Build your intercultural skills

Learn to tolerate uncertainty

Find the humor

Humor heals and helps you through difficult situations. Travel can be stressful, as can new environments and change in general. This stress can limit both your flexibility and your ability to handle cross-cultural situations. Combat stress with humor. Be able to step away (at least mentally) from situations and find the humor in them.

This is an essential skill, and one that can be extremely difficult for people from some cultures where directness and exactness are valued (e.g. Germany, the US). There will be a great deal of unknowns when doing business across cultures. Definitive, concrete answers may not always be given, especially if you are working with a culture with a high tolerance for uncertainty. Focus on what you can determine and try to let go of minor details that are unclear. (Similarly, if you come from a culture that doesn't place a high value on exactness and are working with someone from a culture that does, try to provide clarification and details when possible.)
9. Go early

If your meeting is face-to-face and you'll be traveling abroad, go at least two days before your scheduled meeting. Give yourself time to adjust; you will have to deal with physical adjustments (jet lag, different foods) as well as a number of cultural adjustments as well. These changes can be overwhelming and should be spread out to make them manageable. Give yourself time to adjust physically and then your mind will be better able to make cultural adjustments that are essential for success.

When working with people from different cultures, you need a solid understanding of the norms of that culture. You also need communication skills and business strategies that can be applied across cultures. The items listed above reflect some of the necessary skills for intercultural work in general. However, individuals should develop a list of skills they need to develop to further their intercultural communication skills based on their own situations and needs.

To determine these skills, reflect on past intercultural experiences (for people with limited experience abroad, think of experiences working and interacting with people and groups different from you). When do you become uncomfortable, rigid, or shut down? What mistakes have you made in the past? Commit yourself to continually developing the skills that will help you in similar situations in the future.

View your experiences with different cultures as a trajectory, rather than a string of individual experiences. Link the different experiences you have and you can link the personal development and learning that comes with them.

Answer the questions:

1. Tell about high context.

2. Tell about low context.

3. “Space, Territoriality and Personal Space” among the nations.

4. Business dress in Mid East, Far East, Europe and Northern America.

5. Skills necessary to work across cultutess.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11