Improving Communication Among Diverse Workplace Audiences

Integrating diversity into one workforce is a vital task because a diverse workforce may reduce productivity unless trained to value differences. If diversity in the workplace is effective, it can enhance productivity and propel a company to success. On the other hand, if diversity in the workplace is ineffective, it can become a drain on a company's time and resources. It is important for organizations to keep in mind that harmony and acceptance do not happen automatically when people who are not similar to each other work together.

The following suggestions can help you and your organization find ways to improve communication and interaction.

1. Seek Training: This suggestion is important, especially if an organization is experiencing diversity problems. Look upon diversity as an opportunity, not a threat. A lot can be learned in diversity training programs. Take the time to read and learn about workforce diversity and how it can benefit organizations.
2. Understand the value of differences: Diversity makes and organization innovative and creative. 
3. Don't expect conformity: Do not expect all workers to think or act alike.
4. Learn about your cultural self: Make sure you understand that your culture is just ONE among many. Take the time to learn about your culture and how others see it. Your culture was designed to help you succeed and survive in a certain environment.
5. Make fewer assumptions: Avoid making insignificant, innocent work-place assumptions.Valuing diversity means making fewer assumptions that everyone is like you or wants to be like you. 
6. Build on similarities: Try to find topics or areas that you can use to interact with others who are not like you but can agree or share opinions. Make sure you understand that others might have different points of view. Look for common ground in shared experiences, mutual goals, and similar values. In times of conflict, look for areas of agreement and build on similarities.

Dividends of Diversity

As society and the workforce become more diverse, successful interaction and communication among the various identity groups bring challenges and dividends in three areas. 

A diverse workforce befits consumers, work teams, and business organizations.

CONSUMERS: A staff that is diverse is able to read trends and respond to the increasingly diverse customer base in local and world markets. Teams made up of different people with different experiences are better able to create different products that these markets require. Consumers also want to be able to deal with companies that respect their values and reflect themselves.

WORK TEAMS:  Team members with different backgrounds may come up with more creative and effective problem-solving techniques than those teams that lack diversity. 

BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS: Companies that cultivate and capitalize on diversity will suffer fewer discrimination lawsuits, fewer union clashes, and less government regulatory action. Companies must realize that diversity is a critical bottom-line business strategy to improve employee relationships and to increase productivity.

Developing a diverse staff that can work together cooperatively is one of the biggest challenges facing business organizations today. 

While diversity can have a positive force within organizations, it can also cause divisiveness, discontent, and clashes. Minorities complain that they are discriminated against in hiring, wages, and promotions. Individuals with different religions feel uncomfortable working alongside each other.

The next post will feature tips for improving communication among diverse workplace audiences.

Improving Intercultural Proficiency and Communication

This is a checklist for improving intercultural proficiency and communication:

• Study your own culture: In order to better understand, appreciate, and accept the values and behaviour of other cultures, it is important that you take the time to learn about your customs, biases, and views and how they differ from those in other societies.
• Learn about other cultures: Knowledge of other cultures opens your eyes and teaches you to expect differences, it also enriches your life!
• Curb ethnocentrism: Try to develop an open mind-set to be able to avoid judging others by your personal views. You will be able to get over the view that other cultures are incorrect, defective, or primitive.
• Avoid judgmentalism: Try not to be defensive in justifying your culture. Strive for objectivity and to accept other behaviour as different, rather than right or wrong.
• Seek common ground: Look for solutions that respect both cultures when there is a clash between them. 
• Observe nonverbal cues in your culture: Become more alert to the meanings of gestures in your culture and how they differ in other countries.

Improving Communication With Intercultural Audiences - Written Communication

When sending letters and other documents to businesspeople, make sure you adapt your writing style and tone appropriately. The following suggestions can help you prepare successful written messages for intercultural audiences.

1. Adopt local formats: Learn how documents are formatted in the intended reader's country.

2. Observe titles and rank: Use last names, titles, and other signals of rank and status.

3. Use short sentences and short paragraphs: Make your sentences readable with fewer than 15 words and paragraphs with fewer than 7 lines.

4. Avoid ambiguous expressions: Include relative pronouns for clarity. Stay away from contractions. Avoid slang, abbreviations and acronyms.

5. Strive for clarity: Clarify words that may be confusing and avoid words that have many meanings (the word light has 18 different meanings) and that may result in confusion of the reader.

6. Use correct grammar.


7. Cite numbers carefully: Avoid using figures to express the month of the year.

8. Accomodate the reader in organization, tone, and style: Organize your message to appeal to the reader.

Improving Communication With Intercultural Audiences - Oral Communication

Although it is best to speak a foreign language fluently, many people lack that skill. The following suggestions are helpful for situations in which one or both communications may be using English as a second language:

1. Learn foreign phrases: Even when English is used in conversations, foreign nationals feel welcome and appreciate it when you learn greetings and a few phrases in their language.

