Context Across Cultures

We are all individuals with our own communication needs and preferences, but did you know cultures have their own preferences built in?

I was in the army a long time ago and learned to drive on a two week driving course in northern England. Spending hours in the car with an instructor and another student of course meant lots of stories were told. One is relevant to this topic.

The instructor advised the other student to go "straight over" at a roundabout, confirming the directions with a "take the second exit". He then explained how a soldier from another nation on a course in one of the instructor's colleague's car had taken instructions a little too literally.

He took ‘straight over’ as just that and drove directly over the roundabout.

There’s an irony in the story, as its subject was apparently from a nation that, culturally, is considered high context, and with the UK being considered quite a low context country compared to this soldier's nation of origin, the story would make more sense the other way around. However, we took the storyteller at his word due to the fact the UK is a low context culture in which clear, concise communication is the norm.

The nationality quoted in this story was that of a country where context is important, where the words themselves aren't the entire message, or even most of it. Surely if this soldier had been instructed to drive straight over the roundabout, they'd have considered the context and likely not taken it so literally, right? However, it was a funny anecdote, and that was probably all it was meant to be.

This does highlight the importance of talking to the audience though, even to the point of employing tools other than words to communicate. One string of words spoken to two people could have vastly different interpretations depending on where those two people are from.

And because cultural norms don’t preclude individuality, those two people will have their own needs beyond the generalisation of their culture’s approach to context.

In a previous role in Australia, I had a team member in the another country whose first language was not English, but she was absolutely fluent. However, she admitted her and her colleagues had worked out quite quickly the check certain comms from the internal comms team that had been written for an internal Aussie audience. Not only were the comms a mess of idioms, but without any supporting context, they were often quite difficult to actually understand.

Communication isn’t successful because information was sent, it’s successful when it is understood by the recipients.

Know your audience, but give them the option them to digest information their own way. Present your message in a variety of mediums to ensure maximum reach. Summaries are great for some. Stories for others. A meeting in one setting, or an infographic in another. In the example of my colleague above, she and her co-workers proactively sought a verbal brief to really understand what they’d received. Perhaps a meeting after the comms by the internal comms team might’ve been routine and not an exception? Just as in Anglophone culture, we have meetings and tend to follow-up with written minutes and actions.

The most important lesson here though is don't assume the communicatee (whilst that isn’t a word, I think it should be) is going to get what you are saying.

With businesses becoming increasingly global, understanding context across cultures is critical when communicating with your teams. And with us more and more empowered to operate and think as individuals, tailoring the comms beyond that becomes just as important. And that is something Aberyarn can help with; tailored summaries with suggested mediums of support, directly linked to the full communication, ensuring you know when your team understand what you want them to know.

And heres a further reading option:

World Population Review - https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/high-context-countries