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4.4: Cross-Cultural Communication

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JR Dingwall, Chuck Labrie, Trecia McLennon and Laura Underwood

JR Dingwall, Chuck Labrie, Trecia McLennon and Laura Underwood
Olds College via eCampusOntario

What is Culture?

Learning Objectives

Upon completing this chapter, you should be able to:

distinguish between surface and deep culture in the context of the iceberg model,
describe how cross-cultural communication is shaped by cultural diversity,
explain how the encoding and decoding process takes shape in cross-cultural communication,
describe circumstances that require effective cross-cultural communication, and
describe approaches to enhance interpersonal communication in cross-cultural contexts.

We may be tempted to think of intercultural communication as interaction between two people from different countries. While two distinct national passports communicate a key part of our identity non-verbally, what happens when two people from two different parts of the same country communicate? Indeed, intercultural communication happens between subgroups of the same country. Whether it be the distinctions between high and low Germanic dialects, the differences in perspective between an Eastern Canadian and a Western Canadian, or the rural-versus-urban dynamic, our geographic, linguistic, educational, sociological, and psychological traits influence our communication.

Culture is part of the very fabric of our thought, and we cannot separate ourselves from it, even as we leave home and begin to define ourselves in new ways through work and achievements. Every business or organization has a culture, and within what may be considered a global culture, there are many subcultures or co-cultures. For example, consider the difference between the sales and accounting departments in a corporation. We can quickly see two distinct groups with their own symbols, vocabulary, and values. Within each group there may also be smaller groups, and each member of each department comes from a distinct background that in itself influences behaviour and interaction.

Suppose we have a group of students who are all similar in age and educational level. Do gender and the societal expectations of roles influence interaction? Of course! There will be differences on multiple levels. Among these students not only do the boys and girls communicate in distinct ways, but there will also be differences among the boys as well as differences among the girls. Even within a group of sisters, common characteristics exist, but they will still have differences, and all these differences contribute to intercultural communication. Our upbringing shapes us. It influences our worldview, what we value, and how we interact with each other. We create culture, and it defines us.

Culture involves beliefs, attitudes, values, and traditions that are shared by a group of people. More than just the clothes we wear, the movies we watch, or the video games we play, all representations of our environment are part of our culture. Culture also involves the psychological aspects and behaviours that are expected of members of our group. For example, if we are raised in a culture where males speak while females are expected to remain silent, the context of the communication interaction governs behaviour. From the choice of words (message), to how we communicate (in person, or by e-mail), to how we acknowledge understanding with a nod or a glance (non-verbal feedback), to the internal and external interference, all aspects of communication are influenced by culture.

Culture in the centre pointing to 5 circles each with a different word in thee centre - Learned, Shared, Dynamic, Systemic, and Symbolic.

What Is Culture? by L. Underwood Adapted from Understanding Culture; in Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (n.d.)

Culture consists of the shared beliefs, values, and assumptions of a group of people who learn from one another and teach to others that their behaviours, attitudes, and perspectives are the correct ways to think, act, and feel.

It is helpful to think about culture in the following five ways:

Culture is learned.
Culture is shared.
Culture is dynamic.
Culture is systemic.
Culture is symbolic.

The Cultural Iceberg by L. Underwood Adapted from Lindner (2013)

The iceberg, a commonly used metaphor to describe culture, is great for illustrating the tangible and the intangible. When talking about culture, most people focus on the “tip of the iceberg,” which is visible but makes up just 10 percent of the object. The rest of the iceberg, 90 percent of it, is below the waterline. Many business leaders, when addressing intercultural situations, pick up on the things they can see—things on the “tip of the iceberg.” Things like food, clothing, and language difference are easily and immediately obvious, but focusing only on these can mean missing or overlooking deeper cultural aspects such as thought patterns, values, and beliefs that are under the surface. Solutions to any interpersonal miscommunication that results become temporary bandages covering deeply rooted conflicts.

Cultural Membership

How do you become a member of a culture, and how do you know when you are full member? So much of communication relies on shared understanding, that is, shared meanings of words, symbols, gestures, and other communication elements. When we have a shared understanding, communication comes easily, but when we assign different meanings to these elements, we experience communication challenges.

What shared understandings do people from the same culture have? Researchers who study cultures around the world have identified certain characteristics that define a culture. These characteristics are expressed in different ways, but they tend to be present in nearly all cultures:

rites of initiation
common history and traditions
values and principles
purpose and mission
symbols, boundaries, and status indicators

Terms to Know

Although they are often used interchangeably, it is important to note the distinctions among multicultural, cross-cultural, and intercultural communication.

