Write a composition on importance of incorporating cultural sensitivity when interacting with international clients based on attached files. Please see Instructions document attached for more information.
Please prepare at least a full page and answer the full questions of Cultural Sensitivity.
Please refer to Unit 1, Chapter 2(separate attachment). The Cultural Sensitivity essay should reflect on the importance of incorporating cultural sensitivity when interacting with international clients. I suggest to include in the essay, the importance of recognizing diversity and how diversity adds value to organizations, how business relationships and the understanding of cultural sensitivity are vital components to the success of global business, explain how certain cultural norms vary among countries and cultures, provide an example of an organization or company that demonstrated the understanding of cultural differences, and discuss inclusion. These topics mentioned are only suggestions.
From the Requirements: The key elements of the essay are to write an essay (suggested length of 1–2 pages) explaining the importance of incorporating cultural sensitivity when interacting with international clients.
Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
An effective approach to this essay is the 5-paragraph essay you learned from English 101 – Composition: INTRODUCTION - The first paragraph should introduce the importance of cultural sensitivity when interacting with international clients. Please provide an introduction so the reader can gain a better understanding of the topic. Then, list some supporting sentences about why it is an important subject. Finally, list your thesis about cultural sensitivity and how you would work with international clients. List the importance and provide three examples that will demonstrate to the reader why it is important. Your thesis is the subject of the essay-why it is important/purpose you are writing this, and three ways to show how the subject completes the purpose.
For the thesis – Subject (A) – Purpose (B) and three ways of how to relate the subject to the point of purpose. The next three body paragraphs should follow each of the three reasons listed in the thesis.
BODY 1- Please include 3-4 sentences.
BODY 2- Please include 3-4 sentences.
BODY 3- Please include 3-4 sentences.
CONCLUSION – Develop a short conclusion explaining to the reader about how you related the topic of cultural sensitivity and why it is important with demonstrated examples.
Next, add the Textbook Reference on a separate page in APA format titled
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Team and Intercultural Communication
Work Team Communication
Communicate effectively and ethically in small groups.
By definition, people who work in organizations communicate with other people. Working in small groups and with diverse groups of people is one of the most enriching—and sometimes one of the most challenging—aspects of a business environment. In this chapter, we’ll explore ways that you can get the most out of your experience working with and learning from others.
A team is a group of individuals who depend on each other to accomplish a common objective. Teams are often more creative and accomplish more work than individuals working alone; a group’s total output exceeds the sum of each individual’s contribution. As a manager, if you work well as part of a team and can resolve conflicts, you will likely be seen as an effective leader with potential for promotion.
On the other hand, teams can waste time and create a toxic environment. If you have worked as part of a team, you know all too well that people don’t always contribute equally. Someone you might call a “slacker” is practicing social loafing , the psychological term for avoiding individual responsibility in a group setting.
Two to seven members—with five often as an ideal—seem to work best for effective work teams. Smaller teams often lack diversity of skills and interests to function well, and larger teams struggle with managing their interactions because two or three people may dominate discussions and make key decisions.
The Variables of Group Communication
Three factors—conflict, conformity, and consensus—greatly affect a team’s performance and how much team members enjoy working together. Let’s consider a situation when these variables would come into play. Imagine that you worked for Disney when a young boy was killed by a bus at the Florida theme park. To address this tragedy, you are working on a crisis management team with managers from several departments: transportation, public relations, human resources, and legal. To be successful, this crisis team needs to navigate the variables that shape group communication, explained in Figure 1.
Initial Group Goals
Teams work more effectively when the members know each other well—their strengths and weaknesses, work styles, experiences, attitudes, and so on. Starting off by getting to know each other improves the social dimension of your work, which may make tasks go more smoothly and help you enjoy the team experience more.
Small talk about friends, family, and social activities before and after meetings is natural and helps establish a supportive and open environment. Even in online meeting environments, you can post a profile to introduce yourself or spend time IMing to learn about each other.
Too often, decisions just happen on a team; members may go along with what they think everyone else wants. Instead, teams should agree on how they’ll operate and make decisions; for example, consider discussing the following early on with your team:
What if someone misses a deliverable or team meeting? How should he or she notify the team? What are the consequences?
What if someone needs help completing a task? How should he or she handle this situation?
What if two team members are having a conflict? How should it be resolved?
