Chapter 1 reading log

How do I communicate in a culturally diverse environment?

Answer: It seems the best route is to speak in a clear and concise manner while being ready to apologize
for any mistakes made. Simply must be open and willing to communicate and learn from your
interactions.

What can I do to understand a person who is speaking in a way that is difficult for me to understand?

Answer: analyze their nonverbal cues and if the situation allows ask them if they could elaborate to help
me understand.

What are some ways to improve my knowledge of other cultures social practices?

Answer: Looks like following foreign stars on twitter or other social media is an okay option but may
simply need to research other cultures.

- Communictation in todays workplace creates more mobile work enviroments as well as

requiring employees to be avaible around the clock.
- The first chapter provides an overview of various communication interactions employees have
in todays workplace
- Being able to communicate and write properly will allow you to be competitive in any job
market.
- Job communication is a skill that can be learned and will increase your chances of finding a job
and being promoted.
- Communication over long distance is becoming a skill rather than simply a tool with employees
needing to be good at writing as social media and digital tools leave their work contstantly on
display.
- Businesses are looking and in need of people with good writing skills
- Many recruiters are looking for people with good communication even looking into prospects
social media activity.
- Even fields such as accounting and I.T. must be able to communicate effectively
- In the workplace you must be prepared to use all kinds of communication tools.
- Emails are becoming a key component of office communication and learning to write
professionally will be important.
- Employers expect new employess to have soft skills such as communicating and working well
with others and the better and employee is at them the more successful they will be.
- New hires are sometimes unaware of what is expected of them which may cause them to lose
their jobs due to their lack of professionalism.
- Projecting a professional image is important in advancing in a workplace.
- A college degree is very important in obtaining a high paying job.
- Writing is an important skill that can be a determining factor in your rise through the corporate
ranks.
- Communication in a workplace is always changing and you must be prepared to meet the
challenges that this presents.
 a. In workplaces today workers interact through many avenues of communication.
b. The mobility of communication has caused 20% of workers to work outside of the office as
well as causing 24/7 avaibility to challenge the traditional concept of on and off duty.
c. Teamwork is a required skill in business as the need to maximize individual skills working
together to solve problems becomes standard practice.
d. Business are cutting leadership layers and increasing employee responsibility.
e. Companies increase their global interaction increasing the need for cultural awareness and
communication skills.
f. Ethics are a growing issues companies are taking steps to improve their guidelines on.
- With communication on display more than ever employees must keep improving their writing
skills.
- Many people are not very good listners.
- Poor listening skills are costly in noth business and personal situations
- To improve listening we must identify weaknesses and then apply listening techniques.
- Bad habits are a barrier to good listening skills.
a. Physical things such as noisy surroundings can impair hearing.
b. When someone is speaking differently than what we believe is “right” we tend to tune them
out.
c. Words someone does not know or words that emotionally impact you can cause distractions
and lack of comprehension.
d. Nonverbal distractions such as things we consider outside of the normal range can cause
distractions.
e. We can think faster than people speak which can cause us to be bored (nearly 3 times
faster).
f. Fakeing attention causes the mind to wander and inhibits us when we want to listen.
g. We like to hear ourselves talk which cause us to listen less as others thoughts are not as
important as our own.
- Listening is not a skill you can improve passively, actively engaging yourself in listening will
improve your listening ability.
a. Stop talking, focus on the speaker not your next comment.
b. Control your surrondings as much as possible to improve listening skills.
c. Be positive when listening and be in a learning mindset.
d. Remove you bias when listening to not distort the information.
e. Identify the main points of a speakers dialogue to keep you focused.
f. Since we think faster than people talk work to identify the speakers next point or objective
to keep the mind occupied.
g. Listen for feelings as well as words.
h. Focus on what is being said during a speech not the speakers appearance or public speaking
abilities.
i. Hear someone out completely before you respond.
j. Focus on the important pieces when taking notes as not to interfere with your listening
skills.
k. Maintain eye contact, nod, and participate at appropriate times to show that your actively
listening.
- Nonverbal cues are just as vital in an actual conversation as speaking.
- Nonverbal communication includes all unwritten and unspoken messages intended or not.
- Nonverbal messages can speak more loudly than words.
- Successful communicators must be able to recognize and interpret nonverbal messages.
- Its impossible to not communicate, even if we don’t speak any words.
- Eye contact is attributed to many positive and negative conotations depending on if it is
maintained or not.
- Facial expression can be masked by some but often can show many emotions.
