TJ Walker discusses practical strategies for communicating across different cultures, emphasizing observation, listening, advance research, adapting to local customs (greetings, meal etiquette, gendered interactions), and approaching interactions with humility and intent to meet others on their terms.
Chapters
What are the best ways of communicating with people from different cultures? For starters, try to really watch and listen to them if you're speaking to them. A conference, a convention. Ideally, get there a day or two ahead, have meals with people, have real conversations with people, observe what they're doing, what they aren't doing. And realize everything you do that you think is normal might seem weird to other people, might seem rude to them, might be a big faux pas. So assume nothing. Of course, do all the research you can in advance. There are a gazillion websites that will tell you about customs in any one country or city you go to. So you've got to really start off actually interested in communicating with people in their terms, what relates to them, as opposed to you just showing up and saying, here, here I am. We're going to do everything my way. Very, very important. I've made this mistake before. Now, I typically give people advice. Don't start off a speech or presentation by saying, good morning, happy to be here, how are you? Today I'm going to talk because it's boring. But there are exceptions. Once I was doing a training in St. Croix and the Virgin Islands and several people said, tj, your methods aren't going to work here. Here, if you don't start off with a big, loud, friendly good morning, everyone will think you're really rude. Okay, I was wrong. You're right. We're going to do it your way. Because that's what everyone is expecting. Typically in my day long public speaking training workshops, I tell people and the organizers, hey, we're really going to work hard, get as many times on camera as possible. So we'll work through lunch, just sandwiches in, bring something simple, a salad. We'll be watching videos while we eat. We'll get more done. And I did that in Milan, Italy one time with a bunch of executives. And I was told, tj, that's not how we do things around here. That is uncouth. You sound like an American doing that. Here we're civilized. We take our lunchtime very seriously. And they rolled in a cartoon, nice white tablecloth, wine was poured. We had a very nice lunch. I said, okay, we'll do it your way. So again, the lesson here is don't try to push your way of doing things. Find out what people's goals are, find out how they want to go about it and what is comfortable for them, what they're used to. The simple matter of how you greet people. In some cultures, shaking hands between men and women is not considered an acceptable thing. In other cultures, you don't kiss on three cheeks. That's considered rude. So I can't give you advice on what's going to work in every single culture, but what I can do is give you the guideline of try to learn, read about it, research it, talk to people, watch and listen. If you do that and you go in with the intent, really trying to communicate with people on their terms, you will do fine.
