# 113: Intercultural Communication
Translation
“Dear God, please give me the courage to openly discuss things that divide us, give me the discretion to skillfully override delicate moments, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Story behind the Passage
Once again, I had to translate to make the passage above available for non-German speakers. Translation is something you do all the time when working in intercultural contexts. By translation I do not just refer to verbal or written language. I mean everything that happens between people from different backgrounds — most of this is completely invisible — at first. As soon as it becomes visible, it is usually too late already. Well, not really too late but at a stage when a conflict has erupted already which then needs to be fixed. This is when cultural translation or rather interpretation becomes a must — at least, if you have understanding as your goal.
It is so funny to notice that this topic keeps accompanying my entire life. Be it in university, business, in social projects — even when the topic or issue at hand seems to have no relation to intercultural issues at first, after a while, it takes this intercultural turn. I am not the only one noticing this. Most of my closest friends have also somehow ended up working in the field of intercultural education — for students and professionals. Obviously, this is not only something that we consciously or unconsciously foster. It is also something that pays our bills at times. Be it language teaching or intercultural coaching — people have real trouble with these things which is why they are willing to pay for people who help them with it.
Obviously, intercultural communication is not something that you learn from books. Otherwise, people would prefer to spend less money on intercultural trainers and coaches. But I know, if there is one thing that I have learned from my work in publishing, it is that reading is not the preferred way of learning for many. I am one of them when it comes to intercultural stuff. Actually, when it comes to any stuff. What I mean is that I do buy and read books about many different things, including cultural issues. But I only do so after learning about them or getting in touch with them in practice.
Hence, Schulz von Thun and his colleague are a great resource. I wrote about one of his communication books here before, I think. He is the authority on anything that is related to human communication. I have chosen this passage today from his book Intercultural Communication because the topic has become very prominent in my work again and I am always amazed by one particular insight: No matter how multi-cultural and multi-lingual you are, you will always end up making communication mistakes that can cause conflicts. Intercultural translation and conflict resolution will therefore always remain valuable, no matter how diverse our societies will get. It always takes a third party, an ‘outsider,’ to help with his/her perspective.
My Learnings
“…the wisdom to know the difference.” This is not a joke, I can tell you. There have been so many moments when I simply screwed up. And then there must have been even more moments when I screwed up and did not even notice it! In my case, this was less in international but in different organizational contexts. The thing is: Startups have a very different culture than corporates and other rather ‘traditional’ businesses. Yes, that makes interaction between the two difficult but as long as startup people stay in their own crowd, nobody has a problem. The same holds true for all other crowds. My problem is that I always act between worlds and therefore also enter worlds that are not intuitively my worlds, even though I understand the people in these worlds a lot.
But they do not always understand me.
Understanding that this is actually what is happening takes time, practice, and often you still do not get it. This is when I usually experience very sad moments of misunderstanding that I cannot change much about. At least, I understand why culture is in the way but sometimes I just cannot completely leave my own, my personal cultural standpoint. And I should not. If you do that, you are completely lost. I would say, with us interculturally fluid people, we have no strict and permanent cultural orientation. We decide more case-dependent how we look at something at a given point. Still, we have general personal preferences that get more solid with the cultural environment that we identify with. In my case, I am simply NOT a corporate person and NOT a civic servant person either.
I am a free-floating atom, as someone once reminded me.
So, this means that my natural language — words that escape my mouth without too much enforced self-discipline — is very different from the one used by other people with my education background, even in my age group. For startups, this is completely fine. We usually understand each other. But with these other people, it is a lot more difficult to tell if we are understanding each other. Very often, they smile but afterwards I realize that they had no clue what I was talking about or they even get mad at me or break off the conversation. Often, I feel like a European traveling to Asia when talking to these people. This is not because people living in Asia are aliens. It is just a common stereotype in the ‘West’ that the Chinese or Japanese are difficult to ‘decipher.’ They look quite friendly but underneath and behind the face, European have no idea what is going on. I often feel the same way. Kumbier and von Thun also have an example of Japan in the book.
This image depicts the “inner team,” as the method is called. I learned it in my coaching training. The difference in intercultural communication is just that you have two teams opposing each other. In any case, such a visual representation of intercultural communication and possibly conflict is very helpful, at least for me. But again, this is a cultural communication preference that is very much related to your discipline and personal cognitive preferences. People in the humanities hardly ever draw images or graphs to get their message across. They write texts.
This takes me to my final insight for today. I think, my entire passion and need for writing is very much related to my intercultural communication issues. Yes, it would be nice to be blessed with wisdom, as the quote states. But according to my experience so far, gaining wisdom is hard work! And before you get there, you get a bloody nose quite often because you are not making yourself understood properly. This is why I am saying that all my lengthy writing, my need to talk, is a result of this constant longing to make myself understood without being misinterpreted. In writing, I feel, people understand me better, more holistically, more specifically.
The reason for all this is very simple. When speaking (verbally), I often have three lines of thought in my head in parallel and I jump back and forth between them. This is not for everyone to bear. It can be quite difficult for some people and I do not blame them. They get pissed off, annoyed, and they get headaches. Then they say: “Could you please finish this sentence now before following this other thought and starting two more sentences at the same time?” And then they get quite angry. This is when I tell myself. “O.k., never mind, I will just write about it.” In writing, it is very easy to stick to a linear order of thoughts and words because one letter follows the other.
And is keeping ‘order’ not one of the most typical cultural traits that Germans are known for?
Reflection Questions
1) In which culture do you experience communication problems?
2) Do you ever consult books if you need practical help with something?
3) What is your favorite medium for expressing thoughts and opinions?