Multiculturalism is a rather surface approach to the coexistence and tolerance of different cultures. It takes the perspective of “us and the others” and typically focuses on those tip-of-the-iceberg features of culture, thus highlighting and accepting some differences but maintaining a “safe” distance. If you have a multicultural day at work, for example, it usually will feature some food, dance, dress, or maybe learning about how to say a few words or greetings in a sampling of cultures.

Cross-cultural approaches typically go a bit deeper, the goal being to be more diplomatic or sensitive. They account for some interaction and recognition of difference through trade and cooperation, which builds some limited understanding—such as, for instance, bowing instead of shaking hands, or giving small but meaningful gifts. Even using tools like Hofstede, as you’ll learn about in this chapter, gives us some overarching ideas about helpful things we can learn when we compare those deeper cultural elements across cultures. Sadly, they are not always nuanced comparisons; a common drawback of cross-cultural comparisons is that we can wade into stereotyping and ethnocentric attitudes—judging other cultures by our own cultural standards—if we aren’t mindful.

Lastly, when we look at intercultural approaches, we are well beneath the surface of the iceberg, intentionally making efforts to better understand other cultures as well as ourselves. An intercultural approach is not easy, often messy, but when you get it right, it is usually far more rewarding than the other two approaches. The intercultural approach is difficult and effective for the same reasons; it acknowledges complexity and aims to work through it to a positive, inclusive, and equitable outcome.

Whenever we encounter someone, we notice similarities and differences. While both are important, it is often the differences that contribute to communication troubles. We don’t see similarities and differences only on an individual level. In fact, we also place people into in-groups and out-groups based on the similarities and differences we perceive. Recall what you read about social identity and discrimination in the last chapter—the division of people into in-groups and out-groups is where your social identity can result in prejudice or discrimination if you are not cautious about how you frame this.

We tend to react to someone we perceive as a member of an out-group based on the characteristics we attach to the group rather than the individual (Allen, 2010). In these situations, it is more likely that stereotypes and prejudice will influence our communication. This division of people into opposing groups has been the source of great conflict around the world, as with, for example, the division between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; between Croats, Serbs, and Bosnian Muslims in the former Yugoslavia; and between males and females during women’s suffrage. Divisions like these can still cause conflict on an individual level. Learning about difference and why it matters will help us be more competent communicators and help to prevent conflict.

Theories of Cross-Cultural Communication

Social psychologist Geert Hofstede (Hofstede, 1982, 2001, 2005) is one of the most well known researchers in cross-cultural communication and management. His website offers useful tools and explanations about a range of cultural dimensions that can be used to compare various dominant national cultures. Hofstede’s theory places cultural dimensions on a continuum that range from high to low and really only make sense when the elements are compared to another culture. Hofstede’s dimensions include the following:

Power Distance: High-power distance means a culture accepts and expects a great deal of hierarchy; low-power distance means the president and janitor could be on the same level.
Individualism: High individualism means that a culture tends to put individual needs ahead of group or collective needs.
Uncertainty Avoidance: High uncertainty avoidance means a culture tends to go to some lengths to be able to predict and control the future. Low uncertainty avoidance means the culture is more relaxed about the future, which sometimes shows in being willing to take risks.
Masculinity: High masculinity relates to a society valuing traits that were traditionally considered masculine, such as competition, aggressiveness, and achievement. A low masculinity score demonstrates traits that were traditionally considered feminine, such as cooperation, caring, and quality of life.
Long-term orientation: High long-term orientation means a culture tends to take a long-term, sometimes multigenerational view when making decisions about the present and the future. Low long-term orientation is often demonstrated in cultures that want quick results and that tend to spend instead of save.
Indulgence: High indulgence means cultures that are OK with people indulging their desires and impulses. Low indulgence or restraint-based cultures value people who control or suppress desires and impulses.

As mentioned previously, these tools can provide wonderful general insight into making sense of understanding differences and similarities across key below-the-surface cross-cultural elements. However, when you are working with people, they may or may not conform to what’s listed in the tools. For example, if you are Canadian but grew up in a tight-knit Amish community, your value system may be far more collective than individualist. Or if you are Aboriginal, your long-term orientation may be far higher than that of mainstream Canada. It’s also important to be mindful that in a Canadian workplace, someone who is non-white or wears clothes or religious symbols based on their ethnicity may be far more “mainstream” under the surface. The only way you know for sure is to communicate interpersonally by using active listening, keeping an open mind, and avoiding jumping to conclusions.

