Different Communication

       

I am so fortunate to work with a mixed culture of colleagues, which help me learn and understand different aspect of diverse cultures every day. We have a range of 20-60 years old staffs from Chinese, African American, and Hispanic. I found that some staff have similar communication style and some with different communication style depends, yet not necessary because of their age or cultures.

For example, Mrs. C, Chinese woman around 50 years old seems to have a dominant communication style where she tends to control the conversation (Vuckovic, 2008). When I ask her what did she do last weekend, she seems not like to share much about what she did. She answered, “Nothing much, we just have a family gathering”, and did not ask back.

On the other hand, Mrs. M from Mexico who is also around 50 years old, has a different communication style. She has a more open communication style. When I asked the same question, she told me about almost everything she did on Sunday and detailed. Then she also asked me back. I answered her that I am tired as I was working on my paper the whole weekend, she then valued my feeling and shared that how she went to school, take care of her children and work the same time when she was young. I felt better after talking to her and motivated by her success and stories.

I considered myself has a similar communication style as Mrs. M. that I love to talk to people, open to any topics and love to share my experience. Yet I understand that Mrs. C may not have a strong or trust relationship with me so she doesn’t want to share her weekend. Or it could be her communication style that she is more conservative.

This helped me to understand that every one has different communication skills and each person’s communication style could be varied depends on their personalities, age, experience, beliefs, education level, values, and etc. We should never generalize or stereotype of any culture or races into specific categories.I believe that effective communication needs both side be attentive to build a content conversation. Three strategies that I would use to help me communicate more effectively with the people who are more conservative are: 

            1.       Validate their comment or answer, then ask more clarify questions. However, we need to be mindful not to ask too personal questions in the beginning of the conservation, as it may make the speaker feel pressured. We also need to be aware of their non-verbal gesture, such as facial expression or body movement. If they seem to ignore you or not responding, we should stop asking more question to make the person uncomfortable. 

          2.       Validate their comment or answer by sharing similar experience that we had in the past. This could help break the ice and open up the conversation. 

 

3.    Find the right moment and topic to talk. If you are having a difficult time to communicate with a person, maybe spend some time to observe what the person like to do or have that shared the same common with you. Use this commonalities/ similarities as the topic to open up the conversation. For example, if you have a dog and the speaker also has a dog, you could talk about your dog and dog parks that you bring your dog too, etc. And maybe ask him/ her for suggestions could also make them feel valued.