On Inter-Cultural Communication and Reflection on Team Behaviour

As a member of a diversity team like ours, I have some feelings about the the intercultural/interpersonal communication.

First of all, I want to mention to respect. As a team with four members from four different contries with different traditions, it's very easy to say something that violates other's culture and that may break the bonding in the team. However, our team members are communicating with each other in a very effective manner. We share the ideas, we joked together without worrying about the others' cultures. When there is a misunderstanding in the team, we found a solution quite quickly and effectively without much arguing. For instance, when I found out that the contents in Shawn's slides and mine are quite similar, we asked Ms. Janet to understand more clearly abou the questions in our topics and that eventually solved the trouble. The way we found out the solution made me think that we were going on the right way.

Second, I want to talk about resonsibility. It's very clear that every of us goes to the team meetings on time and well-prepared for the topics. And even in our oral representation, in the Q&A section, we have done our best to answer the others' questions. Each of us tried to answer the questions on our best, regardless the question is based on whose part. I think this is very nice as each of us not only carer for himself but also cares for the team.

Lastly, I want to say that I'm feeling good about our team. We're going on the right way. I hope you can continue to perform like this in the next hard coming days. I will try to speak more to all of you to understand you better, about your cultures, your countries, and yourselves. And I will speak more to express my ideas, even the smallest ones, not just the important ones, things that may be important to our team, to all of you and I hope you can do the same to me. I think when we are able to communicate with each other at that level, our team and our project will be the best thing we can do.

Keep up the good job, guys!

Inter-Personal/Inter-Cultural Communication and Reflections on our Team Behaviour

Being in a team as diverse as ours, with members from four different nationalities, the importance of interpersonal communication (cultural differences coming into play) is very high. Language – as far as our group is concerned – is not a big problem as all group members are comfortable with English. This saves us a lot of headache as translations are a primary reason for miscommunication. Even with all of us knowing a common language, there were problems initially, especially due to different pronunciations. This difficulty eased out once we got to know and understand each other’s accent better. Let it be me or my team-mates, we made sure that we clarified anything and everything we couldn’t hear or understand properly when someone else is talking. Repeating a sentence or two may seem tedious, irritating and like a waste of time. Believe me; clarifying doubtful things then and there is way better than understanding things differently, causing bigger problems down the line.

A self-driven team is always more successful. Ours is one of them! I have noticed on many occasions that each of us is willing to take up that extra bit of responsibility. Having done our homework research, all of us came well prepared for the meeting. This helps us save a lot of precious time and energy and we could concentrate on our next best steps and a probable agenda for the next meeting and more importantly, scheduling the next meeting.

All of us understood other team members’ constraints. This was evident when we were choosing time slots for the next meeting. None of the team members were placed under undue pressure and eventually we came up with a slot convenient for all of us. Personally, I had that sense of assurance from my teammates and this helped me bond with them better.

The fact that we were able to converge on many things quite easily like division of responsibility for the project, order of speakers for the oral presentation showed that we were moving on in the right direction as far as our team spirit and cohesiveness is concerned. Things which may seem trivial, like backgrounds and fonts for the presentation, are usually issues that are a pain. I am glad we were able to move over those quickly.

Our communications so far have been strictly professional. Taking that extra bit of effort to know team members more personally would improve our synergy and ultimately the quality of work we produce. What about becoming friends on Facebook?

Punctuality is another crucial factor which determines output. As most of our meetings are short and crisp it really helps when people are on time. I regret being late on one occasion when I messed up the location of our meeting point. I’ll make sure I am on time for the rest of our meetings and would really appreciate the same from all of us.

Like everyone else, we have our flaws and I can assure that we are working our way, rapidly, to becoming THE team!

Lakshmi Narasimhan

Inter-Cultural Communication Principles and Team Behaviour

I would like to focus on inter-cultural communication principles and team behaviour since our group is quite an inter-cultural group with four members form Singapore, India, Vietnam and China.

First of all, the most important principle in inter-cultural communication is respect. Actually, every effective communication should be based on respect of each other; otherwise, communication may become quarrels or commands. Since people from different cultural backgrounds may have different values, religions, habits and so on, conflicts may happen more easily. Consequently, respect is even more important in this kind of communication. We may not expect every one to accept the same value, but we should respect and tolerate each other. Let us take Singapore, a multi-cultural country as an example. There are people from many different races and religions in this country and they live together harmoniously. This is the power of respect. 

Secondly, as a group, we should try to learn and understand the culture and value of each other. By knowing others’ cultural backgrounds, we can behave in the manners more acceptable to each other. In addition, learning others’ culture is a good beginning to build the personal friendship between each other. It is difficult to develop friendship if we only communicate about work without any more personal stuff. Thus, we should find some time to talk with each other about our culture and backgrounds as well as other interesting topics to build up the friendship.

