Why intercultural communication is important?
Dear Sohail, If I may share from by backgound of 25+ years of cross cultural living, I’d like to suggest that we can never navigate around cross-cultural (CC)misunderstandings. I’d like to suggest, instead, we consider naviaging through it. To navigate through CC issues, we need to begin with the concept that you outlined – different cultures have different understandings of the meaning of a word. English is probably the worse langauge for having these challenges given that it is a living, fluid language. I’ve seen the same word have different meanings in Kolkata, Monrovia, London and Seattle. I’ve learned that it is important to take the time to negotiate meanings assigened to the words we use, especially when we are working together. When I worked in Africa, I brought in a team of counselors to train my local staff in Post Traumatic Stress counseling. A part of the preperation for the training was for the visiting counselors to spend the better part of a day with the best English spe
