Skills and Strategies on International

Business Communication
Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)
Negotiating Success (Hornickel, 2014), Key Business Skills (Tormalin, 2012), Negotiation (Harvard, 2002)

Prepared by: Erilia Kesumahati

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills
1. Know yourself to know others

2. Clarify, clarify, clarify

3. Listen, listen, listen

4. Summarize, summarize, summarize

5. Use questions effectively and often

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)
 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

6. Spell things out explicitly

7. Be open and friendly

8. Invite feedback, don’t just expect it

9. Grade your language to your counterpart

10. Make sure your verbal and non-verbal communication agree

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

1. Know yourself to know others

• It is necessary to identify and keep in mind the response you require from any communication.
• It is important to be aware of your own communication styles and how you may be perceived by
or affect other people.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

2. Clarify, clarify, clarify

• Clarification is a vital way of overcoming the noise inherent in any communication.

• Paraphrasing of what we have heard to make sure the communication is accurate.
• It is important to clarify the feelings expressed as much as the substance communication.
• Confirm that you have accurately understand and acknowledge the message.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)
3. Listen, listen, listen
• Demonstrate interests.
• Acknowledge comments with head or voice.
• Adopt and enquiring attitude.
• Evaluate the meaning of words. They mean different things in different places.
• Listen for what it is not being said.
• Focus on the central message.
• Listen for both content and relational information.
• Listen for the whole message, not just part of it.
• Give yourself time to think before replying.
Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)
 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

4. Summarize, summarize, summarize

• Confirm your understanding of other people’s beliefs, arguments, and intentions at regular periods
in the dialogue.
• This provides signposts to clarify where others are coming from, and creates a shared
understanding on which to base your response to others.
• Effective summarizing takes no more than half the time required for the original opinions to be
expressed.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

5. Use questions effectively and often

• Use simple, straightforward questions and make sure you get the answer to the question you
asked.
• Use open-ended questions to expand the discussion and closed-questions to prompt for specifics.
• Avoid interrupting.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

6. Spell things out explicitly

• In the absence of a shared cultural and contextual understanding, individuals from different
cultural backgrounds can face ambiguity when trying to decipher each other’s communication.
• One way of removing this ambiguity is to formulate and describe informational and relational
information a great deal more explicitly than is normal.
• This means saying exactly what you mean and meaning exactly what you say.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

7. Be open and friendly

• Demonstrating patience, positive feedback and human interest which is works in any culture.
• Giving more than the minimum and mirroring your partner’s tone (using humor where
appropriate).
• Keeping your language positive, constructive and optimistic at all times. This will help turn debate
into dialogue.
• Maintaining culturally appropriate eye contact and body language and making statement that
acknowledge the speaker.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

8. Invite feedback - don’t just expect it

• Base feedback on concrete observable data. Avoid accusations and instead present data.
• Make feedback specific, not general.
• Focus on the behavior, not on the person.
• Be descriptive, not evaluative.
• Use “I” messages rather than “You” messages.
• Share information rather than giving advice.
• Take into account the needs of both the receiver and giver of feedback.
• Direct feedback toward behaviour that the receiver can do something about.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

8. Invite feedback - don’t just expect it (cont.)

• Aim for dialogue, not debate.
• Time it right.
• Give the right amount of information.
• Check that the feedback has been understood correctly.
• Follow it up.
• Be prepared for reactions.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

9. Grade your languange to your counterpart

• Speak slowly and carefully.
• Avoid shouting.
• Avoid idioms or sarcasm and take care with humour.
• Build in pause for understanding.
• Structure your language in a clear and logical way with one idea per sentence.
• Explain complex issues, but make clear that it is an explanation and not an alternative message.
• Choose words that are appropriate for each situation.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Cross-cultural
Cross-culturalCommunication
CommunicationSkills
Skills(Cont.)
(Cont.)

10. Make sure your verbal and non-verbal

communication agree
• It is important to make sure that your body language mirrors your spoken language: all
communication channels need to reinforce the same message.
• It is important to be yourself and use body language that is natural to you.
• Skillful communicators understand the importance of non-verbal communication and use it not
only to increase their effectiveness, but also to understand more clearly what someone else is
really saying.

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Handling
HandlingCross-cultural
Cross-culturalMisunderstanding
Misunderstanding

Recognize the cultural dimension

Analysed what caused it

Five Steps
Decide what your options are
RADAR Strategy
Act on the best option

Review what happened

Understanding Cultural Awareness and Cross-Cultural Communication Skills (Culturewise, 2015)

 Business
BusinessNegotiation
Negotiation

Negotiation Definition
• Negotiation is the mean by which people deal with their differences. To negotiate is to seek mutual agreement
through dialogue.

Business Negotiation Characteristic and Benefit

• It can be formal or less formal.
• Good negotiation skills can yield benefit for company and employee (profit, a sizeable payoff, effective
working arrangements, etc.)

Negotiation (Harvard, 2002)

 Types
TypesofofNegotiation
Negotiation

Distributive • A negotiation in which the parties compete over the distribution of a fixed
sum value. “Who will claim the most value?”. One party’s gain comes at
Negotiation the expense of the others (zero-sum -game).

Integrative • A negotiation in which the parties cooperate to achieve maximum

benefits by integrating their interests into an agreement. These deals
Deal about creating value and claiming it.

Negotiation (Harvard, 2002)

 The
TheFive
FiveStages
StagesofofaaNegotiation
Negotiation

1. Prepare 2. Explore 3. Propose 3. Bargain 4. Agree

Key Business Skills (Tomalin, 2012)

 Creating
CreatingRange
Rangeand
andAlternative
AlternativeofofNegotiation
Negotiation

1. Wish
• The wish is unspoken, internal-to-you-process only, done before the actual
negotiations begins.

2. Starting Point
• The starting point will be the least you can “realistically” expect to pay for
something or the most you can realistically expect to receive for something.

3. Bottom Line
• This is your walk poin. You will go no higher than (if you are buying) or lower
than (if you are selling).
Negotiating Success (Hornickel, 2014)
 Creating Range and Alternative of Negotiation
Creating Range and Alternative of Negotiation
(Cont.)
(Cont.)

4. BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement)

• This is when there is no deal possible with the current other party. You have tried your best but it is not
going to happen. Your BATNA will be your safety nets.

5. WATNA (Worst Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement)

• This can be a helpful checking in anticipation of a deal possibly not going through. If there is no other
option, review Bottom Line again.

Negotiating Success (Hornickel, 2014)