Thirdly, humor is an excellent tool in inter-culture communication. With humor, we can solve many problems difficult to deal with formally. However, we must be cautious when we show our humor because people with different cultural backgrounds may have different understanding of the humor. As a result, sometimes, a kind joke can be interpreted as serious offense. Therefore, we should communicate humorously, but cautiously.

Finally, we should never assume when communicating with people from different culture backgrounds. Culture is quite different from one place to another, and some aspects may be just opposite. Thereby, it is dangerous if we often make assumption on others culture. On the contrary, we had better ask if we are not clear with anything. Asking will not only clarify our doubts, but also show our respect to them.

At the end of the blog, I would talk about the performance of our team. I feel the team is operating very well as everyone is quite responsible for his part. As a result, we have successfully followed our plan and finished all the scheduled tasks. However, we must admit that there still exist some culture barriers among us since we come from totally different countries and do not know each other before this module. Thus, we can apply the principles I mentioned previously to step over the barriers. I hope in the following weeks, we are able to get to know each others’ culture better and begin to develop our relationship as friends in addition to colleagues. For instance, we can talk about some interesting things every time before or after our meeting, have lunch or dinner together, and so on.

Principles of Communication and Team Behaviour

Hi

I would like to discuss on two major component that would either make or break a team. They are principles of communication and team behaviour. And I would like to share my views on the group so far.

Communication

Communication is probably the most important activity we do in our daily lives, which is to interact with one another. Communication comes in two forms, they are verbal communication and non verbal communication. Verbal communication means communication in written or spoken form. Anything else would be non verbal communication. For example body language, hand signs and many others. So the question now is why are we communicating? The answer is we communicate to convey our emotions, ideas or intentions to one another.

Here are six major principles that encompass communication :

1. Your audience
2. The intent
3. Topic
4. Timing
5. Location
6. Methods of communication 

If any one of the six principles is lacking when communicating with one another, there is a risk that the communication might turn out meaningless or no one would pay attention to it or even worse a conflict might arise from it. Making use of all these principles, communication between individuals or parties would be purposeful, directed, intelligible and interactive. The result of having good communication is extremely important, especially in a team oriented setting. This is so because with purposeful communication, people would be interested to know what you are trying to bring forth to them and why you are doing so. And they would start to think how the topic that was brought up would benefit the team. A well directed communication in the group often plays a part in how well the team carry out it's tasks. When communication is directed well to members of the team, there would be minimal confusion. And tasks would be carried out effectively. Intelligible communication can break down many technical jargon and help simplify the topic that is being discussed in the group. Without compromising on the purpose and content of the topic. Interactive communication is probably one of the most important principle out of the six principles that were mentioned. In a group setting if communication is not interactive, it might come across to others that there is disunity within the group. Or there is just one person in the group ordering the other members around or no one in the group is interested. As a result, what can be sure is that the outcome or the deliverables of the task would be of low quality.

Team Behaviour

The other important aspect in a team setting environment is team behaviour. As team behaviour determines the team cohesiveness, the willingness to work as a team, the significance of the aim of the team and the leadership quality present in the team. When team behaviour is positive, the team would naturally be cohesive, helping each other out when in need. Members of the group would carry out their task diligently to accomplish the goals set by the team. This would lead the team to be cohesive and 'tight'. Positive team behaviour would also bring out willingness to work as a team. Every team member would be willing to do his/her own part not for personal glory but for the success of the team. Positive team behaviour would strengthen the aim of the team. Accomplishing task would then not be the only aim but rather to establish a character that the team could relate to. Team behaviour often show how well a team is being managed, the leadership qualities of the leader in the group would come into question here. Good positive team behaviour generally means the group is being managed and led well by the leader. This means the leader has good leadership skills. Negative team behaviour would simply means, leadership is either non existent in the team or the team is not being led properly by the team leader. 

Conclusion

Therefore these two component mentioned above are critical and vital to the success of the team. 

My Views

I do believe our group is advancing well and everyone is doing his part to ensure the success of the group. 

I do note that there is a lack in interpersonal communication. Communication that exist in the team are extremely work oriented. I do believe that for the team to progress to greater heights, interpersonal communication in the team cannot be only taking place because of work. We have to open up and get to know each other really well and have interpersonal communication at all levels. Team behaviour is generally positive where everything is structured well and there is cohesiveness in the team. Everyone in the team is capable of leading the team as each one of us have our strengths that would benefit the team in different ways. 

Shawn Teo Chee Yong