what is an important tool to remember when trying to achieve communication competence?

You've probably heard the saying "It's all about the people you know."

Relationships tin assistance y'all become things done. The more than people you know around the globe, the wider your reach.

But, in order to make connections with people—you have to non only talk to them, you have to persuade them you're someone worth knowing.

Intercultural communication is what y'all do when you talk to someone from a dissimilar culture.

Intercultural communication competence is how you engage someone from another civilisation well.

If intercultural advice isn't currently one of your strengths, don't despair. Change is possible.

Intercultural Communication Competence

Richard Wiseman from California State University has discovered some features of effective intercultural communication that you can use to improve. He has studied intercultural communicators for many years and provides a crisp review of what information technology means to be good at communicating beyond cultures in his chapter on intercultural communication competence.

Wiseman'south basic recipe is adequately elementary. You lot accept intercultural communication competence if you can communicate effectively and accordingly in intercultural situations. Information technology's a central aspect of cultural competence.

The key lies in understanding what it means to be constructive and what it means to be appropriate.

Constructive Intercultural Communication

Your intercultural communication is effective when it allows you to achieve a goal that y'all intendance about. This is the kickoff part of intercultural advice competence.

Wiseman describes the components of effective intercultural communication strategies. Based on this description, these are five steps y'all can use to increase how effective you are in intercultural interactions:

1. Remember about what your goals are for an interaction before y'all engage the other person. Your goal may be to find out if you can trust the other person, or information technology may simply be to go invited to a party.
2. Call back about what you need to practise to reach your goals. If you're trying to find out if you tin can trust someone, one mode might be to ask them a question you already know the reply to. If you desire to go invited to a party, you might say "I heard at that place's this special drinkable people have at parties around here. It sounds fantastic. I'd honey to feel that before I go home."
3. Attempt to predict what the other person's responses will be to things you might say or exercise. This is where knowing the civilisation comes in handy then every bit to accurately have their perspective. If you ask a question that is considered very personal where the other person comes from in your quest to effigy out if y'all tin trust them, yous could inadvertently lose their trust. And, it's possible that by showing that you know and capeesh something about another civilization'south customs you will inspire people to invite y'all to a party.
4. Pick a communication arroyo and attempt it out. This is the function where y'all accept to 'pull it off', so to speak. If you've come up with a communication approach that y'all're not sure yous can pull off, then you lot may desire to attempt to generate some alternatives. Other people know when you're beingness 18-carat and when y'all aren't. In that regard it doesn't matter what culture they come from.
5. Reflect back on how effective your approach was later on the interaction. This means thinking of each interaction y'all take as a learning experience. If it didn't go as you expected, you may want to endeavor to figure out why. This tin help you come up upward with a amend arroyo next time.

Appropriate Intercultural Communication

But, achieving a goal you intendance nigh is not enough. According to Wiseman, intercultural communication competence also means you must communicate appropriately.

Intercultural communication is advisable when you achieve your goals through the use of messages and deportment that are expected in the state of affairs. This means that the actions and communication you employ to achieve your goal are  interpreted as meaningful by the other person y'all're interacting with.

To make that happen, Wiseman contends, you need a trifecta of knowledge, skills, and motivation.

• Knowledge – You must have information about the people, the rules for communication used within their civilisation, the context, and the expectations members of the other culture accept for interactions.
• Skills – You must exist able to engage in a different style of communication than y'all're used to. This could hateful saying things that y'all may not truly believe in and behaving in ways that may feel 'unnatural' at first.
• Motivation – You take to be motivated to interact with people who are different than y'all. This means existence able to let get of whatsoever misgivings or negative emotions you lot may have towards them.

Information technology Takes Two to Tango

Communicating effectively and appropriately is a recipe for edifice lasting relationships beyond cultures.

Now, the following may seem counterintuitive, merely, to fully achieve these goals yous may take to allow go of the idea that intercultural advice is something you practise and something y'all have to be successful at.

You could instead think of intercultural communication as a tango. A tango is something 2 people practise together. To determine whether or not a tango is 'successful' yous take to wait at the whole movie.

Thinking of intercultural advice as a dance makes it easier to remember to think near what the other person is getting from the interaction at each turn.

If at any point information technology appears that your deportment or messages are not making sense to the other person—then y'all have started to step on each other's toes.

That is your cue to apply your knowledge and skills to get the interaction back on track.

Prototype Credit: Suzane Gudolle

References

Wiseman, R. L. (2001). Intercultural communication competence. In Thou. K. Asante, Westward. B. Gudykunst, and B. Mody (Eds.), Handbook of International and Intercultural Advice (pp. 207-224). SAGE Publications.

Click below to check out Save Your Ammo, a guide to cultural competence in demanding situations.

Dr. Louise Rasmussen is an applied cognitive psychologist. She works to advance cultural competence in demanding environments through enquiry, training, and assessment.

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Source: https://www.globalcognition.org/intercultural-communication/

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