Sunday, January 31, 2010
Observation of team behavior: intercultural and interpersonal communication
5 comments Posted by Cherlia at 12:05 AMBeing in a multi racial country, seeing people of difference races or religion working well together is not uncommon. However, with the increase in influx of immigrants from all around the world, Singapore gradually becomes an even larger melting pot of different cultures and traditions. Therefore the need to work well with people with different cultural backgrounds becomes progressively crucial in our contemporary society.
An example of how intercultural communication is important is in baseball. Baseball is a sport that requires a strong sense of teamwork and cooperation. Without proper communication, the team cannot possibly work together to cause the opposing batter to be out of the game. This requires very fast paced communication and deep understanding between the team members.
In recent years, many Japanese famous baseball players have entered the American Baseball playing field. And being in a team where almost all the players share a similar culture, it must have been difficult to smooth out the cultural and language differences at the start. But these teams were not daunted by the task, and they managed to overcome the differences and work together.
For a good team to work well, it is important for the members to understand the different cultures of their group members and not to judge their traditions. Being unable to accept another's cultural makes one seem ethnocentric and inflexible, largely affecting the team dynamics. It is also important for the group to have effective interpersonal communication, to be able to resolve conflicts even if their differences cause some communication problems. This is crucial to a team as the members need to know how to manage conflicts effectively without compromising on someone else's feelings in an argument. They will also need to be emotionally aware of their group members' feelings and how to negotiate on differences in ideas objectively without sounding defensive or aggressive.
Inter cultural and interpersonal communication are necessary skills that all of us need to hone as our world becomes a global city, and people become more interconnected. If we are acceptive of others' culture and lifestyle, we might achieve much more as a team, having diverse viewpoints and perspective that can further stretch each others' potential.
Below is an example on how misunderstanding occurs due to cultural differences.
Selling to the Arabs
A disappointed salesman of a Cola drink returns from his Middle East assignment. A friend asked, "Why weren't you successful selling the Cola drink to the Arabs?" The salesman explained:
"When I got posted in the Middle East, I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem: I didn't speak Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through three posters...
- First poster: A man lying in the hot desert sand...totally exhausted and fainting.
- Second poster: The man is drinking our Cola.
- Third poster: Our man is now totally refreshed.
And then these posters were pasted all over the place.
"Then that should have worked!" said the friend.
"That’s what I thought, said the salesman. Didn’t realize that Arabs read from right to left."
Source : http://www.contentforcommunicators.com/cross-cultural-articles.html
Friday, January 22, 2010
Being a member of a uniform group in my secondary school days, I have had my fair share of problems dealing with communication and teamwork with my squadmates. I lost count of the numerous times information failed to be transmitted to everyone in the squad (or team),or when the squad failed to agree on an issue. And these are all common problems that exist in many organisations. Regardless of whether it is a bureaucratic company, a CCA, or in a project, the moment people need to work together to achieve things the largest obstacles they can face are miscommunication, and the lack of teamwork.
I truly believe, in order to have a great team that is able to not only accommodate each other's shortcomings and work well together, communication is vital. My experience has shown me how inefficient things can become when miscommunication occurs, and when conflicts are not resolved amicably. It affects everyone's emotions, sometimes causing a general frustration, which causes more incompetency in dealing with the problem at hand. Therefore communication and teamwork is important to me.
Good communication not only allows people to forge strong bonds with each other, it allows them to work more cohesively, thus eliminating the problem of having conflicts that were badly dealt with. And similarly, having good teamwork and cooperation further enhances communication within the group. So teamwork and communication goes hand in hand in many circumstances.
However, with the increasing modes of communication that are invented in this modern society, it seems that it is increasingly difficult to communicate efficiently. As humans are overly exposed to too many forms of communication methods, which also serves as distractions, it is difficult to communicate properly and get the message across. For example, when a group meeting is held, it is not uncommon to see members of the group individually distracted by a mode of communication; one can be checking their email while a group member is talking; one reading or replying an sms, etc. These are all disturbances that people now face in dealing with effective communication. It is no longer about the delivery of the message itself, it's about how concentrated the listener is when the information is being processed.
Below is a comic illustrating how difficult it is to communicate in this modern context :
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