How to avoid cross-cultural conflict
Give yourself a minute to reflect: If a police officer behaves in a domineering way – does this reflect his personality? If a foreigner is smiling and friendly – does this reflect his culture? When a person is loud – is this behaviour due to his personality only?
Which elements influence our actions and reactions
How we act and react is neither exclusively related to our personality nor to the situation we are experiencing nor is it deducible from our cultural background only. Our actions are a result of various concurrent elements:
- the individual disposition,
- the situation and
- the cultural background.
(see for the attribution triangle: Fachstelle für Internationale Jugendarbeit der Bundesrepublik Deutschland e.V., n.d.)
How to Deal with Intercultural Misunderstandings
It is helpful to keep this in mind if we want to understand why a misunderstanding with a person from another country has occurred.
It may be helpful to observe the following steps when problems occur in intercultural relationships:
- Observe the situation actively.
- Describe the situation to yourself or somebody else.
- Remember that in another context, in another culture, what you experience can have a totally different meaning.
- Don’t judge what you see but try to find out what the disturbing behaviour really means in that culture.
- Listen actively, ask questions and be conscious of the fact that your cultural “map” will automatically lead you to filter and interpret what you hear.
- Try to understand the values, beliefs and attitudes of members of other cultures.
- Establish rapport by finding out commonalities.
- Save face – respect others and make yourself respected.
- Develop WIN-WIN solutions.
Applying these steps will help you to understand the other culture and to avoid jumping to premature conclusions. For, as stated by Alexander Thomas “a certain degree of willingness and the ability to reflect on everyday encounters with dissimilar others is necessary for developing an awareness of intercultural learning and ultimately understanding the factors underlying appropriate and effective behavior in an intercultural encounter (applied intercultural ability). This constitutes intercultural competence” (Thomas 2010, 11).