Intercultural Communication : Communication Improvement Plan Progress Report Essay

The intercultural challenges I am currently facing is my CQ knowledge. I am having challenges because I cannot find common ground when working with a variety of cultures. For example, I work as a customer service representative in a call center and I’m around a variety of cultures. I find it very hard to understand everyone’s triggers, their dislikes, and likes, and why they behave or act a certain way with different situations. I try to ask questions to grasp an understanding of their behaviors, and still find it quite challenging to reach common ground. I try to be very open-minded, however, it always causes me to become frustrated.

The first point in my theory is that you can better your skills as an interpersonal communicator by better understanding your own culture. DeVito states that there are. “several major cultural distinctions that are crucial for more effective communication” they are: individualism or collectivism, high or low context, high or low power distance, masculinity or femininity, high or low ambiguity tolerance, long or short term orientation, and indulgent or (p. 34). To be able to understand your or anyone else’s culture you must be able to understand the ways that these things affect communication. Once you understand the ways that you are oriented in these seven categories due to enculturation you can understand how you communicate and become a more effective

I know how to speak, and I can hear when people talk to me, but why is it that we still consume ineffective listening skills between one another? When we think of effective listening at work or on the job, most of us think of what we actually say or what is said to us. What I am going to cover is the factors and barriers of effective communication, strategies for active, critical and empathic listening and understanding the impact of gender and culture on interpersonal communication.

Because communication between two people of different cultures is very challenging, there has been extensive research/studies conducted on this topic. This idea was also very interesting to me because I attended a highly diverse high school, in which we had a Global Studies program where international students were invited to come and learn at our school. The immersion of the different cultures was very difficult to adapt to at first because it was new to a lot of us students who have never attended a school where international students were amongst us in the halls, but as the days went on it became normal to me.

You know that feeling of home whether it’s with family members or even your loved ones? I don’t think that home is something that is automatically there, I believe that it is something that’s created. I learned that lesson through the eyes of one of my older friends who came from India with his brother when he was 16 in order to make a living. My friend Vikas, told me everything he had to do and the struggles he conquered in order to make his own successful business here in the U.S. Some things he told be reminded me of interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and intracultural communication. He had to have a lot of communication with his friend who also happened to be from India and some new friends and colleagues he met through his journey. Of course there was homesickness and the occasional depression, but that didn’t stop him from creating his now successful business.

Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.

Many intercultural communication specialists mention open-mindedness as an attribute necessary for the development of successful intercultural

Cultural competence begins with the recognition that we are all born, raised and living in social, educational and organizational cultures. These cultures shape our assumptions, beliefs, values and behaviors. When we interact with others, the similarities and differences between our cultural expectations often make the interaction both more interesting, and more challenging.

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Revolution in Intercultural communication have not only evolved in personal life but as well as professional life as discussed above intercultural communication helped professional giants in generating revenue, and serve their customers with the help of their vast understanding in communication. Because of intercommunal communication a man is able to earn from different parts of world being in one. Intercultural communication doesn’t only be limited in cities or states t can be used in between

Previous researchers have found that for a person to achieve better and more effective communication competence, it is necessary to develop skills that allow an appropriate participation in specific situations. The ability to listen, ask questions, and express concepts or ideas effectively is an important part of communication competence. Intercultural communication presents an unexplored and challenging field that needs to be understood for a better development in communication. (Dillon and McKenzie, 1998). The variables of listening depend on the different perceptions that a person obtains through their cultural background. Furthermore, culture often affects the structure of consciousness in the act of listening. When a person seeks to

The second chapter includes several interesting concepts, one of which being the differences between intercultural and interpersonal communication. Intercultural communication is defined as “the process that occurs when members of two or more cultures or co-cultures exchange messages in a manner that is influenced by their different cultural perceptions and symbol systems, both verbal and nonverbal” (Adler et al., 2015, pg. 40). While most interactions seem to have some sense of intercultural aspect due to the great diversity not only in race but in backgrounds today, not all interactions have this effect. Intercultural interactions only occur when there is a difference between the two people in contact that is noticeable and creates a different dynamic in the interaction. The book uses the term “salience” in order “to describe how much weight we attach to a particular person or phenomenon” (Adler et al., 2015, pg. 41). The book gives several examples, such as different ethnicities on the same basketball team striving toward a common goal don’t place much emphasis in their cultural discrepancies, just as young children from different countries playing together don’t experience intercultural communication until they reach an age when they can understand what makes them different from each other. (Adler et al., 2015, pg. 41) In my own life, and can look back and see how I have played football with guys from a very different culture, and found it easy to spend time around them

Intercultural communication is commonly explained as an interaction between people of 'different cultures whether defined in terms of racial, ethnic or socioeconomic differences.' Human communication consists of verbal and nonverbal messages (language and gestures) which are shaped by gender, social class or culture. Thus, what perimeters define the intercultural exchange and what primary messages do we need or try to convey?

Intercultural communication competence refers to the ability of an individual to adapt and communicate appropriately and effectively across a wide array of cultural contexts. That is to say, for an individual to be considered an intercultural communicator they must understand other’s cultures as well as they understand their own, and apply this understanding to communication (Chen 1-2). With the increasing diversity at the workplace, school and other social settings, it has become increasingly important to learn how to communicate with people from a diverse array of cultures. More importantly, adapting to a more effective intercultural communication competence model provides us with learning opportunities occasioned by the interaction with people from other backgrounds. The intercultural communication competence model comes with some key components including tolerance for uncertainty, self-knowledge, and motivation. The greatest and most important of these aspects is motivation. An individual must be willing to foster relationships with people from a different cultural background. If an individual lacks the willingness to promote intercultural relationships, then other aspects of the intercultural communication model become moot.

As a communicator, I acknowledge that I have strengths and weaknesses. I was raised in a small country town and had an ethnocentric view on other cultures. After learning from lectures, I have become aware of this barrier and realised I needed to learn to understand other cultures. Now, I reflect on my behaviours and interactions. I acknowledge biases and plan to improve on difficult situations. I request feedback from my friends, family on my communication. This is now a strength, and has influenced my above average Meta-Cognition score of 5.5.