Trompenaars

Fons Trompenaars is another researcher who came up with a different set of cross-cultural measures. A more detailed explanation of his seven dimensions of culture can be found at this website (The Seven Dimensions of Culture, n.d.), but we provide a brief overview below:

Universalism vs. Particularism: the extent that a culture is more prone to apply rules and laws as a way of ensuring fairness, in contrast to a culture that looks at the specifics of context and looks at who is involved, to ensure fairness. The former puts the task first; the latter puts the relationship first.
Individualism vs. Communitarianism: the extent that people prioritize individual interests versus the community’s interest.
Specific vs. Diffuse: the extent that a culture prioritizes a head-down, task-focused approach to doing work, versus an inclusive, overlapping relationship between life and work.
Neutral vs. Emotional: the extent that a culture works to avoid showing emotion versus a culture that values a display or expression of emotions.
Achievement vs. Ascription: the degree to which a culture values earned achievement in what you do versus ascribed qualities related to who you are based on elements like title, lineage, or position.
Sequential Time vs. Synchronous Time: the degree to which a culture prefers doing things one at time in an orderly fashion versus preferring a more flexible approach to time with the ability to do many things at once.
Internal Direction vs. Outer Direction: the degree to which members of a culture believe they have control over themselves and their environment versus being more conscious of how they need to conform to the external environment.

Like Hofstede’s work, Trompenaars’s dimensions help us understand some of those beneath-the-surface-of-the-iceberg elements of culture. It’s equally important to understand our own cultures as it is to look at others, always being mindful that our cultures, as well as others, are made up of individuals.

Ting-Toomey

Stella Ting-Toomey’s face negotiation theory builds on some of the cross-cultural concepts you’ve already learned, such as, for example, individual versus collective cultures. When discussing face negotiation theory, face means your identity, your image, how you look or come off to yourself and others (communicationtheory.org, n.d.). The theory says that this concern for “face” is something that is common across every culture, but various cultures—especially Eastern versus Western cultures—approach this concern in different ways. Individualist cultures, for example tend to be more concerned with preserving their own face, while collective cultures tend to focus more on preserving others’ faces. Loss of face leads to feelings of embarrassment or identity erosion, whereas gaining or maintaining face can mean improved status, relations, and general positivity. Actions to preserve or reduce face is called facework. Power distance is another concept you’ve already learned that is important to this this theory. Most collective cultures tend to have more hierarchy or a higher power distance when compared to individualist cultures. This means that maintaining the face of others at a higher level than yours is an important part of life. This is contrasted with individualist cultures, where society expects you to express yourself, make your opinion known, and look out for number one. This distinction becomes really important in interpersonal communication between people whose cultural backgrounds have different approaches to facework; it usually leads to conflict. Based on this dynamic, the following conflict styles typically occur:

Domination: dominating or controlling the conflict (individualist approach)
Avoiding: dodging the conflict altogether (collectivist approach)
Obliging: yielding to the other person (collectivist approach)
Compromising: a give-and-take negotiated approach to solving the conflict (individualist approach)
Integrating: a collaborative negotiated approach to solving the conflict (individualist approach)

Another important facet of this theory involves high-context versus low-context cultures. High-context cultures are replete with implied meanings beyond the words on the surface and even body language that may not be obvious to people unfamiliar with the context. Low-context cultures are typically more direct and tend to use words to attempt to convey precise meaning. For example, an agreement in a high-context culture might be verbal because the parties know each other’s families, histories, and social position. This knowledge is sufficient for the agreement to be enforced. No one actually has to say, “I know where you live. If you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, …” because the shared understanding is implied and highly contextual. A low-context culture usually requires highly detailed, written agreements that are signed by both parties, sometimes mediated through specialists like lawyers, as a way to enforce the agreement. This is low context because the written agreement spells out all the details so that not much is left to the imagination or “context.”

Verbal and Non-Verbal Differences

Cultures have different ways of verbally expressing themselves. For example, consider the people of the United Kingdom. Though English is spoken throughout the UK, the accents can be vastly different from one city or county to the next. If you were in conversation with people from each of the four countries that make up the UK—England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, you would find that each person pronounces words differently. Even though they all speak English, each has their own accent, slang terms, speaking volume, metaphors, and other differences. You would even find this within the countries themselves. A person who grew up in the south of England has a different accent than someone from the north, for example. This can mean that it is challenging for people to understand one another clearly, even when they are from the same country!