2. Use SIMPLE English: Speak in short sentences and try to make use of common English words.

3. Speak slowly and enunciate clearly


4. Observe eye messages: Be alert to a glazed expression or wandering eyes, noticing these things will let you know that the listener is lost.

5. Encourage accurate feedback: Ask questions and encourage the listener to rephrase part of what you say.

6. Check frequently for comprehension: Try to pause at one point in between a long explanation to check for comprehension, rather than waiting until you are completely done explaining to request feedback. Wait until one concept has been grasped in order to move on to the following.

7. Accept blame: In the case of a misunderstanding, accept the blame in a gracious manner for not making what you were trying to say clear.

8. Listen without interrupting


9. Smile!


10. Follow up in writing: Follow up important conversations in writing. After conversations or oral negotiations, confirm what was discussed with follow-up letters.

Improving Communication With Intercultural Audiences - Nonverbal Communication

The key to future business success lies in finding ways to work harmoniously with people from different cultures.

 

When comparing verbal skills to nonverbal skills, it is not necessary to say that verbal skills are far easier to master than nonverbal skills. Verbal skills can be mastered if one practices enough, while nonverbal skills are much more difficult to learn. Eye contact, facial expressions, posture, gestures, are all messages sent by body language that have always been open to interpretation. Understanding nonverbal messages is particularly difficult when cultures differ. 

Nonverbal behaviour is ambiguous within cultures and even more problematic between cultures. Whenever you have to communicate with someone who does not share your language, you probably figure out ways to use gestures to convey basic messages. However, gestures can create different reactions in different cultures and we must be careful as to which ones we use and when interpreting them. 

 We learn a great part of our verbal behaviour in early childhood from our families or even from society and most of the time we are not even aware of this ongoing learning that takes place. Becoming more aware of your own use of nonverbal cues can make you more sensitive to variations in other cultures, you can grow more tolerant, more flexible, and eventually, more competent. In achieving competence, it is important to keep in mind that when interacting with businesspeople in other cultures, it is always wise to follow their lead. For example, if they avoid eye contact, do not stare. If a person puts their elbows on the table, wait until you are knowledgeable about the meaning of gestures, it is a good idea to keep yours to minimum.

Defining and Avoiding Ethnocentrism

Being aware of your own culture and how it contrasts with others is an important first step in achieving intercultural proficiency. One of the main reasons for becoming interculturally competent is that your personal life will be more satisfying and your work life will be more productive and effective.

Ethnocentrism is described as the belief in the superiority of one's own race. It is a natural attitude inherent in all cultures. There is nothing wrong in being proud of your culture and what "your people" achieve. 

Ethnocentrism causes us to judge others by our own values. We expect others to act as we would, and the expect us to behave as they would. This does not always work out so well and can usually result in misunderstandings. These misunderstandings can be reduced through knowledge of other cultures and development of increased intercultural sensitivity. 

Avoiding ethnocentrism is not an easy task, we must have an open mind, and as proud as we might be of our culture, we must always remember that we are all pieces of the puzzle, we are all, in some way or the other, parts of the bigger piece.

Stereotypes, Prototypes, Prejudices and Generalizations

Whenever we talk about cultures, most of the time, if not all of the time, we use mental categories, representations, and generalizations to describe groups. These categories that we think of are usually called stereotypes. The term stereotypes has a negative meaning, they are oversimplified behavioural patterns applied uncritically to groups.

On the other hand, the term prototypes describes general characteristics that are dynamic and may change. They are based on objective observations and usually have a considerable amount of truth in them. This is, in fact, a good thing. Prototypes can be helpful in studying culture.

Stereotypes are fixed and rigid. The worst part about stereotypes is that even though they may sometimes be exaggerated and overgeneralized beliefs when applied to groups of people, they are not always false and may also often contain part of the truth. That is mainly what identifies them as a stereotype while on the other hand, when the stereotype develops into a rigid attitude and when it is based on erroneous beliefs or preconceptions, then it should be called a prejudice.

Generalizations take place when we strive to categorize new data in order to make sense of it. Whenever we are confronted with something new or unfamiliar, we look for ways to relate it to something we know in order to feel more comfortable and be able to work with this data. Being able to draw generalizations from masses of data is a sign of intelligence and learning. In this case, when discussing cultures, it is important to be able to make generalizations and describe cultural prototypes.

When it comes to the intercultural workforce, we must be able to deal with all four of these categories. Stereotypes, prototypes, prejudices and generalizations affect the way we see people and how we treat them. We must be able to understand that every person is different and unique and we must not judge a book by its cover because we might find ourselves surprised at the story behind them.

