Communication challenges in a multicultural virtual working environment

Description:

Blog post outlines the energy and the amount of consideration language and cultural differences take when the working environment is virtual.

Keywords:

language, communication, virtual working

This blog post is my personal investigation and real life example of working in an organisation with more than one native language and virtual co-operation. At university level, we all know that language and communication is challenging when you don’t share the same native language. But when you take the discussion in virtual environment and have it by writing in chat or calling virtual phone calls over Skype, things demand even more consideration. Welcome to read my experiences.

I work in a digital advertising agency. Our organisation is a middle sized Finnish company operating physically in Finland, and our customers and target markets are Germany, the Nordics and Finland. We have employees in two native languages, Finnish and Swedish, who all speak fluent English and also several other languages. We work in two offices in Finland and, occasionally, all over the world. Wherever you have a good enough internet connection.

We communicate with our clients in four languages at the moment: Finnish, Swedish, English and German. There is a lot of virtual and non-virtual communication at the office: video conferences, phone calls, email and face-to-face. The language in many meetings is English. There are lots of challenges between several languages and cultures, and possibilities for misunderstanding.

I did a small academic research to get some proper references before I tell you my thoughts.

●       Serçe et al (2011, 498) emphasize that communication skills, language and culture are deeply intertwined.

●       Mukherjee (2012, 276, 279), while defining culture as a part of social features, highlights the complexity the different cultures bring to communication and knowledge sharing. According to him, in virtual teams the cultural differences require more active construction of good relations and their maintenance (Mukherjee 2012, 281).

●       Crampton (2011, 346, 357-9) discusses the perceiving in virtual team communication between cultures, and finds the biggest challenges in understanding priorities, knowing did the message got across and interpreting silence during the virtual discussion. In the virtual communication you are missing facial expressions, tone of voice and body language, and every interpretation depends on the recipient.

●       Crampton (2011, 359) especially underlines interpreting silence. He means the moments you are waiting for the confirmation email, the silent nodding or thinking yep. Silence can be interpreted in totally yes – or no.

With this setup there is quite a lot to do for us Finns. I have noticed the communication challenges with cultural dimensions: way of expressing things, the compliments and small talk, and interpretation of small talk in messages. Especially Finnish language is plain and rude in the eyes of other language speakers, and the messages sound like demanding commands. It’s not that we are rude, but it’s a cultural matter. Once I explained to our customer, why there is no “please” and “thank you” words in the Finnish translation. I had to think about the explanation.

When I write a chat message or email to a familiar colleague, all these misunderstandings are smaller and more easily avoided. So if I know the person, it is easier since I know something about the other person’s way of communicating. When the receiver is unfamiliar, every character matters. It is really easy to sound impolite for example in email. I have also noticed that people withdraw easily when they are misunderstood once. The problem is that excessive caution does not take the message across at all.

The awkward silence when one specific word from your vocabulary is missing is better to fill with small talk or explanation of what is in your mind – the silence makes the message interpretation a lottery. Keeping this in mind, is sending email easier than direct chatting or Skype calls? It leaves a bit time to read and understand the message. Depending on personality, it also can avoid making too hasty conclusions. I feel that in virtual discussion the biggest misunderstandings come from quick conclusions and unasked questions. You don’t want to seem stupid by asking too many questions – it is easy and quick to say ‘Yes ok, I get it’.

From the reference articles I did pick up one important thought for this blog post. Martins (2004, 815) wrote that it is more important to believe in the matter of what you’re doing: productive virtual teams communicate more but in less official ways. When you care, you ask the questions because you are interested. This leads to successful communication in any language and culture. So, more is really more.

As a conclusion for this blog post of communicating in a multicultural virtual environment the main findings are actually pretty pleasant.

●       Get to know people you work with. Have a party, meet your clients.

●       Writing business correspondence letters at university is not stupid. It makes sense.

●       Do what you like and believe in what you do. Care.

And I think it is fair for humankind to use some emojis in written communication. :)

Few further reading about the subject:

https://hbr.org/2014/12/getting-virtual-teams-right

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244197

https://refinem.com/top-5-common-communication-challenges-with-virtual-teams/

REFERENCE LIST

Cramton, C.D. (2001). The mutual knowledge problem and its consequences for dispersed collaboration. Organization Science, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 346–371.

Martins, L.L., Gilson, L.L. & Maynard, M.T. (2004). Virtual teams: what do we know and where do we go from here? Journal of Management, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 805–835.

Mukherjee, D., Lahiri, S., Mukherjee, D. & Billing, T.K. (2012). Leading virtual teams: how do social, cognitive, and behavioral capabilities matter? Management Decision, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 273–290.

Serçe, F.C., Swigger, K., Alpaslan, F.N., Brazile, R., Dafoulas, G. & Lopez, V. (2011).