While we may not have such distinctive differences in verbal delivery within Canada, we do have two official languages, as well as many other languages in use within our borders. This inevitably means that you’ll communicate with people who have different accents than you do, or those who use words and phrases that you don’t recognize. For example, if you’re Canadian, you’re probably familiar with slang terms like toque (a knitted hat), double-double (as in, a coffee with two creams and two sugars—preferably from Tim Hortons), parkade (parking garage), and toonie (a two-dollar coin), but your friends from other countries might respond with quizzical looks when you use these words in conversation!

When communicating with someone who has a different native language or accent than you do, avoid using slang terms and be conscious about speaking clearly. Slow down, and choose your words carefully. Ask questions to clarify anything that you don’t understand, and close the conversation by checking that everything is clear to the other person.

Cultures also have different non-verbal ways of delivering and interpreting information. For example, some cultures may treat personal space differently than do people in North America, where we generally tend to stay as far away from one another as possible. For example, if you get on an empty bus or subway car and the next person who comes on sits in the seat right next to you, you might feel discomfort, suspicion, or even fear. In a different part of the world this behaviour might be considered perfectly normal. Consequently, when people from cultures with different approaches to space spend time in North America, they can feel puzzled at why people aim for so much distance. They may tend to stand closer to other people or feel perfectly comfortable in crowds, for example.

This tendency can also come across in the level of acceptable physical contact. For example, kissing someone on the cheek as a greeting is typical in France and Spain—and could even be a method of greeting in a job interview. In North America, however, we typically use a handshake during a formal occasion and apologize if we accidentally touch a stranger’s shoulder as we brush past. In contrast, Japanese culture uses a non-contact form of greeting—the bow—to demonstrate respect and honour.

Meaning and Mistranslation

Culturally influenced differences in language and meaning can lead to some interesting encounters, ranging from awkward to informative to disastrous. In terms of awkwardness, you have likely heard stories of companies that failed to exhibit communication competence in their naming and/or advertising of products in another language. For example, in Taiwan, Pepsi used the slogan “Come Alive With Pepsi,” only to find out later that, when translated, it meant, “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead” (Kwintessential, 2012). Similarly, American Motors introduced a new car called the Matador to the Puerto Rican market, only to learn that Matador means “killer,” which wasn’t very comforting to potential buyers.

At a more informative level, the words we use to give positive reinforcement are culturally relative. In Canada and the United Kingdom, for example, parents commonly reinforce their child’s behaviour by saying, “Good girl” or “Good boy.” There isn’t an equivalent for such a phrase in other European languages, so the usage in only these two countries has been traced back to the puritan influence on beliefs about good and bad behaviour (Wierzbicka, 2004).

One of the most publicized and deadliest cross-cultural business mistakes occurred in India in 1984. Union Carbide, an American company, controlled a plant used to make pesticides. The company underestimated the amount of cross-cultural training that would be needed to allow the local workers, many of whom were not familiar with the technology or language/jargon used in the instructions for plant operations, to do their jobs. This lack of competent communication led to a gas leak that killed more than 2,000 people and, over time, led to more than 500,000 injuries (Varma, 2012).

Language and Culture

Through living and working in five different countries, one of the authors notes that when you learn a language, you learn a culture. In fact, a language can tell you a lot about a culture if you look closely. Here’s one example:

A native English speaker landed in South Korea and tried to learn the basics of saying hello in the Korean language. Well, it turned out that it wasn’t as simple as saying hello! It depended on whom you are saying hello to. The Korean language has many levels and honorifics that dictate not only what you say but also how you say it and to whom. So, even a mere hello is not straightforward; the words change. For example, if you are saying hello to someone younger or in a lower position, you will use (anyeong); but for a peer at the same level, you will use a different term (anyeoung ha seyo); and a different one still for an elder, superior, or dignitary (anyeong ha shim nikka). As a result, the English speaker learned that in Korea people often ask personal questions upon meeting—questions such as, How old are you? Are you married? What do you do for a living? At first, she thought people were very nosy. Then she realized that it was not so much curiosity driving the questions but, rather, the need to understand how to speak to you in the appropriate way.

In Hofstede’s terms, this adherence to hierarchy or accepted “levels” in society speak to the notion of moving from her home country (Canada) with a comparatively low power distance to a country with a higher power distance. These contrasting norms show that what’s considered normal in a culture is also typically reflected to some degree in the language.

What are the implications of this for interpersonal communication? What are the implications of this for body language (bowing) in the South Korean context? What are the ways to be respectful or formal in your verbal and non-verbal language?

