Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication is communication between people with different cultures such as Americans and Europeans. It is used as a means for global communications and businesses. Intercultural communication can be used for communications between people of different religious, social, ethnic, and even educational backgrounds. Body language and history are also a major part of the intercultural communications within different countries. Intercultural communication is important in today’s workplace when making deals with other countries because business is conducted between countries not just cities and states anymore. You use the intercultural communications to help be aware of areas that would most likely cause common difficulties or conflicts between people of different cultures. You also use the intercultural communications to find a middle ground between your culture and the client’s culture to show them that you are a respectable business and you want to help profit them as well as your own company.

Cultural differences impact verbal and non-verbal communications in a numerous amounts of ways including respecting the other party’s mannerisms and the way that they perceive you, even the way you dress can be a negative impression on your potential business partner or client. Differences that can impact verbal communications are the tone you use, how you go about the conversation, and even if you interrupt them can affect how they continue business with you and your company. Intercultural communications can be achieved in many different ways by people who are so vastly different by attending seminars, classes, and even by doing your own research to learn about the differences between the cultures that you are communicating with.

The major differences include acceptable body language/symbols, the history of the country, the way you dress yourself, and even whether or not making eye contact is acceptable. The best way for me to meet the major challenges of intercultural communications in my field and profession is to always do my research on the culture of the clients and set a certain restriction of my mannerisms to make sure they are universally acceptable and keep up to date on what behavior and communicational signals are acceptable within every culture to ensure I do not offend someone of a different culture.

References
Poon, S., & Aragon, C. (2011). No sense of distance: Improving cross-cultural
communication with context-linked software tools. Informally published manuscript, Retrieved from Burton, E. L. (2011). Cross-cultural/international communication. In Encyclopedia of Small Business(4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 338-342). Detroit: Gale. Retrieved from |CX2343700156&v=2.1&u=itted&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w