how culture influence view of events, and how it influence the way you interact or communicate with other who do not belong to your culture
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
So what is “culture”? There are many cultures: professional, corporate, educational, national (with geographical differences), religious/spiritual, sexual orientation, generational, family and gender. All of these cultures influence us—we see the world through our cultural lens(es). Another important point is that we learn culture and cultural language is not inherited.
Sometimes one or more cultures may take dominance over another culture, depending on the situation. Examples are:
Corporate culture dominates over national culture
National culture dominates over religious culture
Religious culture dominates over sexual orientation
Generational culture dominates over gender culture
How does culture influence us?
A number of cultural aspects influence the way we interact with other people, including national culture, gender culture, corporate culture and various communication styles. All these elements influence;
how we conduct work
our behavior and style
our use of language
how we solve challenges, problems, and conflicts
how we negotiate and
how we go about creating relationships.
The Importance of Values
Diving a bit deeper on that, all of the above is driven by our values. Values and beliefs are learnt in a national culture, and they may be unconscious. You may not be aware of your own values and beliefs until you are confronted with someone different than you, e.g. working with a colleague from another country (and it may be quite a challenge). Values vary enormously, especially across national cultures. We have a tendency to judge other’s behaviour based on our own cultural norms, the “lens” we see through. And here we have lots of opportunities for potential conflict, misunderstandings and miscommunication. Different values lead to different behavior, behavior you may not understand. It is important that we try to learn and appreciate these differences in order to work effectively with people from other cultures.
Individual vs. group values and behaviours.
According to Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (two cultural “gurus”), individuals are either self-or community-oriented. Which community or group, we identify with differs enormously. E.g. the French identify with country and family, whereas the Japanese identify with the corporation, and the Irish with the Roman Catholic Church.
It has been argued that individualism is the trend of the modern society, but is it really? How often does someone invent a new product all on his own? Or how often do we achieve something only out of own efforts (no help from friends, partners or family)?
Concerning our values, most likely our individual values don’t change in a group. It is very likely that we adapt our behaviors to fit in with the group. This does not always happen, but it does occur more often than you probably think. You can still stay authentic to yourself, at the same time as you try to understand the other and flex your behavior to create a win-win situation for both of you. This is behaving in a “culturally intelligent” way.
What about adapting to a national culture as an expatriate or immigrant, is it a threat to you? Will you forget your origins? You will probably adapt over time, which could mean forgetting some cultural codes and habits (have had some funny situations with that myself). This is in fact practical and it makes sense. It is “survival of the fittest”. We humans have historically been masters at adapting to our environments. Your values will likely stay the same, though.
Building understanding