Thursday, December 1, 2016


November Blog Post
Cultural Diversity


A quote from one of the readings, “Cross-Cultural Diversity” stated “Culturally determined differences in values, beliefs, and assumptions cause at least two types of problems for conducting business across cultures”, it then goes on to describe these problems. For example, people misunderstand when others use a similar gesture as they do but it means something completely different this leads to confusion disappointment when people do not fulfill other’s wants. This quote and the idea behind it reminded of some of the currents issues that have been going on recently.  Because there is such a diverse range of cultures in America now, it can cause barriers when trying to communicate with one another. However, it is important that both parties communicating try and meet in the middle in order to hopefully avoid some of the barriers.

An article that helps to illustrate this is, “How Does Cultural Diversity Affect Communications?” The article starts out by explaining how important it is to handle your communication with others correctly because it influences how they perceive you. A person’s culture can be affected by many things, religion, values, beliefs and even region. Every person that you come in contact with is going to have different values and a different culture and it is important to be aware of those things in order to communicate with them in the best way possible. A specific example of this would be in the workplace, if a coworker values accuracy over speed while working and you value the opposite it is important to know how to communicate your values to that person in a way that does not seem rude or judgmental. If you communicate this the right way it can be the difference between getting that person to agree with you and causing them to feel judged.

Remembering that there is a lot of cultural diversity around us is a key component when it comes to communicating with those around with us. If we are able to remind ourselves that everyone’s culture differs from our own it will make communicating with others easier in the long run.

Reference

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