Cross-Cultural Communication 30-Day Challenge – Build Trust
The first five tips in this series were about smoothing the cultural differences. The next five tips are about having quiet self confidence.
Cultivate Quiet Self Confidence
Now, this is not always easy to grasp. How you interpret self-confidence depends a lot on your own cultural backgrounds. For many English speakers images of asserting oneself easily come to mind when thinking for self-confidence. And this is not really what you need in cross-cultural communication.
Let’s look at the problem this addresses first.
Aggression. A lot of cross-cultural friction happens because someone feels aggression. They feel they have to accept or endorse another person’s differences.
Aggression is not a foundation for trust.
People need to understand that they can keep their own values and still communicate with someone with different values. This may sound easy, but in practice challenging circumstances will always exist.
Knowing Yourself. The first place to start is with yourself. The more you know about your core boundaries the easier cross-cultural communication becomes. You no longer feel aggression because you feel confident in the knowledge of who you are.
This is quiet self-confidence.
In many cases of cross-cultural conflict it is easy to identify the people who feel aggression simply because they do not know themselves well.
Trust In Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge – Tip 6
Do not feel threatened by other ways of thinking for doing things
The first step in attaining quiet self-confidence in cross-cultural communication is to not feel threatened by the cultural differences in others. There is no need to feel any aggression.
There one hard truth:
- Some cultures find it easier to deal with feelings of aggression from different cultures than others.
Personal Boundaries
People with strong international skills know their personal boundaries well. And they know how to interact with others with these boundaries in mind. They do not often feel aggression from cultural differences and when they do, they know how to control these feelings.
What personal boundaries? Well, this also depends who you are. The quickest way to identify the ones you need to work on, is to make a list of all of the things that react to in other cultures. Then look back to:
- What this means to you
- Why this means something to you
- What differences do you see in this issue
- How this effects you
When you understand yourself well it is easier to face the other culture and not feel any aggression.
Business With Different Cultures
Even in business environments some people need to work on their personal reactions to others.
When businesses get a few international clients and do not develop their international business further, I often see an underlying issue of personal aggression mixed in with other things.
Take Time To Learn More About Yourself
There is a fuzzy area here. Business is business. And yet in international business you need to develop personal skills. One of these skills is knowing more about yourself than you need to know to live in your usual environment. In an international environment, it helps to have a deeper understanding of yourself.
For many businesses, the problem is often that people do not take the time to learn more about themselves.
Trust Is Between People
Remember, trust is always between people.
- When someone in the trust equation feels aggression in any way, this weakens the foundation on which trust can be built.
- When everyone knows and understands themselves well there is a more solid foundation for trust.
Questions for you and topics that can lead to interesting discussions between cultures:
- When have you felt aggression or felt shocked by different behavior due to cultural differences?
- Do you know how other cultures react to the cultural differences they perceive in you?
- Do you think you can only communicate with people from similar backgrounds?
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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| Mindset | Clarity | Trust |
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| Expand Your Mindset | Get Extreme With Clarity | Build Trust |
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