Post #2: Observation of team behaviour: intercultural and interpersonal communication

The development of modern aviation technologies has made it easy for us to travel around the world at will. We can easily find people of various nationalities and cultures dispersed all over the world. Hence, our intercultural skills are constantly tested as we work with people from other cultures in today’s modern workplace.

Culture is the way of thinking of a group of people who share common behaviour traits and background knowledge. Intercultural communication is the complex process of communicating to people through a cultural barrier. Different words can even mean different things to people of different cultures. For example, a Chinese might think of a tower as a pagoda, an American might think of it as a skyscraper and a Frenchman might think of it as the Eiffel tower.

Interpersonal communication as it name implies, is simply communication between two or more people. An important factor of interpersonal communication is our emotional quotient (EQ) which influences the way we interact with other people.

I’ve observed that while forming teams, people who do not know each other initially seem to have a natural tendency to stick with people of their own country or race. For example, Indians team up with other Indians and Singaporeans stick to Singaporeans. When members of the team come from the same culture, we feel comfortable as we understand and can relate to the other members better; we are in our “comfort zone”.

I reckon that this is one of the reasons as to why we were randomly grouped with people from various cultures in this course. By forcing us out of our “comfort zones”, we have to interact with people of other cultures, thereby improving our intercultural and interpersonal skills. By improving these skills, we can communicate better and hopefully avoid embarrassing social faux pas in our future careers.

Post #1: Communication and teamwork: Discuss this in relation to you.

In today’s workplace, one is expected to work in teams. Many projects are too big for one to handle alone. Either the project spans across multiple disciplines or the project would take an unfeasibly long time to complete alone.

A team is a group of people working towards a common goal. In a team, our strengths are magnified and our teammates can help us to overcome our weaknesses. In a team, the members share resources and work together to deliver a final product. Being able to understand others better would help me to reduce misunderstandings, enabling me to maintain a good working relationship with my teammates. I would also require good communication skills to present and defend my ideas. Good teamwork would definitely not be possible without effective communication.

Communication is the delicate process of transferring a message from one entity to another through various channels. Various forms of “noise” such as language barriers and the context of the message can distort the interpretation of my message. Therefore, effective communication is required to get the message across properly.

Being able to communicate better has many uses. An example is that it gives me an edge in marketing myself to prospective employers. Being a better communicator enables me to stand out from the crowd, giving me a better chance of advancing in my career as compared my peers.

Effective communication is, to me an art. Understanding the concepts of communications is only one of the first steps of improvement. Only with constant practice and refinement, can I learn to communicate more effectively.