Intercultural Communication

I never thought much about how doing business in different countries depended not only on understanding their language, but also their culture. Originally, my thinking was that the problem with communicating with someone from a different country would be the difference in our language. This project really opened my eyes to what all needs to be taken into consideration when dealing with foreigners. Some of the problems that one might face is that in some countries it is impolite for them to disagree with you. You may make a presentation and think everyone is in agreement because they are shaking their heads up and down. However, in some cultures this just means that they understand, not that they agree with what you are saying. It is also important to know what time companies typically conduct business and if you should or shouldn't present a gift. Should you introduce yourself or should you wait for someone else do the introductions? Where do you sit when you come to the table for a meeting? Do you shake someones hand or not? What should you wear? Do you make small talk or get down to business? All these questions were answered with the panel in class. I found it very interesting that in the United Arab Emirates you do not give as gifts, statues or stuffed animals such as dogs. In India, people stand when a person of authority enters the room. In Germany, business meetings are very organized and matter of fact. They are there to get the job done. In South Korea, you can't even do business unless someone else has introduced you. You just can't walk into a company and speak to someone. In Japan, you cannot be offended if no one asks a question. To them this would be rude to interrupt. Then you have France, where you may get into a heated discussion, which is acceptable. Every country has their do's and don'ts so before you visit one or even when speaking with foreign students here in the U.S.A. you need to know what to do so you are not offensive.

Personal Experience

While doing the group projects, I had the opportunity to interact with students from different countries. I saw how they tried to please us and how polite and considerate they are. They didn't start the discussion, but would add to it and help develop the project. At times it was difficult to understand a couple of the students. I found myself really straining to try and listen to what they were saying. I am sure they were doing the same with me. Now after doing the project in class, I feel I am better able to communicate with the students and I now understand some things I can do on my part to help.

References

Here are a few web sites to visit:

http://www.immi.se/intercultural/

http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles-intercultural.html

http://www.stephweb.com/capstone/

Consulting Case

In the consulting case, we saw how knowing your constituents can help you determine how to communicate and what channel to use. If the company you work for wants to provide information to its employees, you must determine the best way to deliver that information. You need to determine if a meeting, an email, a web site or a newsletter would be the best way to deliver the message. You would need to know how many people you need to speak to and if your employees are older or younger, also their educational backgrounds would be helpful. For an older employee you may not want to use computer technology because this may not be the best source. You may also need to use many sources. When you look at the message, you also need to determine how to structure it and what approach to use. You must take into account the constituencies, communication, channel, structure, and approach when you send your message.


Personal Experience
I am a Girl Scout leader for a Brownie troop in my area. I need to communicate with the parents of these kids after every meeting. I was finding that the parents would come in, get their children so they could get home or to their next destination. They didn't have time to wait for me to talk with them after the meeting. I needed to let these parents know what we did at brownies and what else was going to be happening. They needed to know fund raising information and field trip information. One year I created a newsletter that I sent home with the children after the meeting. I was still finding out that some of the kids would leave the newsletter in their neighbors car or it would get stuck in their back pack and Mom and Dad never saw it. The following year I continued to send the newsletter home with the kids, however, I also emailed them the newsletter with any other information I wanted them to be aware of. This seemed to work well. Those without email addresses, I would then call and make sure they had the information. I only had to call maybe 1 or 2 children. The internet was the best channel for me to use. It was fast since I only needed to type up the information once and send it to about 14 parents all at the same time. If I would have had to call all the parents after or before every meeting it would have taken me a great deal of time. By emailing this information, the parents all received it on a timely manner and they had a hard copy to look back to if necessary.

References
Here is a web site concerning different types of business communication methods

http://www.fastrak-consulting.co.uk/tactix/features/commopts/comopt02.htm http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/absence_communication/

Here is a site for communication structure:

http://cnx.org/content/m0002/latest/

Corporate Communication Relevance

The relevance of communication keeps growing and growing. If you can't communicate with another person than you are lost. How does someone know what you expect of them or if you are pleased with them or not if you cannot communicate appropriately? There are many different forms of communication that I had the experience to use during this class and were able to determine the relevance of each:

An on-line class Having the opportunity to do the class whenever I wanted to was very convenient. Answering questions, and not having to sit in class to submit the answers but sending them over Web CT was a new experience. It saved me a trip to school.

