Discuss about the Intercultural Dynamics Of Multicultural Working.
In communication, it is possible to find one person very competent in one situation while the same person who appeared a good communicant can be poor given that he or she is in a different context (Gopee, 2012). To realize that, different diagnostic tools filled by the same person were used whereby the statement to identify the different situations under which a person can be and know the situations when one is at his or her best and when he or she is on her worst. Therefore, this piece of writing is about self-reflection of my communication capabilities under different situations using the given five diagnostic tools. Through this essay, I will analyze my own communication ability using the diagnostic tools presented as questionnaires (ZHAO, SUN, ZHOU, WEI & NIU, 2013). There are two communication issues that really require my attention are interacting with people from a different culture whereby I find myself very nervous when engaging in a group discussion with such people and talking to or with strangers often put me in a difficult situation. I will also present two professional interactions that i have found myself in that required my communication ability within the last twelve months that is simply a period of one year. This essay also covers a literature review part where concepts shall be defined as well as providing theoretical and personal skills that I need to acquire in order to demonstrate competence in my chosen area of communication (Pittman, 2012). I will also provide an action plan that I intend to do in the next six months in order to acquire the skills concerning my communication issues.
Five diagnostic tools were presented in form of questionnaires and I filled each question which presented different communication situations (Maubane & Rheede van Oudtshoorn, 2011). The first tool was Self perceived communication competence that contained a number of communication contexts such as my ability to communicate in a meeting, public, group, acquaintance stranger and a friend. The results showed that when talking to a friend, I do it with utmost ease, talking in the public also does not give me a lot of problems , communicating with a person who I know but no close friend appeared to be moderate but the worst situation was talking to a total stranger (Moore, 2016).
The second tool was nonverbal immediacy scale self-report which shows how individual behaves when communication to or with others. Nonverbal immediacy is cues that indicate positive feelings towards another person. It is said that women tend to be nonverbally immediate than men. The tool tested how I use gestures, touching others while talking, the kind of tone I produce, looking away from others while talking to them, how my face appears when talking to others that is frowning and smiling , my positioning when talking whether I stand, sit close or far from whoever am taking to among so many others (Sanders, 2010). From the results, it shows that I occasionally do some things such as use of gestures, touching others frown while talking to others as well as standing or sitting far from whoever am talking to. In rare occasions do I have a dull voice, move away from others while they talk to me, have a tense body, use a variety of vocal expressions when I talk to people and animated while talking to others. The only situation that I scored the highest that was four that indicated that I often do it was the fact that my body is relaxed while I talk to people, look directly at people while I talk to them, I am stiff when talking to people of which this explains why I occasionally use gestures and rarely have an animated body and I maintain eye contact when talking to others. These were my strongholds when it came to my behavior towards the people am talking to or with (Roloff, 2015).
The third tool was personal report of intercultural communication apprehension which is a measure of how an individual is worried that something unpleasant may happen when communication with people from a different culture. According to me, I agreed with the fact that I am generally comfortable with a group of people from a different culture, I love having discussions with people from a different culture, I calm and relaxed when talking to people from different cultures and I have no fear when having conversation with people from different cultures (Dekay, 2014). These show that I can interact and cope up well with different cultural backgrounds. I disagreed with the statements that engaging in discussions make me nervous, my thoughts are confused and jangled, and am uncomfortable when talking with people from different cultures. Disagreeing to these statements support the statements that I agreed with showing that I am competent when communicating with people from other cultural backgrounds.
The forth tool was the talkaholic scale which explains that some people talk a lot, others talk less while others talk too much than the required , talking too much often implies that the person talks about what whoever is listening to them is not pleased with. Normally, the social interaction level of an individual is measured by the ability of him or her to talk to others, people who talk more tend to appear so much like a leader and seemingly competent than who talk less. According to the findings from the individual questions, I am not a talkaholic, I talk less than I should sometimes and sometimes I feel compelled to be silent. They all indicate that I do not have much to speak when with other people.
The fifth tool was tool was tolerance to disagreement that is a measure of how an individual can tolerate with what others are disagreeing with what the person thinks is right (Lee, 2013). The points that I agreed with were, I enjoy talking with different points of view from mine, disagreements are generally important and that I would prefer joining groups where disagreements do not occur. As much as I do not have a problem with people who have different views from mine, I feel better when in a group where there are no disagreements.
Based on the findings from the analysis of diagnostic tools, my communication issues, these are things that I have a problem with which possibly lowers my communication competence (Codó, 2012). The first issue was on the intercultural communication context where I find that am nervous when I engage in a discussion with people from a different culture. I really need to work on this area since during business engagements, I will definitely have to interact with foreign people hence discussion with them should not be a problem to me. I also have strong feelings that the issue with interacting with strangers is of a disadvantage to me and will inconvenience me in future if I do not take a step and develop myself in that area. I should be able to easily communicate with strangers if I want to be competent communicant and a good business person (Cranmer, 2011).
