Cross Cultural Management: Reflection on Non-Verbal Communication

This article reflects on the importance of non-verbal communication in cross-cultural management and the author's experiences with non-verbal communication. It also provides an action plan to improve non-verbal communication skills.

Running Head: CROSS CULTURAL MANAGMENT
Cross cultural management
Reflection
Student Name
[Pick the date]

CROSS CULTURAL MANAGMENT 1
Introduction
Communication plays one of the most important roles in the completion of any task.
Communication is mainly of three types verbal, written and non-verbal. All three types of
communication are very important on the global level (Zeki, 2009). After a lot of exploration and
experience, I came to know that I am very weak in my non- verbal communication. Non-verbal
communication is that type of communication which is expressed through body postures, facial
expression, cues, and eye gaze. In this, facial expression is considered as universal expression all
over the world (Forceville, 2009). Many times I have this feeling that my non-verbal
communication is very bad. I often find myself trapped in a very uncomfortable situation in most
of the cases.
One of my bad experiences was in college where our team had to work on one task. Our team
consists of five members and all of the members were from different culture. While working on
the task, I used my non-verbal communication to convey my opinion without any wrong
intention (ICAS, 2019). But to my surprise, I unintentionally made my two teammates
uncomfortable because of my nonverbal expression because it generated different meaning for
them. As a result of this, we were not able to complete our task on time and whole team blamed
me for this outcome.
Reviewing my non-verbal communication from different prospect
I have faced numbers of bad experience related to my non-verbal communication while
interacting with people from different background. My first bad experience related to my non-
verbal communication happened in student meeting. In my culture, loud pitch or sound is
generally considered as a symbol of sincerity but to my surprise, it was considered as the symbol
of aggressive attitude and display ignorance (Cheshin, Rafaeli and Bos, 2011). In this situation,
my intention was to display my sincerity towards the meeting. But the result was just opposite, I
was perceived as the person who thinks that I am better than others and do not consider others
opinion valid for the meeting. In addition, I was perceived as a symbol of Hitler who wants to
suppress other opinion by putting my opinion over others in the form of aggression.
Another bad experience related to my non-verbal communication was in class, where one of the
girls who were from different culture feels offended because of me. There were events going on
in my college and everyone had to take part in the event. For this purpose, I interacted with one
girl who was from different culture regard her participation (Geng, 2011). In various culture,
maintaining eye contact with other persons while interacting is considered as one of the symbols
of confidence and gives value to the conversation. But to my surprise, while having a
conversation with that girl I was not able to maintain proper eye contact (Little et al., 2015). As a
result of this, she suddenly started to display different mode and left the conversation in the mid.
I was very surprised by this kind of behaviour because I have not experienced such kind of

CROSS CULTURAL MANAGMENT 2
behaviour in my life. Without focusing on the weak side I perceived that girl is having a negative
attitude.
Interpretation
After these experiences, I decided to analyze myself related to these incidents and tried to find
out what went wrong. After exploring, I came to known that in both these incidents mistake
happened from my side because I forgot that every country has a different culture which means
they have believes, values and cue will be different. It would be better for me if I would have
gained knowledge related to culture difference (Gay, 2013). This knowledge would have helped
me to avoid such kind of mistakes in such a situation and had offered value to my non-verbal
communication. Non-verbal communication is usually considered as one of the most important
tools which are being used in creating a unique impression on the audience. Because of the lack
of knowledge associated with cultural difference I was not able to form my positive impression
through my non-verbal communication in both these incidents. I also received a suggestion from
my friend that if I really want to grow in my life I have to work on my non-verbal
communication which has created my negative image in the minds of the other people (Stahl,
Maznevski, Voigt and Jonsen, 2010). From these incidents it was very clear in my mind that
having good intention is not enough in the world of diversity, it is also important to express our
intention in proper form. This will surely help in elimination most of the possible barrier in
intercultural communication.
Action plan
After learning lessons from my various experiences, I have decided to work on my non-verbal
communication. Because of this weakness, I have suffered a lot and some times I ended up in
very uncomfortable situations. Therefore I have formed an action plan to overcome my weakness
and will continue for five days.
Activity Duration Action
Observing people One day In this step, I will start observing
other people for almost one day
and try to understand their
nonverbal communication in
both formal and informal pattern.
In this situation, my main focus
will be on the pitch of voice and
body language so that such kinds
of mistake never happen again.
Maintaining eye contact Two days In this step, I will try to maintain
my eye contact while having a

CROSS CULTURAL MANAGMENT 3
conversation with random people
in the college. I will keep on
practicing this activity for almost
two days. In this activity, I will
mainly focus my conversation
with person having opposite sex
because it has been seen that it is
very difficult to maintain eye
contact with person who is
having opposite sex from us.
This activity will surely help me
in improving my eye contact
ability.
Studying diverse culture Two days In this step, I will try to gain
general knowledge related to the
cultural aspect of the people with
the help of books, internet and
various articles related to cultural
diversity written by scholars.
This will help me in building a
general knowledge about the
diverse cultures in the form of
values, believes and cues. This
kind of activity will help me in
gaining an adoptive culture
nature so that I can adjust myself
in any possible situation despite
cultural diversity.

CROSS CULTURAL MANAGMENT 4
References
Cheshin, A., Rafaeli, A. and Bos, N. (2011) Anger and happiness in virtual teams: Emotional
influences of text and behavior on others’ affect in the absence of non-verbal
cues. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 116(1), pp.2-16.
Forceville, C. (2009) Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework:
Agendas for research. Multimodal metaphor, 2, pp.19-35.
Gay, G. (2013). Teaching to and through cultural diversity. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 48-
70.
Geng, G. (2011) Investigation of teachers’ verbal and non-verbal strategies for managing
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) students’ behaviours within a classroom
environment. Australian Journal of teacher education, 36(7), p.2.
https://www.icas.com/professional-development/barriers-to-effective-intercultural-
communication
ICAS. (2019) Barriers to effective intercultural communication [online]. Available from:
Little, P., White, P., Kelly, J., Everitt, H. and Mercer, S. (2015) Randomised controlled trial
of a brief intervention targeting predominantly non-verbal communication in general practice
consultations. Br J Gen Pract, 65(635), pp.e351-e356.
Stahl, G.K., Maznevski, M.L., Voigt, A. and Jonsen, K. (2010) Unraveling the effects of
cultural diversity in teams: A meta-analysis of research on multicultural work
groups. Journal of international business studies, 41(4), pp.690-709.
Zeki, C.P. (2009) The importance of non-verbal communication in classroom
management. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1(1), pp.1443-1449.