The Increasing Importance of Intercultural Communication

What is known as a "global village" that was predicted many years ago is actually becoming a reality. Not only local, but national businesses as well push products across borders and seek customers in diverse foreign markets. 

To better compete, many organizations form multinational alliances, however, many expanding companies stumble when they are forced to confront obstacles never before encountered. Some of these obstacles involve national boundaries that mean less as businesses expand through mergers, alliances and acquisitions. Also, the misunderstanding and contrary views resulting from intercultural differences. At the pace the rate of multiculturalism is growing, not only in Canada but in countries like the U.S., you will most likely face such intercultural differences in your future jobs. Your employers, coworkers, or clients can very well be from other countries. Not only that, but you might also have to travel abroad for your employer, or even on your own. If you learn more about the importance of intercultural communications and about the powerful effect that culture has on behaviour, it will be very helpful in reducing friction and misunderstanding when you are dealing with people from other cultures.

In the near future, working with people from all around the world will be extremely common. We have to be able to adapt and to learn to cooperate with people's ideas and simply agree to disagree when something is a good idea, even when it is not of our liking. By increasing intercultural communications we are preparing ourselves to deal with all these different ideas, we are preparing ourselves for what will soon  be a part of our everyday lives.

Intercultural Workforce

As the world is evolving, it has become a very competitive place for everything. Looking for ways to cope with change and overcome the competitiveness of our everyday lives, people tend to move around and travel, looking for experience and gaining new and improved knowledge. 

People from many cultures are moving to the countries promising to fulfill their dreams. Due to their reputation and their high standard of living, the two most popular destinations have been Canada and the United States.

Because of increases in immigration, foreign-born persons are an ever-growing portion of the total population. The influx of immigrants has reshaped Canadian society; it has been compared to a cultural mosaic, meaning that it is a multicultural society and Canada encourages people to keep their original culture and share it with the rest of the community. In the United States, the "melting pot" is supported, meaning that people are encouraged to adopt the culture of America and blend in together.

Although Canada's two official languages are English and French, unofficially it is the land of many languages. Cultural diversity is increasingly the norm, we can expect changes to happen smoothly as we seek to accommodate multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, multinational companies, and an international workforce. 

Culture affects the way we work because due to the rising population of international and multicultural people that come to Canada, we must, in some way or the other, adapt to the different ethnic groups because everyone has different ideas and different suggestions to bring to the table. Some companies look at other countries to recruit the best possible candidates for a specific job because having an Intercultural Workforce is becoming a great strategy to achieve growth in a company due to the different and unique ideas that a person from a different culture can contribute. We must learn to appreciated and enjoy what we can learn from other people as we get to know and work with others.

Characteristics of Culture

Culture includes all that man acquires in his social life, from the attitudes he learned in childhood to those that are later internalized in adult-hood. The current period of globalization is causing us to make adjustments and adopt new attitudes. Understanding basic characteristics of culture helps us make adjustments and accommodations.

Culture Is Learned: All of the values, attitudes and rules of a culture are not inherited, instead, they are learned and passed down from generation to generation. 

Cultures Are Inherently Logical: The rules that are enforced in each culture originated to reinforce that culture's values and beliefs. They act as normative forces. 

Culture Is The Basis of Self-Identity and Community: We use culture as the basis to tell people how we feel, who we are and what we believe. Using their primary culture, people build their identities through cultural overlays to the same. 

Culture Combines the Visible and Invisible: The way we act, mostly the things we do in daily life and work, are the most visible parts of our culture. The actions we perform based on our culture may be outward symbols of deeper values that are invisible but that affect strongly everything we think and do.

Culture Is Dynamic: Culture goes through ongoing change. Over time, it is affected by advancements in technology and communication, migration, natural disasters, and wars. These events change attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs which change more quickly in open societies that in closed societies. 

Defining "Culture"

The word “culture” has many different meanings.  It could be used to describe the excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, or perhaps it could be defined as an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior or also as the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that are characteristics of an institution, organization or group.  Every country or region within a country has a unique common heritage, joint experience, or shared learning. This shared background produces the culture of a region, country, or society. The definition of “culture” that we will be focusing on for this blog is the complex system of values, traits, morals, and customs shared by a society.

Culture teaches people how to behave, and it conditions their reactions. Society pretty much defines the behaviours that men and women adopt since gender, race, age, religion, and many other factors cause us to behave in certain patterns. Individuals do not always behave as expected and this may cause people from one culture to have difficulty get through to those from another culture. However, the one thing we should keep in mind is that culture is a major factor that conditions the way we act, think and behave and due to this, we are flexible and capable of phenomenal change.