HHRR/GralInt-Cultural awareness training: A new 'must' for business

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Apr 1, 2013

Cultural awareness training: A new 'must' for business

Myriam Siftar is president of MTM LinguaSoft in Philadelphia







Myriam Siftar, Guest Columnist



Miscommunication can cost businesses both time and money. Whether the communication is between peers, managers and subordinates, salespeople and clients, a failure to communicate can lead to work not being done and having to be rushed through, work being done wrong and having to be redone, or cancelled orders and contracts. Failures of communication are common enough between people from the same background. When the communications are between people from different cultures, the possibilities for miscommunication and damaging consequences are multiplied.

Everyone understands the problems of communication caused by lack of a common language, but many are unaware of the communication problems that can be caused by culture. That’s because people don’t usually recognize the ways in which their culture affects their own attitudes and expectations. The reality is that different assumptions based on cultural differences can be a major barrier to effective communication, even when you’re all “speaking English.”

With increasing globalization and immigration, small and mid-sized businesses today often have to deal with international partners and customers as well as multicultural workforces. More and more business leaders are personally experiencing the problems that can arise in cross-cultural communications. Here are just a couple of examples of common cultural differences that can affect business.

In many cultures establishing relationships is very important before doing business with someone. Americans, who tend to believe that all you need is a common business goal to “do a deal” may not take the time to nurture relationships and, as a recent article in the Huffington Post put it, “pull the plug too soon,” thus wasting the time and effort they already have put in and which, with more patience, could very well have gotten results.

People from many cultures are more deferential to authority and will not speak up to or disagree with someone they perceive as their superior. Employees or co-workers from these cultures may not contribute their own ideas unprompted, voice concerns they have, or even admit that they don’t understand something. These cultural differences among members of the same workforce can, as an article from The Houston Chronicle put it, “wreak havoc in the workplace.”

Cultural competence training can help avoid costly failures of communication. Basically, this training addresses three issues: 1) awareness of the effect of culture on one’s own communication; 2) knowledge of and appreciation for the differences between cultures and the sources of those differences; and 3) learning to pick up the subtle clues that can signal a problem in communication.

Until recently, large companies that operate internationally have been the major clients for this kind of training. But even these companies often didn’t reach out for assistance until someone in their leadership experienced the problems personally—at least, this has been the experience of Carol C. of C. Consulting, one of the expert consultants we work with. Smaller companies have only really started to come to her within the last year, but the trend will most likely continue with the U.S. government push towards increased exports for small and mid-sized companies.

If cross-cultural communication is important in your business, consider cultural competence training for your employees before you learn the costs the hard way.

Myriam Siftar is the president of MTM LinguaSoft, a language services company in Philadelphia.


Source: www.bizjournals.com