Comparing and Contrasting

How can you prepare to work with people from cultures different than your own? Start by doing your homework. Let’s assume that you have a group of Japanese colleagues visiting your office next week. How could you prepare for their visit? If you’re not already familiar with the history and culture of Japan, this is a good time to do some reading or a little bit of research online. If you can find a few English-language publications from Japan (such as newspapers and magazines), you may wish to read through them to become familiar with current events and gain some insight into the written communication style used.

Preparing this way will help you to avoid mentioning sensitive topics and to show correct etiquette to your guests. For example, Japanese culture values modesty, politeness, and punctuality, so with this information, you can make sure you are early for appointments and do not monopolize conversations by talking about yourself and your achievements. You should also find out what faux pas to avoid. For example, in company of Japanese people, it is customary to pour others’ drinks (another person at the table will pour yours). Also, make sure you do not put your chopsticks vertically in a bowl of rice, as this is considered rude. If you have not used chopsticks before and you expect to eat Japanese food with your colleagues, it would be a nice gesture to make an effort to learn. Similarly, learning a few words of the language (e.g., hello, nice to meet you, thank you, and goodbye) will show your guests that you are interested in their culture and are willing to make the effort to communicate.

If you have a colleague who has travelled to Japan or has spent time in the company of Japanese colleagues before, ask them about their experience so that you can prepare. What mistakes should you avoid? How should you address and greet your colleagues? Knowing the answers to these questions will make you feel more confident when the time comes. But most of all, remember that a little goes a long way. Your guests will appreciate your efforts to make them feel welcome and comfortable. People are, for the most part, kind and understanding, so if you make some mistakes along the way, don’t worry too much. Most people are keen to share their culture with others, so your guests will be happy to explain various practices to you.

Culture Shock by L. Underwood

You might find that, in your line of work, you are expected to travel internationally. When you visit a country that is different from your own, you might experience culture shock. Defined as “the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone when they are suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes” (OxfordDictionaries.com, 2015), it can disorient us and make us feel uncertain when we are in an unfamiliar cultural climate. Have you ever visited a new country and felt overwhelmed by the volume of sensory information coming at you? From new sights and smells to a new language and unfamiliarity with the location, the onset of culture shock is not entirely surprising. To mitigate this, it helps to read as much as you can about the new culture before your visit. Learn some of the language and customs, watch media programs from that culture to familiarize yourself, and do what you can to prepare. But remember not to hold the information you gather too closely. In doing so, you risk going in with stereotypes. As shown in the figure above, going in with an open attitude and choosing to respond to difficulties with active listening and non-judgmental observation typically leads to building rapport, understanding, and positive outcomes over time.

Culture Shock

Experiencing culture shock does not require you to leave Canada. Moving from a rural to an urban centre (or vice versa), from an English-speaking to a French-speaking area, or moving to or from an ethnic enclave can challenge your notion of what it is to be a Canadian.

In one example, one of the authors participated in a language-based homestay in rural Quebec the summer before her first year of university. Prior to this, she had attended an urban high school in Toronto where the majority of her classmates were non-white and into urban music. When she went to take the train and saw that all the other kids were white, listening to alternative music, and playing hackey sack, she began to worry.

When she met her house mother upon arrival, the house mom looked displeased. Out of four students to stay in her home, two were non-white. The students discovered quickly that the house dad was a hunter, evident by the glass cabinet full of shotguns and the mounted moose heads on the wall. To add to all these changes, the students were forbidden to speak English as a way to help make the most of the French language immersion program. About two weeks into the program, the student from Toronto, a black girl, overheard the house mom talking with her roommate, a white girl from London, Ontario. She said, “You know, I was really concerned when I saw that we had a black and an Asian student, because we never had any people like that in our house before, so I didn’t know what to expect. But now, you know especially with your roommate from Toronto, I can see that they’re just like normal people!”

The urban to rural transition was stark, the language immersion was a challenge, and the culture of the other students as well as that of the host family was also a big change. With so many changes happening, one outcome that is consistent with what we know about one aspect of culture shock, is that most of the students on this immersion program reported sleeping way longer hours than usual. It’s but one way for your mind and body to cope with the rigours of culture shock!

Despite all the challenges, however, the benefit for the author was a 30 percent improvement in French language skills—skills that later came in handy during bilingual jobs, trips to France, and the ability to communicate with the global French-speaking community.

A Changing Worldview

One helpful way to develop your intercultural communication competence is to develop sensitivity to intercultural communication issues and best practices. From everything we have learned so far, it may feel complex and overwhelming. The Intercultural Development Continuum is a theory created by Mitchell Hammer (2012) that helps demystify the process of moving from monocultural approaches to intercultural approaches. There are five steps in this transition, and we will give a brief overview of each one below.

