When your business goes global you will need to interact with partners and customers from different countries and with different cultural backgrounds. And to effectively communicate with them you need to acquaint yourself with the art of cross cultural communication.
Ask questions to develop cultural knowledge.
Distinguish cultural perspectives.
Build self-awareness.
Recognize the complexity of cross-cultural communication.
Avoid stereotyping.
Respect cultural differences.
Employ active listening skills.
Avoid culturally insensitive language and behaviors.
Be flexible in choosing communication strategies.
Communicating across cultures is challenging. Each culture has set rules that its members take for granted. Few of us are aware of our own cultural biases because cultural imprinting is begun at a very early age. And while some of a culture's knowledge, rules, beliefs, values, phobias, and anxieties are taught explicitly, most of the information is absorbed subconsciously.
The challenge for multinational communication has never been greater. Worldwide business organizations have discovered that intercultural communication is a subject of importance—not just because of increased globalization, but also because their domestic workforce is growing more and more diverse, ethnically and culturally.
We are all individuals, and no two people belonging to the same culture are guaranteed to respond in exactly the same way. However, generalizations are valid to the extent that they provide clues on what you will most likely encounter when dealing with members of a particular culture.