The Challenges Of Intercultural Communication In The Workplace

As the workforce becomes more diverse, immigration increases, and technology rapidly advances, effective communication is harder to achieve. All types of communication follows the same model of sender, encoding, channel, receiver, decoding, and feedback, with noise during that communication transition, however, cultural differences can complicate the process, adding so much noise that contributes to misunderstanding is the workplace. Effective communication in the workplace requires growth and flexibility. This means that, first, one needs to accept that the verbal and non-verbal communication style that we are most familiar with often become our unconscious norm against which we judge the communication styles of others. Second, there is a

For example, eye contact in our culture means respect and confidence, but in other cultures the same behavior can generate anxiety or not be trustful. Non-verbal communication can be challenging through electronic communications, because it is very complex to include the tone or the manner of such communication, therefore, it can be judged as a total different approach than the intended. Intercultural communication within an organization is an opportunity to find benefits, and to strengthen the organizational culture, however, this is not a concept that can be easily managed, only leaders that understand the need of intercultural communication, and that value diversity in the workplace, can transform and define the appropriate methodologies and metrics to effectively implement such intercultural communication in the workplace, ensuring effective communication that can be translated to economic profits due the synergies generated by its diverse

However, in the workplace, even that employees are measured by individual performance, teamwork is crucial in most of the companies, roles, activities, etc., to achieve individual results that at the end, become the results of the company itself. Some people prefer to work in group because they have the ability to generate value from the synergies created with that work methodology, however, there are others that like group work, just because there are lazy and prefer to do the least effort possible while the other group members allow it. The same effect occurs with individualism, but in the other way. No matter if one prefer collectivism or individualism, because in the world that we are living today, people, countries, companies, are so interrelated, that both, individualism and collectivize, abilities, need to be well developed, to be successful not only in the workplace, but in most dimensions of