How to Manage Cultural Differences in Workplace Communication by Valerie Cantella. 

Valerie Cantella wrote this post on November 20, 2022, for the Science of People website about managing cultural differences in workplace communications. In this piece, Valerie provided incisive information about the reality of cultural differences in the workplace and how managing and comprehending these differences may result in diverse, high-functioning teams.

These variations, according to her, encompass both spoken and nonspoken elements like facial expressions and body language. The capacity to put prejudice and stereotypes aside and adapt to, accept, and celebrate cultural variety comes with understanding. She  emphasised that cultural differences could manifest in both verbal and nonverbal forms. Nonverbal communication is characterised by nonverbal cues like eye contact, personal space, physical contact, teamwork, eating and drinking, and gestures, while verbal cues include speaking tempo, word choice, handling conflict, handling group dynamics, and task-oriented versus relationship-oriented behaviour. She went into great detail on how to handle each of the aforementioned to create a positive work environment.

 She began by explaining in detail how eye contact is one of the non-verbal communication techniques: Making eye contact with someone while speaking to them shows attention to detail and is generally expected in the United States. Others from different cultures, however, could view this as disrespectful, confrontational, or frightening. Compared to people from Western European cultures, "individuals from an East Asian culture perceive another's face as being angrier, unapproachable, and unpleasant when making eye contact," according to a 2013 study. According to another study, people from East Asian backgrounds do not value keeping eye contact, whereas people from Western European backgrounds do. Japanese kids are taught to look at people's necks rather than their own eyes because making too much eye contact is seen as impolite.

To one of the verbal communication, speaking tempo, she had this to say: "Why do some people speak quickly while others speak more slowly? It could have to do with their native language. One study looked at 17 spoken languages and ranked them from fastest to slowest. This is what they found: Japanese (fastest), Spanish, Basque, Finnish, Italian, Serbian, Korean, Catalan, Turkish, French, English, German, Hungarian, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Thai (slowest). Even though the scope of this study is quite narrow, it's intriguing to consider how culture affects speech rate.

She highlighted these 6 strategies for navigating cultural differences (as a manager).

Learn about your employees.

Improve cultural awareness.

Show cultural appreciation.

Offer training.

Be more self-aware.

Build up your team.

In the piece, she gave examples of how cultural differences in group dynamics supported dispute resolution, decision-making, and task-versus relationship-orientation. Although I have utilised the analysis above to lay the groundwork for the piece, it is by no means an exhaustive source of information. As an international student residing in a multicultural society like Canada, I find this issue of cultural differences to be very essential because it's critical to learn how to negotiate these differences and forge healthy connections both inside and outside of the workplace.


Reference

Cantella, V. (2022, November 1). How to manage cultural differences in workplace communication. Science of People. https://www.scienceofpeople.com/cultural-differences-in-communication/

 

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