About intercultural communication & interactions

• We begin our “cultural indoctrination” as children by copying our role models, for example by walking the same way as them.
• Children from minority cultures in Australia learn to develop 2 different cultural frames.  For example, they may have to be submissive at home & be told not to stare at other family members, particularly their elders.  However these same children learn that they cannot adopt this same behaviour in the playground or they will be picked on.
• When talking to a person, we can only “see” roughly 10% of what makes up that person’s culture.  Think of it as the “cultural iceberg”- just like an iceberg most of the culture lies below the water.
• Easily observed traits of the culture include language and behaviour, but other traits such as traditions and beliefs lie “below the water”.  The “values” of a person can also be completely hidden.
• We looked at two ways of mapping cultural differences by looking at the roles of hierarchy & identity in different cultures.

• Heirarchy. Some cultures have a small power distance and some cultures have a large power distance, eg. the idea that children should be obedient to parents comes from the concept of a large power distance and the idea that children should have a will of their own comes from a small power distance.
• Identity. Identity deals with the extent to which people look after themselves and their direct family.  Cultures can look at identity in two different ways, namely collectivism & individualism.  Cultures that value collectivism have “extended” families, obligations to family, take care with how something is said and have an obligation to the group.  Conversely cultures that value individualism focus more on the “nuclear” family, take more individual initiative, use individual decision making styles, are direct and to the point, openly confront difficulties and people are more independent.

• During the day we played a game of cards that showed some of the issues that you have to deal with when interacting with people from another culture.  I won’t go into the game in detail, as the facilitator does not want to spoil the surprise for future groups, but I will say it was a good example of different cultural “rules” coming into conflict.
• We looked at linear, re-active and multi-active cultures.  Linear-active people are task-oriented, highly organised planners.  Reactive people are respect-oriented and good listeners.   Multi-active people are people-oriented, loquacious communicators.  Most Australians are linear active, reactive people often come from Asian cultures and multi-active people tend to come from countries such as Italy, Greece and Mexico.

1. Be self aware
2. Assess cultural like-mindedness before beginning the interaction
3. Pro-actively learn about cultural background
4. Think carefully about “adaptation” (by whose cultural “rules” should we play?)
5. Consider the context of the communication