Which decisions will be most important for the team? How should the team make those decisions?
Constructive Feedback
Giving and receiving constructive feedback is critical to working through team problems. These proven methods for giving and receiving criticism work equally well for giving and receiving praise.
How easily do you accept feedback? How comfortable are you giving feedback? Do you tend to invite or avoid conflict?
Acknowledge the Need for Feedback
Imagine a work environment—or a class—in which you never receive feedback on your performance. How would you know what you do well and what skills you need to develop? Feedback is the only way to find out what needs to be improved. Your team must agree that giving and receiving feedback is part of your team’s culture—how you’ll work together. This way, no one will be surprised when he or she receives feedback.
Give both Positive and Negative Feedback
Many people take good work for granted and give feedback only when they notice problems. In one study, 67% of employees said they received too little positive feedback. Hearing only complaints can be demoralizing and might discourage people from making any changes at all. Always try to balance positive and constructive feedback. Figure 2 suggests ways to give both positive and constructive feedback.
Conflict Resolution
Ignore fleeting issues. Try not to overact to minor annoyances. If someone introduces an irrelevant topic once during a meeting, you can probably let it go.
Think of each problem as a group problem. It’s tempting to defuse conflicts by making one member a scapegoat—for example, “We’d be finished with this report now if Sam had done his part; you can never depend on him.” Rarely is one person solely responsible for the success or failure of a group effort. Were expectations clear to Sam? Was he waiting for data from someone else? Did he need help but couldn’t get it from the rest of the team? What is the team’s role in encouraging or allowing behavior, and what can each of you do differently to encourage more constructive behavior?
Be realistic about team performance. Don’t assume responsibility for others’ happiness. You’re responsible for being a fully contributing member of the team, behaving ethically, and treating others with respect. But the purpose of the group is not to develop lifelong friendships or to solve other people’s time-management or personal problems. If someone is sick, you may decide to extend a deadline, but you do not need to spend 20 minutes of a meeting talking about the illness.
Encourage all contributions, even if people disagree. You may not like what someone has to say, but differences contribute to productive conflict. Try to respond in a nonthreatening, constructive way. If the atmosphere temporarily becomes tense, you can make a light comment, laugh, or offer a compliment to restore harmony and move the group forward.
Address persistent conflicts directly. If interpersonal conflict develops into a permanent part of group interactions, it’s best to address the conflict directly. Working through the conflict as a team may not be fun, but it will bring you to greater understanding and a higher level of productivity. It takes a brave manager to say, “I’d like to talk about how we interact with each other at these meetings. It seems like we often end up fighting—it’s not productive, and someone usually gets hurt. Does anyone else feel that way? What can we do differently?”
The Ethical Dimension of Team Communication
When you agree to participate on a team, you accept certain standards of ethical behavior. One of these standards is to put the good of the team ahead of personal gain. In baseball, team ethics are clear. If a runner is on base, the batter may bunt the ball, knowing he’ll probably be thrown out (i.e., the pitcher will get the ball to first base before he gets there). The batter makes the sacrifice for the good of the team, so that the teammate can advance a base.
Team members also have an ethical responsibility to respect each other’s integrity and emotional needs. Everyone’s ideas should be treated with respect, and no one should feel a loss of self-esteem. Team members should be encouraged to produce their best work, rather than feel criticized for not performing up to standard. When a baseball player hits a home run, the entire team celebrates. When a player strikes out, you’ll never see team members criticizing him.
Finally, each member has an ethical responsibility to promote the team’s well-being—refraining from destructive gossip, dominating meetings, and sabotaging work. When New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez admitted using performance-enhancing steroids, for example, his behavior created controversy and bruised the reputation of the entire team. One team member’s behavior can undermine the team’s ability to reach its goals.
Applying Strategies for Team Writing
Let’s take an example of a start-up business. If you and two friends want to open an ice cream store and need funding—from either a bank or private investors—you would write a business plan. You would probably all do extensive research to make sure the business is feasible. Then, you might have one person write the financial projections, another write the marketing plan, and so on, until you complete the business plan. No one person will have expertise in all areas of planning your new business. When you present your idea to investors, each of you will create slides for your part of the presentation. And later, when you create a website, you may divide up the writing for that too. Consider the steps in Figure 4 when writing as part of a team.
