Cross-Cultural Communication 30-Day Challenge – Build Trust
This is the last tip on cultivating quiet self-confidence to build trust in cross-cultural communication. Here are the previous tips:
- Tip 6 – Do not feel threatened by other ways of thinking for doing things
- Tip 7 – Know yourself and feel confident with who you are
- Tip 8 – Trust yourself first
- Tip 9 – Show confidence in your company and those you work with
The first 5 tips on building trust were about smoothing the differences. The next 5 tips will be specifically about doing what you promise. By the end of the month we will have covered 6 different aspects on how to build trust.
Cultivate Quiet Self Confidence
Self-confidence is important in cross-cultural communication:
On a personal level – to stop you from feeling awkward when confronted with cultural differences you do not feel comfortable with
On a business level – to convey the right message
Trust In Cross-Cultural Communication Challenge – Tip 10
Groom natural self-confidence
As you begin to understand the role self-confidence plays in how you approach people from different cultures and the quality of your cross-cultural communication, you will find ways to groom your natural self-confidence.
Identify Lacks Of Self-Confidence
There is one big problem. It is not always easy to identify the lack of self-confidence you may have. Many people laugh at the thought of having a lack of self-confidence… especially if they are seasoned business professionals.
But the self-confidence here is not about how well you perform a specific task. It is the self-confidence you would need if you were:
- Alone
- In a large crowd of people from a very foreign culture
- In an enclosed environment
- Where everyone else is doing something you could not possibly imagine doing
- And not feel awkward, threatened or any form of personal aggression
Have you ever been in a similar circumstance? Even if you think you have the self-confidence it takes, you might be surprised if you put yourself to the test.
This is a level of self-confidence we do not usually need to rely on because we live in a familiar environment. This touches on areas of primal instincts and our very nature of being human. And most people need practice to develop the self-confidence involved here.
Notice Cross-Cultural Issues Created By One Person’s Lack Of Self-Confidence
Even if it is difficult to identify where this self-confidence lies within yourself, it is usually easy to spot in others. When a cross-cultural “incident” happens between two people, and you have a certain level of cross-cultural experience, it is usually easy to see when someone’s lack of self-confidence was the cause of conflict or at least the cause of an escalation of difficulties.
This type of cross-cultural difficulty happens often enough when people with different levels of cultural skills work together. This is why it is important to build a quiet self-confidence to build trust in cross-cultural communication.
A word of caution: When you do notice a lack of self-confidence in someone else in a business environment, don’t even attempt to explain this to them. They probably feel even more aggression and the problem will get worse.
If this happens in a business environment, the best thing to do is to look for other avenues of communication. International professionals need to excel at processing multiple sources of information at the same time… and this is when this skill comes in very handy. The only immediate solution is to quickly find an alternate path of communication which does not hit that person’s self-confidence issues.
When you have noticed this type of incident a few times it then becomes easier to turn inwards and examine yourself for a similar lack of self-confidence.
Groom Your Naturual Self-Confidence
Once you can identify the area of self-confidence involved in cross-cultural communication, it is easy to work backwards and find the little things you can do to groom this natural self-confidence.
In my experience this is something you need to work at to maintain.
I’m curious…
- How do you groom your self-confidence for cross-cultural communication?
- Do you find it easy to identify a lack of self-confidence as the cause of cross-cultural difficulties?
- How do you manage doing business with different skill levels of cross-cultural competence?
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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