Chat Room When we did the chat room that was the first experience I ever had with talking to someone on line at the same time. I have emailed people and gotten their responses, but by actually sending a message and them getting back to me at the same time was a new experience. I did find it difficult to use this method with more than one person. I didn't know how long it would take to type my answer and then someone else would think I wasn't responding so they would type. It did get confusing until we all got onto the same page. It was still frustrating for me to wait for a response. I much rather call and speak to someone directly or on conference call than to use a Chat room. However, I can see where younger people would really enjoy using this form of communication. Possibly if I got more comfortable with it, I would not mind using it in business.

"30 Seconds of Fame" This is an interesting concept. What can you get across to someone in a short period of time so they want to contact you or your company again? I can see this being very useful for everyone. With today's busy schedules, people may only have the time they are walking from their car to the building to discuss a concept. Learning how to get someones attention and get your point across is very challenging to do in a few seconds.

Power Point Presentation When the 21st Century Trends were presented on power point this was a great way to communicate to the class. The different ways you can create the power points to keep your audience interested was also useful and fun to watch. I know I had no idea what power point was capable of producing until watching the other presentations in class.

Blog Getting on line to produce this blog was also a learning experience and throughout the course I can see how helpful blogs and the internet can be in the communication process. In the book, Mistaken Identity, the sister kept a blog so family and friends could check on "Laura's" progress throughout her recovery. This was quite easier for the family to keep everyone who was interested in Laura's progress up to date.

All the above methods are helpful in communicating. If you can't get your point across to your constituents than you won't be successful. If you don't communicate with others, there is no way for them to know what your expectations or dreams are and there is no way that those expectations and dreams can be met.

Most companies may think that if they can communicate with their employees that is sufficient, however, a company needs to know if they are successful with communicating with other companies, vendors and customers.

Personal Experience
The company I am employed by is very small. There are currently 15 employees within the company. At one time there were only 6 of us and at one time there were about 23 of us. One may think that in a company so small that communication would not be an issue. WRONG!! Within the company there are 5 different manufacturing departments (Machining, Grinding, Wire, RAM, & Inspection). When an order is received, the part may need to go to each department, or it may only need to go to one, two, or three of the departments. This is where communication is so important within the company. If the wire department doesn't know that the part needs to go to grinding when they are done with it, it could be shipped without all the work being completed. Therefore, we created what we call "Travelers" that are attached to each blue print that we receive. On the traveler, each department that needs to do work on the part is listed. It is also listed in the order it should be completed. This has helped the flow of communication significantly within the company. At one time the travelers did not exist. Of course at that time, we didn't have as many departments as we currently have, however, as the company grew, we saw the need to make sure everyone that had their hand on the part knew what was to be done to it before it left the company.

References
http://www.relevantcommunications.com/
http://www.it-director.com/enterprise/content.php?cid=10030
http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2005/02/signs_of_increa.html

Crisis Communication

We saw how crisis communication can effect companies thru the case study on Coco Cola and also how Tylenol handled the cyanide incident. It is quite important how a company communicates with the public when a crisis occurs. A crisis can be human induced like the Tylenol incident or a natural disaster as many businesses experienced on September 11, 2001. In either incident companies need to have some kind of plan. They need to know who will be the spokes person and what steps they will need to take to keep the reputation of the company intact. Tylenol did an excellent job of keeping their reputation. They knew they needed to pull all the Tylenol off the shelves to make consumers aware that they cared what was happening and that they were going to do whatever it took to ensure that their product could not be tampered with in the future. Their efforts proved highly successful. A company needs to own up to its errors. They need to be straight forward with the public and let everyone know what is going on. If they don't have an answer they need to say that.

Personal Experience

Companies are not the only ones that need to consider communication in a crisis. When the attacks came on 9/11 the world watched New York. We saw how the first plane hit one of World Trade Center towers and then we watched while a second plane came in and hit the second tower. The world was watching this while the people in those towers didn't know what was going on. The emergency crews that entered the building couldn't communicate with each other. Some of the emergency workers were in the second tower and did not know a plane had it the building. It seemed as though people watching television knew more about what was going on, than the emergency workers that were on the scene. Hopefully, we have all learned from this situation and emergency personnel have made sure that they are able to communicate between each other so if there is another situation that arises, we are better able to communicate with each other.