See if you can deduce the main points of the overview before expanding the selection.

The first two steps out of five reflect monocultural mindsets, which are ethnocentric. As you recall, ethnocentrism means evaluating other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture (OxfordDictionaries.com, 2015).

People who belong to dominant cultural groups in a given society or people who have had very little exposure to other cultures may be more likely to have a worldview that’s more monocultural according to Hammer (2009). But how does this cause problems in interpersonal communication? For one, being blind to the cultural differences of the person you want to communicate with (denial) increases the likelihood that you will encode a message that they won’t decode the way you anticipate, or vice versa.

For example, let’s say culture A considers the head a special and sacred part of the body that others should never touch, certainly not strangers or mere acquaintances. But let’s say in your culture people sometimes pat each other on the head as a sign of respect and caring. So you pat your culture A colleague on the head, and this act sets off a huge conflict.

It would take a great deal of careful communication to sort out such a misunderstanding, but if each party keeps judging the other by their own cultural standards, it’s likely that additional misunderstanding, conflict, and poor communication will transpire.

Using this example, polarization can come into play because now there’s a basis of experience for selective perception of the other culture. Culture A might say that your culture is disrespectful, lacks proper morals, and values, and it might support these claims with anecdotal evidence of people from your culture patting one another on the sacred head!

Meanwhile, your culture will say that culture A is bad-tempered, unintelligent, and angry by nature and that there would be no point in even trying to respect or explain things them.

It’s a simple example, but over time and history, situations like this have mounted and thus led to violence, even war and genocide.

According to Hammer (2009) the majority of people who have taken the IDI inventory, a 50-question questionnaire to determine where they are on the monocultural–intercultural continuum, fall in the category of minimization, which is neither monocultural nor intercultural. It’s the middle-of-the-road category that on one hand recognizes cultural difference but on the other hand simultaneously downplays it. While not as extreme as the first two situations, interpersonal communication with someone of a different culture can also be difficult here because of the same encoding/decoding issues that can lead to inaccurate perceptions. On the positive side, the recognition of cultural differences provides a foundation on which to build and a point from which to move toward acceptance, which is an intercultural mindset.

There are fewer people in the acceptance category than there are in the minimization category, and only a small percentage of people fall into the adaptation category. This means most of us have our work cut out for us if we recognize the value—considering our increasingly global societies and economies—of developing an intercultural mindset as a way to improve our interpersonal communication skill.

In this chapter on cross-cultural communication you learned about culture and how it can complicate interpersonal communication. Culture is learned, shared, dynamic, systemic, and symbolic. You uncovered the distinction between multicultural, cross-cultural, and intercultural approaches and discovered several new terms such as diplomatic, ethnocentric, and in-/out-groups.

From there you went on to examine the work three different cross-cultural theorists including Hofstede, Trompenaars, and Ting-Toomey. After reviewing verbal and non-verbal differences, you went on to compare and contrast by doing your homework on what it might be like to communicate interpersonally with members of another culture and taking a deeper look into culture shock.

Finally, you learned about the stages on the intercultural development continuum that move from an ethnocentric, monocultural worldview to a more intercultural worldview.

The ability to communicate well between cultures is an increasingly sought-after skill that takes time, practice, reflection, and a great deal of work and patience. This chapter has introduced you to several concepts and tools that can put you on the path to further developing your interpersonal skills to give you an edge and better insight in cross-cultural situations.

Key Takeaways and Check In

Learning highlights.

The iceberg model helps to show us that a few easily visible elements of culture are above the surface but that below the surface lie the invisible and numerous elements that make up culture.
Ethnocentrism is an important word to know; it indicates a mindset that your own culture is superior while others are inferior.
Whether a culture values individualism or the collective community is a recurring dimension in many cross-cultural communication theories, including those developed by Hofstede, Trompenaars, and Ting-Toomey.
Language can tell you a great deal about a culture.
The intercultural development model helps demystify the change from monocultural mindsets to intercultural mindsets.

