An Ideas Into Action Guidebook: Communicating Across Cultures

Key Point Summary

Cross-cultural communication blunders can lead to serious consequences - lost confidence, lost customers, lost business relationships, and lost opportunities. Enhancing your effectiveness in communicating across cultures requires several actions. You should expect and identify cultural differences, draw cues from nonverbal communication, speak and write clearly for other cultures, learn the importance of names and titles, use humor judiciously, show your respect for other cultures, and become a lifelong learner of other cultures.

You can acquire these skills by concentrating on four points. First, examine your own cultural conditioning. Second, review your experiences with other cultures. Third, watch for discomfort that can ...