Figure 4Steps for Team Writing
Intercultural Communication
Intercultural communication (or cross-cultural communication) takes place between people from different cultures when a message is created by someone from one culture to be understood by someone from another culture. More broadly, multiculturalism refers to appreciating diversity among people, typically beyond differences in countries of origin.
To be successful in today’s global, multicultural business environment, managers need to appreciate differences among people. Although English may be the standard language for business, by no means do we have one standard for all business communication. If you want to do business abroad, you need to understand different cultures and adapt to the local language of business.
With a dozen hotel brands in 91 countries, Hilton Worldwide knows the challenges of employees working and traveling internationally. The company’s online resource “Culture Wise” prepares employees to navigate cultural differences. For several countries, employees learn about travel tips, business practices, employee development, negotiations, and so on.
When we talk about culture , we mean the customary traits, attitudes, and behaviors of a group of people. Ethnocentrism is the belief that an individual’s own cultural group is superior. This attitude hinders communication, understanding, and goodwill between business partners.
Diversity has a profound effect on our lives and poses opportunities and challenges for managers: opportunities to expand our own thinking and learn about other cultures—and challenges in communication. Although you’ll learn in this chapter about communicating with people from different cultures, keep in mind that each member of a culture is an individual. We generalize here to teach broad principles for communication, but you should always adapt to individuals, who may think, feel, and act quite differently from the cultural norm or stereotype.
Cultural Differences
To help you understand differences, compare your own culture with another via the Hofstede Centre (https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/).
Cultures differ widely in the traits they value. For example, Figure 8 shows that international cultures vary in how much they emphasize individualism, time orientation, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, formality, materialism, and context sensitivity.
Figure 8
Cultural Values
|
VALUE |
HIGH |
LOW |
|
Individualism: Cultures in which people see themselves first as individuals and believe that their own interests take priority. |
United States Canada Great Britain Australia Netherlands |
Japan China Mexico Greece Hong Kong |
|
Time Orientation: Cultures that perceive time as a scarce resource and that tend to be impatient. |
United States Switzerland |
Pacific Rim and Middle Eastern countries |
|
Power Distance: Cultures in which management decisions are made by the boss simply because he or she is the boss. |
France Spain Japan Mexico Brazil |
United States Israel Germany Ireland Sweden |
|
Uncertainty Avoidance: Cultures in which people want predictable and certain futures. |
Israel Japan Italy Argentina |
United States Canada Australia Singapore |
|
Formality: Cultures that attach considerable importance to tradition, ceremony, social rules, and rank. |
China India Latin American countries |
United States Canada Scandinavian countries |
|
Materialism: Cultures that emphasize assertiveness and the acquisition of money and material objects. |
Japan Austria Italy |
Scandinavian countries |
|
Context Sensitivity: Cultures that emphasize the surrounding circumstances (or context), make extensive use of body language, and take the time to build relationships and establish trust. |
Asian and African countries |
Northern European countries |
|
To learn more about cultural differences, read Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications) |
We can look at communication differences even more deeply through a lens of “high-context” and “low-context” cultures, the last value listed in Figure 8. According to anthropologist Edward T. Hall, high-context cultures rely less on words used and more on subtle actions and reactions of communicators. Communication for these cultures is more implicit and emphasizes relationships among people. Silence is not unusual in these cultures, as it could have great meaning. Low-context cultures, on the other hand, rely on more explicit communication—the words people use. In low-context cultures, tasks are more important than relationships, so people use a direct style of communication, which we’ll explore more when we discuss how to organize a message. See examples of high- and low-context cultures along a continuum in Figure 9.
Figure 9High- and Low-Context Cultures
With restaurants in 119 countries, McDonald’s adapts its marketing to local markets. For example, in Latin America, a collectivist society, McDonald’s “Glad You Came” (#quebuenoqueviniste) campaign profiled people rather than products, which it showcases for individualist societies ( Figure 10).
Figure 10McDonald’s Tailors Advertising in Colombia
Companies customize their websites for different cultures too. Site navigation for high-context cultures, for example, might include subtle guidance and new pages opening in several new browser windows. This strategy allows the user to select new entry points for further exploration. But for low-context cultures, which tend to have more linear thought patterns, navigational cues may be more explicit, and new pages will open within the current window, to allow the user to go back and forth easily.
