Understand cultural differences

In international business, the failure to understand cultural differences can bear serious consequences. In fact, whole campaigns have had to be pulled due to a lack of prior research into cultural awareness. Last-minute redesign and reprinting can be very expensive, so it is crucial to ensure that any text and images used are culturally appropriate. It’s not surprising that intercultural understanding and communication are top priorities for international businesses today. Employees with intercultural communication competence are highly sought-after. But what is intercultural communication?
Intercultural communication studies communication across different cultures and social groups and describes the many communication processes and related issues among groups of individuals from varied cultural backgrounds.
Knowing a foreign language is just part of the parcel—the other party’s cultural background, values, and beliefs also need to be understood. This is where intercultural communication skills are indispensable. They are needed to successfully communicate with people from other cultures and social groups. And intercultural communication skills also include a willingness to be adaptable and accept that other cultures may communicate and do things differently.
If you’re wondering where you and your staff can acquire these sought-after intercultural communication skills, look no further! EHLION is an established language services provider with many years of experience in cross-cultural training. We can help your staff communicate effectively with other employees internationally, or we can prepare executives for overseas deployments or for high-level business negotiations as an alternative to relying on interpretation services.
How do we define intercultural communication?
How can we define intercultural communication? Intercultural communication essentially means communication across different cultural boundaries. When two or more people with different cultural backgrounds interact and communicate with each other or one another, we can say that intercultural communication is taking place. So intercultural communication can be defined as the sharing of information on different levels of awareness between people with different cultural backgrounds, or put simply: individuals influenced by different cultural groups negotiate shared meaning in interactions.
Intercultural communication theories
There are many different intercultural communication types and theories. The most important ones are:

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