Attribution Statement (Cross-Cultural Communication)

This chapter is a remix containing content from a variety of sources published under a variety of open licenses, including the following:

Chapter Content

Original content contributed by the Olds College OER Development Team, of Olds College to Professional Communications Open Curriculum under a CC-BY 4.0 license
Content created by Anonymous for Understanding Culture; in Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, previously shared at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/cultural-intelligence-for-leaders/s04-understanding-culture.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license
Derivative work of content created by Anonymous for Intercultural and International Group Communication; in An Introduction to Group Communication, previously shared at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/an-introduction-to-group-communication/s07-intercultural-and-internationa.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license
Content created by Anonymous for Language, Society, and Culture; in A Primer on Communication Studies, previously shared at http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/a-primer-on-communication-studies/s03-04-language-society-and-culture.html under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

Check Your Understandings

Original assessment items contributed by the Olds College OER Development Team, of Olds College to Professional Communications Open Curriculum under a CC-BY 4.0 license
Assessment items created by Boundless, for Boundless Managing Diversity Quiz, previously shared at www.boundless.com/quizzes/managing-diversity-quiz-2584/ under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license
Assessment items adapted from The Saylor Foundation for the saylor.org course Comm 311: Intercultural Communication, previously shared at http://saylordotorg.github.io/LegacyExams/COMM/COMM311/COMM311-FinalExam-Answers.html under a CC BY 3.0 US license

Culture

Understanding The Iceberg Model of Culture to Drive Organizational Success

In 1976, Edward T Hall developed the ‘Iceberg Model of Culture’ and explained that organizational culture is like an iceberg that’s found in polar seas. What you see is just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath lies an enormous, invisible mass, which holds everything together strongly.

The iceberg model of culture or cultural iceberg is used as a common metaphor, but how well do you know it? Before we deep dive into its layers and their significance in an organization, let's understand it on a high level.

Now that you have a clearer picture of the iceberg theory of culture, let's understand how it can help drive organizational success.

What is Organizational Culture and How Can it Drive Organizational Success

While the policies and employee handbooks put together by HR can guide employees' outward behaviors, changing organizational culture positively can influence how employees treat each other, communicate with each other, get things done, etc.

Culture, as a word, describes the way people live in a particular place, but there are different ways to look at it. Let's understand it from an organizational perspective and how the iceberg model of culture influences people at work.

What is the Iceberg Model of Culture

In 1976, Edward T Hall developed the ‘Iceberg Model of Culture’ and explained that organizational culture is like an iceberg found in polar seas. Like an iceberg, company culture has the characteristic of being highly disproportionate in its actual visibility.

While some aspects of culture are easily perceived from the outside, often called the surface culture , what forms the foundation of a strong culture is often submerged, deeper in the values and beliefs of the organization, called the " deeper culture ."

Aspects like workplace ambience, dress code, systems, policies, and processes are visible on the surface but elements like shared values and beliefs, attitudes towards authority, competition, and underlying assumptions form the deeper culture.

Layers of the Iceberg Model of Culture

Let's now deep dive into these various layers of culture — both surface and deeper — and understand how it helps achieve organizational goals.

Now, let’s explore the aspects of surface culture:

1. Perks and benefits

As an organization, do you promote work-life balance? Do you promote the culture of flexible hours? Do you encourage employees to take a step forward toward their well-being?

Most successful organizations strive to create a culture that ensures their employees feel comfortable in all aspects of their life. Employee perks and benefits play a huge role in making this possible.

Whether working from home, taking regular company/team retreats, or flexible work arrangements , perks and benefits significantly impact employee behaviors and engagement. A study showed that 48% of people switching jobs would weigh perks as an essential part of their decision-making – even if the perk is as small as a free snack bar.

2. Dress and appearance

How does your workforce come to the office — are they in formal wear all the time or jeans/t-shirts or do you all wear uniforms to the office? How do you expect your employees to appear?

Employee dressing style and appearance can have a massive impact on how organizational culture is perceived. It has almost been a couple of decades since the formal dress code has become an outdated concept.

Today, most companies are loosening up their dress codes to encourage employees to be casually dressed and to feel comfortable in their shoes (pun intended) to increase productivity.

3. Technology

Are the technologies you use aligned with company goals and strategies? Do you also use technology to reinforce organizational culture?

Technologies used in an organization play a critical part in defining an organization’s culture. They can either make an organization look ‘cool and savvy’ or ‘old-fashioned and rigid.’

Though technology single-handedly cannot create or change organizational culture, it acts as an essential tool to reinforce the culture amongst employees. It reflects and shapes the values and assumptions while keeping the organization relevant for the future workforce.

4. Language

What cues are you using to communicate about your organization? What is the tone or pitch of your messaging? How does your organization come across to others?

Language gives away culture through mannerisms of speaking (polite or crude?), behavior (formal or casual?), delivery (direct or indirect?), and choice of words (clean, squeaky, or arrogant?).

How we choose to communicate with others can significantly impact how organizational culture comes across to people. Therefore, choose the right set of words, gestures, tone, and communication platform.

