On a personal level, I have hardly experienced any intercultural conflict. Therefore, for this blogpost, I have chosen to borrow one of my father’s experiences.
My father’s job requires him to travel rather frequently and these trips enable him to meet with various groups of people from distinct cultural backgrounds. On one such occasion, he was involved in a meeting consisting of individuals from two different countries. The clientele comprised of people who were generally mild mannered and soft spoken as this was what was expected in their culture. The presenters on the other hand were from a culture where people spoke in loud and firm voices accompanied by big gestures.
During this particular meeting, the latter were supposed to give a presentation on the products that were to be purchased by the customers. However, after the meeting was completed, my father was approached by the customers. Apparently, they were not entirely comfortable in the manner in which the presentation was conducted. They were not used to the way the presenters spoke or the way they articulated themselves through their hand movements. As a result, they were not able to elicit much information from the presentation itself. They ended up requesting for someone else to conduct presentations in future.
In my understanding, culture refers to a shared set of beliefs, attitudes and values of the people involved. Although both parties mentioned above were from Asian backgrounds, I feel that the countries they belonged to led to them having significant differences in their practices and mannerisms. The history of their nations and the interactions they experience would have influenced them in many ways. However, if one pursues a career that requires him to interact with people of different cultures, it would be advantageous if he is able to modify certain mannerisms accordingly to suit the needs of the people he meets. It would also be good if he is able to adapt to the way others conduct themselves. In the above situation, each party could have been unaware of each other’s cultural nuances thereby disallowing any form of adaptation.
I felt that this was a good example to highlight differences in cultural behaviour as it is set in a typical workplace scenario. Hope my sharing was useful (:
