Say Anything to Anyone, Anywhere: 5 Keys To Successful Cross-Cultural Communication

Chapter 6

Maximize Effective Communication

. . . By Minimizing Ineffective Communication

Listening is one of the first and most important things we need to keep in mind when communicating cross-culturally. Because of unfamiliar accents, inaccuracies, and possibly a limited ability in a second language, to make sure we’ve understood correctly, we need to listen even more carefully than we might when communicating in our native tongue. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason!

For the most part, people are rather poor listeners, with the exception of people from Asian cultures and a few others. People from these cultures typically listen quite carefully. They usually politely pause and contemplate what has been said before they respond. Sometimes there are even long periods of silence before they respond. Although this can be uncomfortable to some people, it would benefit many of us to listen more carefully and to contemplate our responses more than we do. Because we spend so much of our time preparing what we will say next, we consequently miss a big part of what someone else has said. We may then say something that isn’t relevant, doesn’t make sense, or shows the other person that we didn’t listen. Sound familiar? Rather than listening for the real meaning of what someone is saying, we are often distracted by accents, mispronunciation, grammar, or a simplified level of speech.

For instance, I was recently at a hotel in Africa where the clerk was talking to me about a “wee fee.” ...