Within the last two months, I have encountered myself in situations where my two communication issues really brought me problems, which show how urgently I need to develop to avoid future problems. I was working with a certain hotel in one of our towns where I acted as the assistant public relations officer of the firm (Treloar, 2016). During that week, my senior from the Public Relations department informed us that there would be visitors from a foreign country who were interested in our activities as a hotel and wanted to borrow ideas from us. Therefore, it was our role as a department to interact with them as we give them business ideas as well as borrowing other ideas from them because they were also running a hotel business back in their country (Rossade, 2016). Since I was among the least in the department, I was very sure that I would not be among those who were going to attend the meeting with them but to my shock, my name was among the few people who were to represent the PR department (Rossade, 2016). During the meeting, I was nervous so much that I did not even know how to express myself due to exposure to a strange culture; everybody noticed it and it made me feel very embarrassed. This same situation combined my two communication issues where I find myself in a difficult situation when talking to strangers. Everything about these people was so strange to me. I did not know how to engage with them (Basinger, 2013). As much we spoke the same language, their accent was very different from mine where I could not here some of the words yet my colleagues seemed to understand everything and interacting with them appeared easy while I was struggling. It raised an alarm to me that I have to work on, assuming I had been sent alone, what would have happened? The thought of it gives me a push to learn how to cope up with strangers and adapt different cultures so as to carry out my business communication with ease(Peter & Rob, 2013).
Intercultural communication is one of the most important elements in business communication as it demands knowledge, skills, understanding and empathy (Blumler, 2015). Skills are the abilities that one should have in order to relate with different cultures, knowledge refers to information that one has on that particular culture that he or she has to interact with, understanding is the ability to realize the meaning of some things or issues pertaining a particular culture while empathy means the state of understanding the situation of other people like you have been in the same situation too, therefore, one should be able to understand the situation at which the fellow who is from another culture is for him or her to know how to relate with the person. It should be understood that people differ in cultures if they come from different communities or different nationalities (Kalidindi, 2018). Intercultural skills therefore are the abilities that one needs to possess in order to communicate with people from different social groups. The communicant should understand that different cultures have different customs , standards , morals as well as way of thinking therefore he or she should undermine the other party or look down on oneself such that is becomes difficult to express own feelings. All that matters is that one should be able to accept the differences, appreciate and learn how to adapt to them. When communicating with such people, the communicator should show willingness to meet others by trying to know some phrases from the languages; it is believed that if you talk to a man in a language that he understands, that goes to his head, if you talk to a man in his own language, you will have captured his heart. It is also important to talk to someone who understands the culture before you approach the people from the particular culture so as to know what to expect in advance (Salmon & Young, 2011).
Ability to communicate with strangers as well carries a lot of weight in business communication. A stranger is defined as a person you do not know according to the Oxford dictionary (Koski & Launonen, 2012). This is a common situation in s business communication context as one has to meet clients or customers that are new every day and it is important to know how to handle them in order to share information with them. To start building the ability to communicate with strangers you should learn to go out alone once in a while, face new people and from that, you will begin to learn on how to handle fear for strangers. Whether it is talking to a stranger face to face, through a phone call or texting, one should know what to talk about, how to make conversation less boring and when to end the conversation (Wilkins, Bernstein & Bekki, 2015). All through any communication context, one should make sure that they let their personality shine and make sure that whatever they say builds their reputation, know how to behave on the first approach keeping in mind that the first impression lasts. As for the case where I was not able to communicate with people who I did not know, it means that I did not have the proper skills and the knowledge of how to interact with strangers (Ong, Wang & Zainon, 2016). I should be able to watch my body language, remember that even when talking, the body is communicating. Knowing how to read the stranger’s body language is also important, if when tensed, I have a tendency of forgetting what I wanted to say, I should walk with a small reminder note but with time, I should be able to do away with tension which means that I will not have to walk around with reminder notes (Corte, Cavedon & Milanese, 2015).