Online collaboration: collaborative behavior patterns and factors affecting globally

distributed team performance. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 27, pp. 490–503.

Text by Kaisu Koskiaho, a student of Independent Study in English course

Understanding the minds of Finnish people

Have you seen a Finn who is speaking and laughing loudly in a crowd; making a show of oneself? Or is your image of a typical Finn a person who sits quietly in the corner observing the crowd? I am sure that these both types of people do exist but the latter one is what we usually think Finns are like. But why? This is a cultural matter. Whether the Finns want it or not they more or less think that it was just a while ago they still lived alone in a cabin surrounded by a thick pine forest. This image is scary but at the same time tells something essential about Finns. I give you some hints how to understand the minds of Finnish people:

1      Success

It is okay to succeed. It is okay to make profit . It is okay to be rich. It is not okay to show it. It is not okay to brag about it. Old Finnish saying goes like this (freely translated): If one has a fortune, one should keep it hidden.

2      Asking for help

Finns are hard-working people. From the beginning of time many Finnish people have been working in agriculture, from early morning to late evening. Finns are used to earning their own living and they are proud of it. They want to do things themselves because they can. Only if they are forced, they ask for help.

3   Failing

Finland is full of innovations and people with new ideas. Finns could be brilliant in many areas of  business if they just had the courage to put things forward. Entrepreneurship is highly valued by Finns but only too seldom people start their own business. As people say in Eastern Finland: we don’t dare.  That means that they are afraid. There is a 50 percent possibility to fail. Yes, Finns are likely to think of failing. The big question might be: what if I don’t make it or what do people say? That is the reason why people often keep good ideas in their diaries or in their drawers.

4     Swedish people

Finns have many stereotypes for Swedish people. For example, Finns can think that Swedish people get things easier in life or the Swedes were born a golden spoon in their mouth (a Finnish saying). When Finns are competing against Swedes in athletics, it is very serious. Winning the Swedes is the only option. There is nothing more rewarding than winning Swedes in ice-hockey in World Championship games.

Were you able to identify some of the above mentioned features? If you did, you have started to understand Finns.  You have a real possibility to succeed in social gatherings with Finns.

I think that Finns should be proud of what they are. All those limitations make Finns brilliant. These features make Finns a little strange but unique.

Text: Riina Kosonen, a student in Independent Study in English course

Don’t be shy. Speak it up!

What differentiates a passionate language learner from an ordinary one? There can be many personal aspects also included, but undoubtedly the fearless attitude to practice the language via speaking and to learn through making mistakes is among the main distinctions.

A passionate language learner knows that starting to speak as early as possible is extremely beneficial for the language process and can boost it a lot. Firstly, speaking improves the fluency since the knowledge of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary becomes the “quickly-accessed” assets of the brain. Secondly, communicating with a native speaker can be indeed an exciting as well as motivating activity for a learner to keep up developing the language skills. Meanwhile, this communication also supports the process of enlarging vocabulary and improving grammar skills of a learner.

I personally see learning languages as my hobby, and already from the age of six I have been learning and developing my English, originally being a Russian-speaker. Five years ago I moved to Finland, and from that moment I got an idea of learning Finnish somewhere in the future. Time goes by, and I ended up being a student of Lappeenranta University of Technology, where I finally was able to set my mind right in terms of learning Finnish. I went to all the Finnish courses, offered by the university’s Language Center, and enjoyed those so much that decided to practice more in “real world” cases: in shops, cafeterias, over the phone when ordering pizza or so on, and eventually never regretted this idea of mine 

I assume you can image how tough and embarrassing it was at the beginning, because I didn’t know a lot of words and could barely understand when an interlocutor was responding to me and I was humbly trying to express some thoughts of mine in Finnish. Sometimes people could understand me, sometimes they asked several times so I would repeat my phrase or express it in other words, but eventually this whole practice helped me a lot. And maybe it helped not only in the way of practice speaking, but in terms of reducing the internal mental barrier to open my mouth and speak it up.

Of course, you can’t just start talking a language straight after opening a grammar book on it. In order to proceed well with communication, it is essential to study and to acquire new skills and knowledge on vocabulary and grammar. Talking to a foreigner gives an opportunity to develop the communicating skills and to obtain more confidence, and most probably it supports the learning of slang or set expressions. However, to highlight – don’t give up on books or e-sources when learning, they are necessary to get a starting point and gain general understanding on the culture of the language.

To conclude, living far from home for a long time and travelling a lot, I was able to meet great number of interesting people – some of them were good at English, some could barely say a word in the foreign language, but what is pleasantly surprising is that the majority of them was not afraid of communicating not in their native language. So I hope after reading this, you will also challenge yourself a bit, and start practicing a new language by simply opening your mouth and saying “hi” in Finnish, Italian, German or whatever language you are learning now! Good luck and stay cool!

Text: Anastasiia Kisurina, a student of Independent Study in English course