One of the most challenging tasks for a leader is to coordinate actions and decision making in an inter-cultural settings. And truth is most international leaders do not even know the role culture plays in human behavior. Our culture plays a vital role in human behavior because our interpretations of emotions or visible cues differ across cultures.
.jpeg)
Source
And if you cannot predict human behavior, you can't control or lead them. I had my first leadership role at the age of 13 working for the international Red Cross/Red Crescent. Under that role I had many people working with me who are from diverse cultural backgrounds and I was quick to notice how importance our cultural differences affected our personal decision and group relationships.
Therefore in order to effectively influence and manage other people's emotions in another culture, you need to be familiar with the culture's emotions norms and scripts.
.jpeg)
Source
Now you may wonder how useful cultural intelligence is to you and therefore why the need to read on on this topic. I'll like to remind all of us that we are all here now on the Steemit community with people from all over the world. If you look carefully, you will notice how culture influence people's behavior here on the Steem blockchain.
I'm particularly interested in understanding how culture affects our behavior and how well we can learn to work together with people of diverse cultures. I happen to lead or advice a couple of communities on the Steem blockchain and I've noticed how cultural diversity in a team or organization can be extremely helpful; it can stimulate fresh perspectives and cross-pollination to develop better and more satisfying interpretations and solutions.
Now, I'm not going to bore you here with much details about my work on cultural intelligence. I wrote something about this four months ago, first on Navigating Cultures: Cultural Intelligence For International Leaders and also on Decoding Cultures: Cultural Intelligence For International Leaders.
So today, I want to take a look at Communication Challenges in a Cross Cultural settings especially for leaders. Leaders do not have to make all the decision themselves, but they have to coordinate the process. And you can't coordinate if you can't communicate effectively.
Communication is the exchange of information, claims and appeals. Do you know that understanding the meaning of a phrase relies on your understanding of social conventions of the particular cultural context? I have seen misinterpretations of meaning in an intercultural settings lead to many misunderstanding and/or tensions.
As a leader, your followers build an image about you in their mind base on what you say. When you communicate to exchange information and give direction, you also establish relationships with your followers (intentionally or unintentionally).
From what a leader says, your followers construe answers to the following questions:
Is he/she one of us?
Does he/she understand and care about us and what we care about?
Can he/she help us achieve our goals and interests?
Key Communication Barriers In International Communication
- Language Barrier: a situation where the reader fails to understand the literal meaning/translation of a word /phrase.
This is easy to detect and corrected. For example, I read earlier today about knacksteem where a user @secret.service pointed out that the word knack is German for something that breaks. But in this context, the author originally meant knack as an English word for talent. 
This is an example of a language barrier in intercultural communication.
- Semantic Barrier: difference in meaning attached to a particular words or phrases between sender and receiver. This is more difficult to detect because the receiver has the impression has the impression that he/she understood the sender's message.
I learned Chinese sometime last year and I got to learn a couple of new things about the Chinese culture. In Chinese the symbol for woman, when put together as two means arguments, and three means adultery. Now look at the derived meaning from having two women together to means argument. What do you think of it?
Source
People don't wants to look weird, be judged or get into conflicts, so this bring up issues of information sharing especially among followers. I'll talk more about this in the next post on this series when I'll be talking about self disclosure.
.jpeg)
Projected Similarity: there's is a rooted subconscious parochialism that your way of thinking is the only possible way of thinking. People often assumed that their situation, their problems, their thinking is way similar to you than it actually is.
At the beginning of my career in cross-cultural leadership, I didn't know well how to handle situations like this. But I'm glad to the chance I've had to work and communicate with people across different cultural backgrounds right here on the Steem blockchain. In the last five months alone I've worked on my subconscious parochialism which have helped me understand people better thereby eliminating most communication challenges.
These and many more are often the challenges people face when it involves communication. I'll stop here for today because I want to hear your feedback on your own experience when leading or working in groups in an intercultural settings. In two days time I'll continue this series, looking at possible solutions to these challenges by employing communication dimensions.
Let's hear your own experience.
Most of the lessons I'm sharing here is from my MOOC on Coursera: International Leadership and Organizational Behavior offered by Universita Bocconi. If you desire to learn more, consider checking on the free course here
Wow.. I had finished reading the post before looking at the name of the writer. I never knew it was you @lordjames.
I think a leader has to be extremely flexible in character, manner of approach, etc so he can actually deal with the cultural differences of followers.
Also, I think one of the ways of easily tackling communication barriers in international communication is the use of 'simple words' .
What I mean is that, the speaker should see his listener as a layman and minimize the use of "bulky words"
Hmmm you just reminded me of your Chinese language "ni hao ma"
Your post is wonderful..
Thanks for the upvote.
Hi @lordjames, I'm @checky ! While checking the mentions made in this post I noticed that @service.secret doesn't exist on Steem. Maybe you made a typo ?
If you found this comment useful, consider upvoting it to help keep this bot running. You can see a list of all available commands by replying with
!help.I know that an intercultural leader must be very careful with the information and the way in which he can express himself in order to transmit the ideas or what he wants to project to each of the participants. Some phrases may be perfectly understood by some, and for others it may be completely different. A good idea would be to know the type of audience you are exposing yourself to, in order to avoid any misunderstandings.
Good point, know your audience. That's to show how important cultural intelligence is even when some people might not know the exist. So from what you say it's important you listen first before speaking.
The title alone don discourage me to read😂😂😂😂
Great and imformative post brother.
Really good to see you share tge experience @lordjames
Mehn, this is deep stuff
Quality writing
Leadership manual
My experience isn't cross cultural per se, it is in my own words - CROSS PERSONAL EXPERIENCES..
Some years back in University, i happened to lead a Group of persons who had different experiences in life.
I had a sorta simple godly upbringing that made me feel others should behave right by default and when they err, sanctions should be meted out immediately..but somehow God waa sending me to a group of societal misfits, ladies with some many heartbreaks than they had seen daybreak, others who have had abortions, had rape incidents. And many more..
I had to understand where they were coming from, i had to somehow feel their pain so that i could be able to understand the decisions they take and how to correct them lovingly. This understanding made me have greater measure of patience and aided my communication with them which in turn gave me a platform to be part of their change experience.
Guess i've talked much..
Nice piece again bro
Thanks
Sorry, I'm just getting to read this for the first time. You are right, if you are not putting yourself in their shoes to understand them, you will never be able to communicate with them effectively.