Interpersonal communication has been defined in many ways one of them defining it based on the context and the number of people involved in a communication situation. Millar defines it as the communication that occurs between two people when they are close meaning that they can provide immediate feedback and make use of various senses (Dayani & Gelbard, 2015). With the goals approach, interpersonal communication is perceived to have a purpose of achieving personal targets through interacting with others. Politeness theory explains how and why individuals try to promote, protect or save face in a situation where embarrassment occurs at the when least expected. This theory was developed by Brown and Levinston. This theory is guided by the assumption that each and every individual is concerned with maintaining self-desired images when presenting him or herself before others (Salmon & Young, 2011). In this, there are two presentations of the face image, the positive face and the negative. An individual maintains a positive face by behaving in a way that he or she believes will be liked by others while the negative one, an individual behaves freely in the way the person likes most without putting in mind what others will think of him or her. The theory also assumes that human beings are rational enough to decide on the kind of face they want to present before other participants in a communications context. Therefore, it is the best when everyone is maintaining own face for the sake of other and at the end, the dependence shall be mutual because an individual’s face depends on the face of the other person (Koski & Launonen, 2012). The third assumption that this theory takes is that some behaviors are just threatening to the face. It is a mutual correspondents whereby the way you behave may be damaging the image of the other person and keep in mind that as you try to damage someone else’s image, the same way it shall be done to you at some point. The theory directly relates to the findings from the diagnostic tools where there were situations where one can be compelled to keep quit, it is all about wanting to present a certain image. Maintaining a face image in most of the time applies to people who do not know you and you therefore want to present a certain perception about you. When interacting with quittances, people from different cultures, the public and strangers, one has to shape his other image in self-desired manner (Wilkins, Bernstein & Bekki, 2015).
There is need for me to have plans on how I am going to develop my communication skills concerning the issues identified and fulfilling what I think should be done in order to be a competent communicant when interacting with strangers or people from a different culture. The only way to acquire these skills is by learning them and I am going to do it within the next six months (Ong, Wang & Zainon, 2016). I will take a short course that will run for two months and the specific cause shall be Intercultural communication skills. The course will equip me with knowledge of other cultures, make me understand the different cultural behaviors and above all, I will acquire skills on how to handle different people with different cultural behaviors. Since my other issue in communication was interaction with strangers, this course will serve the same purpose because interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds is as good as interacting with strangers (Dayani & Gelbard, 2015). I will make sure that the communication skill course is in line with business so that I can learn the specific tactics that I will apply in a business communication context.
Apart from this, I will take my time in reading different books that offer communication knowledge so that I can advance my personal interrelationship with others. There are self-help books that are easy to understand while reading alone; such will boost my communication skills such as Applied Communication Theory and Research. This is a book by Dan O’Hair; Gary L. Kreps, it provides well understood examination of when and where to apply various skills in communication. The book has discussion by well-known communication researchers that provide an insight of communication under different situations. With the information contained in this book, I will be able to know the application of communication skills in a business context (Koski & Launonen, 2012). Even with the areas where I had slight problems according to the findings in the diagnostic tools such as looking over others or away while talking to people, sometimes having a tense body while talking to others, dull tone while talking to others and use of body language the course will help me overcome these challenges. In general, all skills required in business communication shat be availed too me through this particular course.
A personal journal can be defined as a well-kept record kept by an individual that contains experience, ideas or it could be reflections on what needs to be done. Records are taken regularly from time to time for personal use. I will therefore make sure that I have a record of my experiences for the next two months, from then I will start taking records of how I have been able to handle myself under different situations and the skills I will have gained by then (Wilkins, Bernstein & Bekki, 2015). The record shall contain my personal reflection, what I think my progress is and what I still need to keep up with the timeline of acquiring all skills within the next six months. I will make sure that I interact with strangers and people from different cultural backgrounds to see how much I will have developed my personal skills to relate with others making each experience count in the journal.
For any plans to succeed there must be something that guides monitors the progress. Nothing can be done within one day especially in this case of acquiring various skills in communication; I have to be done step by step, in a planned and systematic manner (Ong, Wang & Zainon, 2016). Lack of a proper working formula may end up ruining the whole plan and by the time the six months are over, I will not have achieved what I actually wanted. My goals by the end of the coming six months are to be able to interact with strangers comfortably and adapt to different cultural situations to be a person who is competent in business communication. All of these require a plan that wi(Ong, Wang & Zainon, 2016)ll guide me on what to do next and show me the progress am making as it also reminds me of the time am left with and how to keep up with the timeline. The best guide to use is a Gantt chart that is visual view of task scheduled over a period of time, it is useful for showing when the task shall be completed (Kalidindi, 2018).
The chart above represents the range of activities that I will carry out for the next six month (Blumler, 2015). The time is indicated by colors where the 1st quarter represents the first three months that I shall be taking a sort course on Intercultural Communication Skills, the 2nd quarter represents the forth one month that I shall be reading self-help books that is Applied Communication Theory and Research by the 3rd represents the fifth one month I shall be exposing myself o new people and from different cultural backgrounds as I keep the records of experiences in my journal and lastly the 4th quarter represents the last month where I shall be reflecting on the records from the journal to see if I will have attained my goals (Basinger, 2013).
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