References
Here is a web site to get you started on a Crisis Communication plan:
http://www3.niu.edu/newsplace/crisis.html

Here are a couple more links on Crisis Communication:
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/pressoffice/crisis.htm
http://www.e911.com/monos/A001.html

This is an example of a University's Crisis Communication plan:

http://www.wku.edu/ur/crisis.html

Consensus

The importance of team work and working toward a consensus is very important in the work place. Off hand it really doesn't seem like a difficult task. However, when we did the activity in class it was really amazing to see how different our ideas were when we got together as a group. We had a couple people that just seemed to think they were right and we found ourselves wanting to negotiate instead of coming to a consensus on the issues. It is so important for you to listen to everyone and receive all the input before making a decision. Also on the other side of the coin, everyone needs to vocalize their reasoning as to why they think their decision is the best. If someone just tells you they want the decision to be made this way and they don't have any information to back up their decision, it is hard to be persuaded to do so even if that would be the better choice.


Personal Experience
In my every day life I see how my husband and I come to a consensus on different issues with our children all the time. My oldest daughter wanted to go to a friends (Andrew) house. There would be a couple other classmates there who my husband and I did not approve of. We also did not approve of Andrew and did not trust him. After my husband and I talked it over we came to a consensus that we would let our daughter go to Andrew's home. We were both hoping that if there was anything going on at Andrew's that we did not approve of, our daughter would call us to come pick her up. We told her she could go to his house and that we wanted her to remember what we expected of her and also reminded her about how her own decisions could affect her. We expected her to call us if there was anything going on that was inappropriate or she was uncomfortable with. We would not ask questions. This conversation happened about a month and a half ago. She has yet to go to this boys house. She decided on her own that she didn't want to go. My husband had wanted to just tell her "no", absolutely not. I really wasn't sure how to handle it. We are both glad we listened to each other and our daughter made the right choice.


References

Here is a site that may help you better understand "consensus":

http://www.ic.org/nica/Process/Consensusbasics.htm

http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/consens.htm

http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/consensus_building/

Internal Communications

Watching the video "Tactical to Strategic Communication" showed the difference in how communication is perceived in the work place at this time. At one time companies didn't put a lot of value in communication. Now companies are starting to realize how much communication influences their work place. It was suggested to do a time study to see how much time was devoted to doing certain tasks. In most cases you'll find that companies spend more time on writing and rewriting memos than people reading them. Internal communications is an essential role in today's workplace. In the video a company that was merging was able to use the internet to help with it's internal communications. They knew a lot of questions would be asked, so the company created a site to allow employees to post their questions. The questions were answered within a few days and anyone logging onto the site could read the questions and answers. This helped to keep everyone informed about the merger. It was so well received that after the merger took place the company kept the site to help with communications.


Personal Experience
The internal communication where I work is very poor. How do you change it when it starts at the top? We have three students on co-op in our company. Recently, we had a light week so in order to give these students their hours, the owner asked them to help clean the machines and the registers in the building. Needless to say, the registers were not cleaned to the owners satisfaction. Instead of taking the co-op students and showing them what he expected, he thought if you cleaned them himself in front of the students they would get the message. He was not happy with their work, but I am quite confident that seeing him clean the registers made no difference to these kids. I am positive he did not get his message across to them.

Here is another example of failed internal communication:
Months ago two employees (Joe and Bob) were put in charge of hiring another grinder. They were told not to hire from a specific tool and die company in the area. On Tuesday a fellow came in the back doors of the company. We saw him speaking to the Joe & Bob. On Thursday this person showed up again. Joe called the owner's wife to his room and told her he needed the paper work for this new employee. She was put on the spot, she had not been told that someone had been hired, the paper work that needed to be completed had to be put together. She asked if they provided the new employee with a policy manual, the answer was "No". She asked what we were going to pay this employee. They didn't know that either. She asked if the benefits were explained to the new employee. This hadn't been done either. There was a lot of missed communication between Joe & Bob, the new employee and the owners. She also asked the new employee where he had been employed. The answer was, the tool and die company that Joe and Bob were told not to hire from! Joe and Bob said the new hire quit at that company on Tuesday so therefore, he was unemployed! I know that the message not to hire from that specific company did not get communicated properly to Joe and Bob.

References

Here are some interesting links on internal communication:

http://www.managementhelp.org/mrktng/org_cmm.htm

http://www.movabletype.com/solutions/intranets.html

http://psbpr.com/page/Advance-Engagement.jsp?gclid=CMHt0ajV9JICFQGsGgod8Bpv4Q