Communicating Across Cultures

Culture can be a challenging issue that many business leaders encounter. A business leader does experience the difficulty of understanding and communication of another culture and may easily breach the cultural customs of a foreign country without being educated of this particular culture. First important cultural issue is stereotyping. When scrutinizing a culture, a business leader must be extremely careful not to stereotype about personality traits once he/she sees. All cultures do have significant personality differences. Second important cultural issue is that business leaders need to take cultural lessons about that particular foreign country that they wish to do business with. Many cultures have the utmost respect for higher levels of ritual. For example, a Japanese business negotiator may observe long silent pauses (silent communication) when a business leader’s convincing point is being considered. Third important cultural issue is language issue. Business leaders need to understand the foreign country’s language as well as regional differences that may be too subtle to notice. For example, in some cultures, business transactions can be carried out in non-verbal communication suc