The Importance Of Intercultural Communication Today

The importance of understanding of intercultural communications has never been as glaring as it is today. The concept of intercultural communications refers to the communication between two individuals from different backgrounds. The word, communication is very broad. We will focus on items such as, verbal language barrier, non-verbal communication, context level, value of time, stereotypes, feelings and emotions. We will look at the impact it has on both our personal and professional lives.

As corporations continues to expand and penetrates foreign market, the need to understand how to communicate with our business partners across the globe is critical. Coordinating meetings is hard enough already with the introduction of the time differences,

As a child, from the moment we started school, we were taught that it is imperative to be on time. We were trained to obliged by the rule from when the first bell rung to be in class, till the last bell at the end of the day. As an adult, we were taught to always arrive 15 minutes early before your scheduled job interview or that you should never be late to a date. This concept may hold true in our society which is commonly referred to a low contextual society, but it may not hold true for other cultures that belongs to high contextual society. In a high contextual society, the concept of being on time is not as critical as they view time as a fluid concept. This holds true as we live and operate in a diverse environment. Having an understanding of where everyone one stand in terms of their perspective of time helps us set expectations accordingly. Similarly, in respect to personal life, a perfect example is in the Asian culture, which is commonly referred to a high contextual culture, the general perception of time is more lax compared to a low contextual culture. In the Asian community, you will find that we generally show up anywhere between half an hour to an hour later than the actual time of when reception or party starts. Because of this concept, Asian 's have our own time zone which is known as, Asian time. This is by no mean of

Positive things such as increased creativity, increased number of ideas, increased range of services leading to higher satisfaction both internally and externally.

When there is a set level of intercultural understanding, it helps increase creativity. By opening up the communication channels amongst everyone without the fear of rejection, it brings comfort to everyone to not be afraid to share their ideas without backlashes. This also helps create a closer bond amongst the team. Based on everyone 's background, and experiences, the number of ideas on how to solve or improve something is unlimited. Everyone can share their experiences or success stories, that will help develop an idea by combining a hybrid of all the successful