Some Stumbling Blocks in Intercultural Communication

Through the development of modern technology, it has become easier for people from different countries to communicate. In a sense, the world has become a global community. Although the border between countries become more and more ambiguous, cultural differences still exist. As far as I concerned, assumption of similarities and tendency to evaluate are the two of stumbling blocks that I strongly recognized. Take customer service, the first impression of a new country, for instance, what a server should do in a restaurant is similar all around the world, but the look-alike similarity could also be deceptive.

In Taiwan, people consider customer-oriented strategy as their management idea of success. The restaurant taught servers to be more humble and submissive. The more friendly and welcoming they show, the more reputation the restaurant would earn. In order to be more attractive, they try hard to make customer feel like he or she is a very important person, such as providing massage and nail manicure services for free when customer is waiting for seats; making a bow when the server finished ordering or serving meals; squatting down when the server listening and speaking to the customer, and so on. However, when the first time I traveled to Europe, things completely changed. I took my family to a famous restaurant in German. After the server recommended the dishes, I made orders immediately and the others were still hesitated. When the server found that we were not completely ready to order, she just left with porker-faced and said that she would come later. We were astonished by the rude manner and could not help but think that might be racial discrimination. In Taiwan, the server would not only smile and speak softly to the customers, but also leave before asking if we need more time to make decision or we can order now. In the case, we felt uncomfortable at the beginning because we were trapped in the bias of similarity and we forgot about thinking of different culture background. After visiting and observing other restaurants, we found that the cases were so similar that we turned to reinterpret them as cultural differences. As of tendency to evaluate, once we have formed a first impression of someone, we tend to look for cues that are consistent and supportive of this impression and ignore those that are inconsistent. (Schneider, 1973)

Frankly speaking, I used to make a judgement depending on the first impression of others until the experience of my friend reminding me. When the first time my friend tried to take her international friends to look around, she was angry about their out-of-control and self-centered behavior. Unlike her who plan and check everything previously, they prefer to make decision depending on the feeling at the moment. Unlike her who used to follow the direction with others in an unfamiliar place, they prefer to go their own routes. Limited by the inconsistencies between different cultural backgrounds, she felt irritated. After having a discussion about the background of growth with them, she comprehend that if she put herself in their position at the beginning, she would realize that they have been taught with the concept of being free and unrestrained since they were young.

As an old saying goes: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” When traveling, we would be cautious about avoiding the violation of their taboos. Similarly, we should also be open-minded to the differences between cultures.We believe that deep down all people are the same—but there are important differences. The more dissimilar two cultures are, the greater the degree of influence culture has on intercultural communication. (Dzenowagis, 2008) No to mention when it comes to international business context, the stumbling block becomes more difficult and complicated since it could make a substantial influence on a company. On the one hand, mutual trust is crucial element for internal operation. In order to decrease discomfort, people are prone to transform the information of what we receive to what we expect. As soon as the communication is misunderstanding, colleagues are easily distrustful of others. Without mutual trust, it is unable for departments to cooperate.

Culture would become a source of conflict resulting in internal division. On the other hand, external benefit is even more important for a business. Take what the representatives of the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology in Spain said for instance, he said that technology enterprises in Spain nowadays still considered China as an agricultural-concentrated developing country, as China has become the world's second largest R&D investment country. He even made a bold prediction that their children would work for China in the future. Because of the preconception of China, Spanish entrepreneurs could lose the opportunity of expanding business territory, not to mention the benefit of their company. The stumbling blocks of Intercultural communication is based on the consistency that we consider as normal and universal. Since we have already taken the first step of cross-culture interaction. The next step is to keep broaden our horizon which represents not only more observation but also complete comprehension. The last but not the least is to make use of the differences and create a competitive advantage for our international business.