Cultural Differences Impact Workplace

Communication
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Article By: Paulette Markel

To Ming or not to Ming that is the question. This was the subject title of an email I received while
working for an international company. The context of the "question" was: do we fire Ming Liu? Should
we get a replacement in Singapore to work with our customer in South East Asia? The idea of forming
a multicultural team to service the customer worldwide was excellent. Unfortunately, the issue of
communicating with each other was a problem. The problem was compounded by the fact that all
communication was through conference calls and email.
In the United States we use low-context communication. We emphasize directness, explicitness, and
verbal expressiveness. In Asian culture, high-context is the norm. It involves indirectness,
implicitness and nonverbal expressions. This team was stuck in the storming stage of multi-cultural
team building process because of their inability to communicate effectively across cultural lines. What
we had was a political issue between the decision makers (customer) in the Philippines and the United
States. There was also a failure to communicate within our own team. In the end Ming did the right
thing from the customers perspective. What she didnt do was communicate with her team and lost
their trust.
Intercultural communication: Communication and negotiation between individuals of different
cultures is successful when you learn to form cultural bridges. This requires an understanding of the
core values of the other culture and as well as your own personal values. It requires an understanding
of culture, subjective culture and cultural literacy.
Culture is based on knowledge, beliefs, art, laws, morals, customs, religion, language and any
capabilities or habits acquired as a result of being a member of a certain group.
Subjective culture is developing an understanding of your own core values and how cultural filters
affect your perception of the world. These values and cultural filters are developed as a result of all the
things that encompass your background as a child and life experiences including: your religion, things
your parents taught you, perceptions of ethics and morality, and more. Consider your work
experience and how you communicate and make decisions. Have you had instances where you have
been at an impasse with a colleague on a project due to miscommunication? Was this colleague from
another culture and could that have been one of the issues? What perceptions did you develop?
These perceptions are our personal reality and each of us perceives the same situation through
different cultural filters.
Cultural Literacy is where you learn to understand and accept the differences in other people. When
you reach out to your fellow co-workers and neighbors that are from other cultures, you find you have
several things in common that can start a friendship such as our jobs, our children, and our religion,
etc. Your neighbors and congregation at church are a natural way to meet and get to know people
from other cultures. As your friendship deepens you can ask them to start to share their culture and
values. You then learn the color or nature of the filter that creates their and your perceptions of the
world you develop cultural literacy with the other person.
When we become culturally literate we can then form cultural bridges at work, at home, our churches
and our community. We can use the positive differences we discover to provide more creative
productivity in the work place. Employee attitude surveys have shown that if a company embraces
intercultural diversity their staff is more satisfied with their jobs. These surveys also show employees
of these companies would recommend the company to friends and, most importantly, they are loyal to
the firm.

So, before you fire the Ming in your organization, step back and look at yourself and the cultural filter
coloring your perception. Then think about Mings filter and determine if there is a way to form a
cultural bridge to reduce miscommunication. Accept the differences and use them in a positive way to
enrich your life and the people around you.
Article By: Paulette Markel