Cultural Communication & Education

If you are just beginning your international business development you are probably concerned about avoiding cultural communication blunders. There are stories out there of major companies making major business mistakes.

Enough to damper any business’ international fervor. Most peoples reflex is to look at the other cultures first. After all, they are the ones that are different.

You might be tempted to start by researching all the possible types of cultural communication blunders with all of the different cultures out there.

Stop!

International business is different today than before. Internet marketing provides businesses a universal international communication tool. If you are lucky enough to be a native English speaker you are probably using internet marketing as a key element to your international business expansion. English is the second language of choice throughout the world.

Most initial international business development is done in English, or at least with very little foreign language content. There is no reason to become confused with studying different cultures first. You will probably be wasting your time.

Here is why:

You will be relying heavily on English language communication to begin with.

Internet marketing allows you to refine your international targets and your foreign targets will probably evolve with your market research.

You internet marketing will provide you with valuable international market research.

Learning over generalizations on cultural habits does not do your business much good. In practice, there are many cultural exceptions to the rule.

The person who is important to you is your particular foreign prospect or client.

Your communication has to be right for your foreign prospect or client. For this particular person. Not someone who lives 100 miles away with a totally different background.

Of course your foreign prospect or client will be different from you if he lives in a different culture. You will need to find a common ground to communicate with him.
If he speaks some English this is not common enough ground. His language skills will not be the same as yours.

Cultural Communication Visualization

If communication barriers represent the distance between the two of you, you will need to move from where you are to meet him somewhere along the path separating you.

So if you visualize this, what’s the first thing you need to do?

Review Your Own Communication First

Before studying other cultures, you must look at your own communication. Here’s why:

• Your own communication represents half of the cross cultural communication equation.
• You are more capable of understanding your own cultural communication than a foreigners communication habits.
• Adjusting your own communication will signal to your foreign clients that you actively seek to communicate with them.

How can you make communication easier with your international prospect or client?

Some people’s reflex is to speak to foreigners like babies. This is not the solution.
So how can eliminate blunders when communicating with your foreign clients?

Internationalize Your English

• Adapt your own communication to make yourself easier to understand.
• Eliminate your own cultural filters.
• Use simple English
• Internationalize your own language.

The English language is widely used in international business. So much so that we can often overlook our own English language communication practices.

Before looking at the differences in other cultures and learning about them, turn your focus onto your own communication style. If you give each individual communication with your foreign clients your full attention and adapt your own language to something they can understand you will create more

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Watch the video related to cultural communication

This video was a product of an assignment I gave my Introduction to Speech Communication class. I wanted student groups to do their own brainstorming, research, surveying, scripting, shooting, and producing of a video on the value of communication skills in a given area. It is, in some respects, guerilla teaching and guerilla learning: one where an experience yields more than an actual lecture would. This project not only gave students the experience with basic video editing and producing …

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About Author

Cindy King
Cross-Cultural Marketer & International Sales Specialist

Over 25 years field experience in aligning cultural offers for international sales.

International content strategy
Custom publishing in English to build international markets B2B international lead generation

40km south of Paris, France – GMT+1
Cell: +33 6 98 91 86 11
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