Don't Make Cultural Assumptions

Bengaluru is home to the offshore technology centers of a number of large global  companies in a number of sectors. It is also the base for many ITES businesses that work extensively for overseas clients. This makes cross cultural communication a critical skill for most professionals and leaders in these organizations.

Leaders are always looking for ideas on how to improve their competence and comfort in engaging important stakeholders across cultures. One of the resources that I recently came across is an article by David Grossman, wherein he shares a number of tips for communicating across cultures

One of Grossman’s suggestions that I liked was to not make cultural assumptions.

Don’t make cultural assumptions. Everyone has different expectations, cultures aside. Don’t simply transfer an experience with one person within a culture to another. When in doubt about something, ask your colleague or client what they prefer.. 

I’ve seen this play out, ironically, in culture sensitization workshops. In most of these workshops the facilitator warns participants to guard against stereotyping, and then proceeds to  present a list of cultural traits that one must keep in mind.

While the post is about communicating across cultures, many of the ideas therein apply to communication in general - whether within a culture or across cultures. You can access the original post here.

11 Fundamental Tips for Communicating Across Cultures

PS: I'm delivering a public webinar on Communicating Upward on 24th October. If this is of interest to you, please register here : https://narayankamath.in/webinar

What are some other ideas you have about communicating across cultures effectively?

​Please leave a comment below or send me an email, and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.