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The problem is that cultural differences are most often in conflict during lots of communication, especially face to face in meetings and so forth. The more yo
by icelancer 5y ago
The problem is that cultural differences are most often in conflict during lots of communication, especially face to face in meetings and so forth.
The more you eliminate synchronous communication, in-person interaction, and office work... the less those cultural differences are going to matter.
- truffdog 5y agoI don't think thats true, having worked with teams in Russia, Belgium, and India. The cultural differences can be a huge deal and sink projects.
- arp242 5y agoStrong disagree with that one; I think it's the exact opposite in fact. The more direct communication is, the easier it is to avoid and/or quickly clear up misunderstandings and the like. Some email that was sent and misunderstood? Your entire project can go off-rails. People can hold grudges over something that was not intended at all. Etc. You're much more likely to catch these things early in face-to-face communication due to body language, tone of voice, etc. Text communication is pretty hard to get right in general and text communication in a non-native language is even harder, doubly so when you're talking to a native speaker and there's an asymmetry in language skills, which there often is, even with fairly proficient non-native speakers. Add to that cultural differences on what is or isn't "appropriate" or different interpretations on various things and it can become quite tricky to communicate effectively. This table is a good example of this: https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2014/02/anglodutch_final.gif https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2014/02/angl...