- A persons posture and gestures can convey many things and may mean different things in
different cultures.
- You should record yourself to view what your noverbal cues say about you.
- Three external elements convey information in the communication process: time, space,
territory.
- How we use our time can tell others about our personalities and how we feel about certain
things.
- How we control the space around us send messages to others.
- People from diverse cultures view territory such as personal space and private locations
differently.
- Business document apperances can convey messages immediately.
- The appearance of document can have a positive or negative effect depending on the
appearance and time taken on the document.
- Your personal appearance can have a major impact on how people interact with you.
- Nonverbal skills are vital to a conversation be sure to present yourself how you want to be
perceived.
- Eye contact is important in North America.
- Good postures shows your alert and engaged.
- Move to reduce physical barriers
- Decode verbal and nonverbal messages.
- Probe to make sure you understand a conversation when verbal and nonverbal cues don’t
match up.
- Interpret nonverbal cues only when you understand the cultural context.
- Associate with people from various cultures to expand your knowledge.
- Keep the appearance of your documents, business space, and yourself in order so that you give
off the desired message.
- Observe yourself to make sure your verbal and nonverbal cues are aligned.
- Use friends and family to observe your communication skills to help you improve.
- Communication between cultures can be difficult
- Culture is something we need to account for in our global society
- Five key dimensions of culture: context, individualism, time orientation, power distance, and
communication style.
- Context refers to the stimuli, environment, or ambience surrounding an event.
- In low-context cultures words are taken literally.
- High-context cultures use nonverbal cues and the setting to help determine the meaning of a
message.
- Low-context cultures believe in more individual values.
- High-context cultures believe in more group oriented actions.
- Many cultures are complex and aren’t simply individualistic or group oriented.
- North Americans value time considering it a precious commodity.
- Some culture view time as an unlimited resource to be enjoyed.
- Some cultures view time analytically, while others view it holistically.
- Power distance refers to how an individual of lower or higher power treats an opposite in their
society.
- Power distance can affect the work environment when foreign companies try to break into a
culturally different market.
- High and low context culture value the use of words over written words differently.
- Cultural differences offer areas of exploitation to those who understand how the others will
react to certain situations.
- Social media has allowed a platform where minimal resources are needed to reach more varied
audiences than ever before.
- Social media tends to reinforce a user’s social tendencies than break them out of their shell.
- Social media is a platform that allows us to reach out over cultural boundaries if we are willing
to.
- Those who design media for markets usually consider the cultural norms to decide how to
market their product.
- It remains to be seen if cultural difference will continue with the expansion of social media or
change.
- This digital age requires people to be able to work together despite cultural differences.
- Ethnocentrism and stereotyping are two major barriers to intercultural communication.
- Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of one’s own culture.
- Stereotypes are an oversimplified perception of a culture.
- Tolerance is important when working to interact with other cultures.
- One must be able to work with an ethnically diverse workforce in today’s society.
a. Speak in shorts sentences and with familiar short words.
b. Be sure to speak slowly and clearly and enunciate pauses.
c. Be sure to engage to the audience to be sure of comprehension.
d. Avoid moving on to your next point until your sure the audience has comprehended what
you said.
e. Watch eye expression to see when you are losing your audience.
f. Be sure to accept blame if the meaning appears to have gotten lost or misunderstood.
g. Listen more, talk less.
h. Smile, but not too much.
i. Confirm messages in writing.
- When writing to someone in a different culture you must take care to be understood.
a. Take into account the standard formatting of documents in the country you are
communicating with.
b. Hire a translator if your document is important.
c. Use short sentences and paragraphs.
d. Avoid ambiguous wording.
 e. Use figures instead of spelling out words and spell out months instead of the numerical
option.
- The domestic workforce is growing in diversity.
- The workforce looks to shift from anglo and male dominated to minority and female dominated.
- Your job will require communication with a diverse workforce.
- Customers are beginning to look to buy from those that respect their values.
- Business look to diversify their customer base as well as their staff.
- Creating a diverse staff will help solve many problems that may arise.
- Creating a diverse workforce does not mean harmony and companies must work to balance how
the deal with diversity.
- Training can help deal with cultural clashes.
- Groups that suffer from sameness tend to groupthink which hinders creativity.
- Identify your cultural self and analyze your automatic reactions to certain situations.
- Avoid making assumptions.
- Look for common ground when working in culturally diverse situations.

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