Manage the Cultural Differences while Working with People from other Cultures

Nowadays, as we all notice that the world is getting flatter. More and more people are getting the chance to work with people from other culture. It is not only limited to the people from the developed countries like Americans and Europeans. People in the developing countries are also open to the opportunity to work with people from other culture. Understanding that culture difference is heavily rooted in people’s everyday behavior is only the first step to get to work with people. Coping the way foreigners do with the local culture is the key point to be successful in working with people from other culture. Misunderstanding the culture and behavioral difference can lead to problems and alienation, even confrontation, between colleagues and ultimately the collapse of partnership. Being self-centered and refusing to social with the local culture would also lead to the failure eventually.

When people from the different culture meet or a person goes to a different country, they are expecting to have a culture clash, which includes the communication, leadership and organization and etc. The communication problem would the language barrier, but most time it is more than just the language difficulties. How to get the message across can vary and greatly impact the communication. In the video, Building the Transnational Team, it clearly shows that everybody can speak the same international English, but everyone understanding one another is the challenge. First, when the native English speaker talking with another non-native speaker, if he or she speaks too fast and uses slang terms, the non-native speaker would totally get lost and feel frustrated. Like in the video, Luis from Spain who speaks English but has limited understanding of ...

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... will help people from different culture work efficiently together. The change would be in communication, leadership and organization. In the video, five people finally realize that they have to manage the culture difference before they can talk about business. They figure out the way to have a better communication by using simple English and also they could like to phone call and fax both to satisfy people from different culture. Furthermore, strategic change will be implemented which means to adapt or create organization policies which take into account cultural differences. Particular attention should be paid to policies or programs that have been developed to meet the requirements of one culture and are then imposed internationally. The key thing to work with people from different culture is to manage the cultural difference and cope to different cultures.