Reflection On Inter-Cultural Communication

Introduction

In this essay, I will reflect on my contribution and experience during the first 4 weeks of People and Organisation module, identifying the two main problems I and my group faced. To do this, I will use the Gibbs Framework for Reflection, a tool that allows me to think on the experience systematically (Oxford Brookes University, no date). The two main aspects I will explore includes; working across cultures and teamwork.

Gibbs Framework for Reflection

Stage 1 - Description of the Event

The Event I am reflecting on is the group presentation that I had to complete in a team of five for People and Organisation module. The presentation was about a fictional hotel; the Junction Hotel, once a luxurious hotel, now faces decline in efficiency as a result of constant change in management (King and Langley, 2016). The task was to identify five major problems the hotel faces, suggest possible solutions backed-up with appropriate theories and present our findings to the whole class.

I teamed-up with two girls because

In social psychology, this is referred to as Person Perception (Cherry, 2017). These mattered because of my cultural background which is very high-context according to Anthropologist Edward Hall’s theory on Inter-cultural Communication in his book ‘The Silent Language’. Hall believed that inter-cultural communication can be classed into two; high-context and low-context cultures. High-context cultures place a significance on non-verbal cues, relations and appearance while low-context cultures have a high dependence on words to convey meaning (Hall, (1976) cited by Neese, 2016). In Nigerian culture, the common perception of anyone with red or other flashy hair colour and tattoo is irresponsible. I was worried about my work because I felt like I could not trust them to deliver however, saying something would be