures.
You need to adjust your communication…and your English.

When you adjust your English communication, your English becomes what is referred to as International English, or Global English. It is English that is very easy to understand for different cultures.

International English or Global English is also a great source base for translations.

What you need to know about International English:

International English Guidelines