Cross- cultural Communication This page intentionally left blank

Focus
Acknowledge
Clarify
Empathize
First, you need to focus on the speaker by maintaining good eye contact, 
whilst always remembering that in some cultures strong eye contact may 
be seen as challenging. Acknowledge means using verbal or non- verbal cues 
to show you are listening, for example, nodding or saying ‘uh huh’. Clarify 
means asking what happened next or repeating to the speaker what has 
been said. Empathize means showing appreciation or sympathy by using 
such phrases as ‘great’, ‘that must have been difficult’, etc.
Silence
What is immediately obvious about active listening is that it is a much more 
reflective, quieter and calmer process. It allows us to absorb how the speaker 
feels as well as the actual message. It allows time for us to reflect and to 
formulate in our turn a reasoned response which agrees common ground, 
but also allows us to state our own point of view. Silence is much more of a 
tradition in countries like Japan, China and Finland. For many of the rest of 
us, the urge to jump in and interrupt is too strong as we are uncomfortable 
with periods of silence.
All of us probably engage in many of these approaches to listening for 
different reasons and at different times. The challenge is to listen actively 
and to focus on the thoughts and feelings of the person we are listening to. 
In that way, we show interest, we acquire more cooperation and we learn 
more about the speaker.
Networking
In her book Dinner with Churchill, Cita Stelzer emphasizes how important 
meals were in Churchill’s wartime diplomacy when he said in 1944: ‘If only 
I could dine with Stalin [the Second World War Russian leader] once a week 
there would be no trouble at all.’ Networking is a very useful way of gain-
ing information, researching a problem and opinion making. It is often the 
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