We all interpret events through our own mental filter, and that filter is based on our unique knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. For example, the language of time is as different among cultures as the language of words. Americans, Canadians, Germans, and Japanese are very time conscious and precise about appointments; Latin American and Middle Eastern cultures tend to be more casual about time. For example, if your Mexican host tells you that he or she will meet with you at 3:00, it’s most likely más o menos (Spanish for “more or less”) 3:00.
Businesspeople in both Asian and Latin American countries tend to favor long negotiations and slow deliberations. They exchange pleasantries for a while before getting down to business. Similarly, many non-Western cultures use silence during meetings to contemplate a decision, whereas businesspeople from the United States and Canada tend to have little tolerance for silence in business negotiations. As a result, Americans and Canadians may rush in and offer compromises and counterproposals that would have been unnecessary if they were more comfortable with the silence—and more patient.
Body language, especially gestures and eye contact, also varies among cultures. For example, our sign for “okay”—forming a circle with our forefinger and thumb—means “zero” in France, “money” in Japan, and a vulgarity in Brazil ( Figure 11). Americans and Canadians consider eye contact important. In Asian and many Latin American countries, however, looking a colleague full in the eye is considered an irritating sign of poor upbringing.
Figure 11: Same Sign, Different Meanings
The use of physical touch is very culture specific. Many Asians do not like to be touched except for a brief handshake in greeting. However, handshakes in much of Europe tend to last much longer than in the United States and Canada, and Europeans tend to shake hands every time they see each other, perhaps several times a day. In much of Europe, men often kiss each other upon greeting; if you don’t know this custom, you might react inappropriately and embarrass yourself.
Our feelings about space are partly an outgrowth of our culture and partly a result of geography and economics. For example, Americans and Canadians are used to wide-open spaces and tend to move about expansively, using hand and arm motions for emphasis. But in Japan, which has much smaller living and working spaces, such abrupt and extensive body movements are not typical. Likewise, Americans and Canadians tend to sit face-to-face so that they can maintain eye contact, whereas the Chinese and Japanese (to whom eye contact is not so important) tend to sit side-by-side during negotiations.
Also, the sense of personal space differs among cultures. In the United States and Canada, most business exchanges occur at about five feet, within the “social zone,” which is closer than the “public zone,” but farther than the “intimate zone” (see Figure 12). However, both in Middle Eastern and Latin American countries, this distance is too far. Businesspeople there tend to stand close enough to feel your breath as you speak. Most Americans and Canadians will unconsciously back away from such close contact.
Figure 12Personal Spaces for Social Interaction
Finally, social behavior is very culture dependent. For example, in the Japanese culture, who bows first upon meeting, how deeply the person bows, and how long the bow is held depend on one’s status.
Before you travel or interact with people from other countries, become familiar with these and other customs, for example, giving (and accepting) gifts, exchanging business cards, the degree of formality expected, and how people entertain.
Group-Oriented Behavior
As shown earlier, the business environment in capitalistic societies, such as the United States and Canada, places great value on how individuals contribute to an organization. Individual effort is often stressed more than group effort, and a competitive atmosphere prevails. But in other cultures, originality and independence of judgment are not valued as highly as teamwork. The Japanese say, “A nail standing out will be hammered down.” The Japanese go to great lengths to reach decisions through group consensus.
The Toyoda family changed the company name to Toyota in 1937 for its clearer sound and more favorable number of strokes for writing the name.
Closely related to the concept of group-oriented behavior is the notion of “saving face.” People save face when they avoid embarrassment. When Akio Toyoda, the Japanese president of Toyota Motor Corporation, apologized for many vehicle recalls, he demonstrated emotion and great humility—far more than might have been expected of an American business leader.
Human relationships are highly valued in Japanese cultures and are embodied in the concept of wa, the Japanese pursuit of harmony. This concept makes it difficult for the Japanese to say “no” to a request because it would be impolite. They are very reluctant to offend others—even if they unintentionally mislead them instead. A “yes” to a Japanese person might mean “Yes, I understand you” rather than “Yes, I agree.” To an American, the Japanese style of communication may seem too indirect and verbose. At one point during Toyoda’s testimony before Congress, the committee chair said, “What I’m trying to find out … is that a yes or a no?” To Japanese viewers, this sounded rude and disrespectful.
Latin Americans also tend to avoid an outright “no” in their business dealings, preferring instead a milder, less explic