High and low context communication

Today I want to talk about something that everyone who works in

international business must learn to do. Communicate across cultures.
International business people come from all different cultures right? So they
have different ways of communicating. Both on how they express their
ideas and how they receive their ideas.
I'm just to be clear. I'm not talking about the use of a particular language,
English or French or Chinese or whatever. I’m talking about communication
style within a language. communication style means how we exchange
information. how we show our feelings and how we understand other
people. so it is an international business people how do we communicate
across cultures. first by understanding the communication styles we end
others use and second by transferring that knowledge to the workplace.
So let’s get started. Now what communication styles do people use?
Basically they are two. One is low context and the other is high context. At
low context communication style and high context communication style.
Let's first define context. Well context is a situation or surrounding
information that nonverbal information that helps a person understand a
message better. for example someone knocking on the door right now and
we understand we’re having a class just by seeing the context to you.
right? desks students talking notes means standing her talking to you.
That's the context. so turning to learn first communication style: low context
communication is one person expresses an idea directly. They put the
important information into words. In low context communication we don’t
need the context or nonverbal information to communicate. The context is
low. Words are what’s important. Who uses low context communication?
well culturally speaking most north americans and europeans do. Let's look
at an example samely have an advertising agency and two professionals
both Americans, are discussing an idea for an ad for athletic shoes. one
says: I think the ad should feature world cup players. The other says: oh
no, I disagree. I think the ad should show everyday people.
See how each expressed their ideas very directly? With just words. This is
how low context communicators operate. Now let’s look at high context
communication. High context communication occurs when a person
expresses an idea indirectly, through body movement, facial expressions,
even silence. They show the important information nonverbally rather than
speaking. The context is very significant to the meaning of the message.
The context is high. Generally speaking the style of communication is
typical of Asians, Africans and other listeners. An example might be two
Egyptian bankers creating a long plan for a local business. The first banker
shows his partner's plan, which he put together the night before. numbers,
dates and so on. The partner lists the plan and response by remaining
silent. The first banker gets the message as the partner doesn’t like it. he
said so, with a silence. Now some important that recognizes each of these
two communication styles has its strengths and its weaknesses. Low
context communicators are often very productive because they quickly and
clearly identify these problems and find short term solutions and they’re fast
in developing the projects. but because of this fast style they may not build
strong long term business relationships. So if you’re working with low
context communicators, you need to remember this. Important ideas and
feelings are often expressed very directly and forcefully. Now high context
communicators on the other hand may seem to be slow. They often don't
move quickly to find solutions because they want to give more information
in … first . They don’t want to make mistakes. also they’re careful with their
opinions because they want to preserve their relationships with other
people. So if you’re working with high context communicators, remember
this. Things may happen slowly and important messages are often sent
nonverbally. so it’s now combined with two earlier examples. Let's say our
egyption banker context the american at the ad agency. He tells his banker
he’d like to do some advertisement. so the american creates two ads. One
shows the bank’s name in huge bright letters that it’s about all the bank
services and several comments to satisfied customers. The other ad shows
only a picture of a woman smiling in front of a bankery, with the words
business loans for everyone and the bank’s name at the bottom of the ad.
Can you guess which ad the egyption banker likes best? and why? the one
on the picture of the happy woman in the bankery of course. the high
context ads appeal to the person with the high context communication style
and even the ad agency representative from low context culture understood
that her customer was from high context culture, ok? Well, that’s all for
now. Next time, I want you to think about which kind of communicator you
are? High or low context? And what experiences have you had
communicating across cultures?