Track 17

Unit 4a.

Business.

High and low context communication.

Pages 60 and 61.

Listen for main ideas and Listen for details.

Today I want to talk about something that everyone who works in international business must learn to do.

Communicate across cultures.

International business people come from all different cultures right?

So they have different ways of communicating both in how they express their ideas and how they receive their ideas.

Now just to be clear, I’m not talking about the use of a particular language, English or French or Chinese or whatever. I’m talking about communication style within a language. communication style means how we exchange information, how we show our feelings, and how we understand other people.

So as international business people how do we communicate across cultures?

Well, first by understanding the communication styles we and others use, and second by transferring that knowledge to the workplace.

So let’s get started.

Now what communication styles do people use?

Basically there are two, one is low context, and the other is high context. that’s low context communication style, and high context communication style. Let’s first define context, well context is the situation or surrounding information the nonverbal information that helps a person understand a message better, for example, someone walking in the door right now would understand that we’re having a class just by seeing the context here right? Desks, students taking notes, me standing here talking to you, etc. That’s context.

So turning to our first communication style, low context communication is when a person expresses an idea directly, they put the important information into words. In low context communication we don’t need the context, or nonverbal information to communicate, the context is low, words are what’s important.

Who uses low context communication? Well, culturally speaking most North Americans and Europeans do. Let’s look at an example say we have an advertising agency and two professionals both Americans are discussing an idea for an ad for athletic shoes, one says I think the ad should future World Cup players the other says oh no I disagree, I think the ad should show everyday people.

See how each express their ideas very directly? With just words. This is how low context communicators operate.

Now let’s look at high context communication, high context communication occurs when a person expresses an idea indirectly, through body movement, facial expressions, even silence. They show the important information non-verbally rather than speaking. It the context is very significant to the meaning of the message the context is high. Generally speaking this style of communication is typical of Asians, Africans, and Middle Easterners.

An example might be to Egyptian bankers creating a loan plan for a local business, the first banker shows his partner a plan he put together the night before numbers and dates and so on, the partner reads the plan and responds by remaining silent.The first banker gets the message his partner doesn’t like it, he said so with his silence. Now it’s important to recognize that each of these two communication styles has its strengths and its weaknesses. Low context communicators are often very productive because they quickly and clearly identify business problems and find short-term solutions, and they’re fast at developing projects. But because of this fast style they may not build strong long-term business relationships.

So if you’re working with low context communicators, you need to remember this important ideas and feelings are often expressed very directly and forcefully. now high content communicators on the other hand may seem to be slow they often don’t move quickly to find solutions because they want to get more information and opinions first. They don’t want to make mistakes also they’re careful with their opinions because they want to preserve their relationships with other people so if you’re working with high contest communicators remember this.

Things may happen more slowly and important messages are often sent non-verbally. So let’s now combine our two earlier examples let’s say our Egyptian banker contacts the American at the ad agency, he tells her his bank would like to do some advertising so the American creates two ads one shows the bank’s name in huge bright letters then it lists all the bank’s services and several comments from satisfied customers, the other ad shows only a picture of a woman smiling in front of her bakery with the words business loans for everyone and the bank’s name at the bottom of the ad.

Can you guess which ad the Egyptian Baker liked best? And why? The one with the picture of the happy woman in her bakery of course. The high context ad appealed to the person with the high context communication style and even though the ad agency represented it was from a low context culture, she understood that her customer was from a high context culture.

Okay well that’s all for now for next time I want you to think about which kind of communicator you are. High or low context and what experiences you’ve had communicating across cultures.