5. Rewards and recognition

Rewards and recognitions have an immense impact on employee experience and organizational culture. They create a perception amongst people about what an organization stands for, its values, and its beliefs.

Who in the organization gets rewarded/recognized and why—represents an unequivocal statement of the organization's actual values and culture.

Rewards and recognition reinforce that the work is meaningful and valuable to the organization. It helps employees find focus and purpose in their day-to-day activities - thus increasing employee motivation.

We all tend to break down complex information and generalize what we see and hear to derive more straightforward conclusions. Surface culture is that aspect of culture that gets reflected by an outsider — providing shortcuts to identify how things get done within an organization.

However, what we see on the surface reflects what organizations are built on deep-down—values, beliefs, and underlying assumptions that drive employee behaviors.

Here, we discuss some of the aspects of deeper culture that drive an organization.

1. Authority

Do employees in your organization feel they have appropriate decision-making authority? Do your employees feel their opinion was heard in the decision-making process?

Most successful organizations involve employees in the decision-making process. They are open to hearing employee opinions and feedback , which significantly impacts organizational culture.

Employees feel extremely valued when their views are heard and encouraged to participate in decision-making. A sense of authority is experienced when they are involved in discussions and tasks that impact the organization's growth, leading to higher levels of job satisfaction.

2. Health and wellbeing

What is your organization’s philosophy about health and wellbeing? Do you encourage your employees to make healthier choices? Do you support them in their choices?

Organizations across the globe increasingly recognize the crucial role employee well-being plays in engaging employees and cultivating a strong workplace culture. Be it physical, emotional, mental, or financial health, they significantly impact employee engagement and culture.

Happy and healthy employees have proven to drive better productivity and reduce healthcare costs and churn rates. An employee well-being program is crucial to building a happier workforce, ultimately improving your bottom line.

However, simply having a program or initiative won't magically improve well-being. Organizations must make it a part of organizational culture and regularly assess its impact to move the needle and deliver results.

3. Purpose and meaning

Do your employees understand the importance of your organization’s vision and mission? Do they know how their job roles contribute to the greater good?

Purpose and meaning are part of the iceberg of organizational culture that has gained much importance in recent times, thanks to the increasing number of millennials in organizations.

Helping employees understand the organization’s mission, helping them engage, and making them realize they are a part of something bigger is vital for every organization. When employees know why they are doing what they are doing, it can drive phenomenal engagement, motivation, and business outcomes.

4. Communication

Do you frequently and consistently communicate with your team about what’s going on? How transparent is your communication? Do you listen to your team enough?

Communication is an integral part of organizational culture. An organization that adopts open, transparent, positive, and strong communication fosters healthy work relationships resulting in fewer conflicts and negativity.

A healthy and effective communication culture opens the channels (between employees and management) for a healthy exchange of ideas, suggestions, and feedback.

5. Employee engagement

Do you value your workforce as key contributors to organizational success? Do you understand the pulse of your employees? Do you provide employees with a conducive atmosphere to engage?

Organizational culture has a powerful impact on employees. A positive and open culture can create trust and loyalty among employees, driving passion and dedication to the organization.

When organizations proactively take employee feedback and take the path of open communication to proactively convey important messages about layoffs, hikes, restructuring, etc., briefly, it reassures employees and increases engagement.

Research says that employees feel engaged when they are invested in their company’s future and culture, feel like their jobs give them a sense of purpose, and have great relationships with their co-workers.

6. Learning and development

Do you emphasize learning and development in your organization? Do you provide enough learning and growth opportunities to your employees? Are your employees challenged with new and exciting projects?

If there is one cultural trait that every successful leader will vouch for, it’s prioritizing learning and development among employees. This not only promotes innovative thinking and creativity but also improves the agility of the business to sustain itself in today’s increasingly complex and constantly changing business environment.

7. Collaboration and teamwork

Do you encourage your employees to work cross-functionally, across teams? Are there clear definitions of ownership to work in a cross-functional environment?

Nurturing teamwork, team morale, and collaboration is a part of organizational culture that values employees working together to achieve organizational goals. Organizations that build a culture of teamwork believe that planning, thinking, and decision making happen better when done collectively rather than individually.

Making collaboration and teamwork a part of your organization's culture requires buy-in from all employees. Implementing a plan that lays out the various dynamics of collaboration, ownership, teamwork, and regularly encouraging and rewarding teamwork can help make the concept part of your company's culture.

These are only some of the indicative aspects of what forms organizational culture. Understanding and improvising the culture within your organization can be vital to driving success.

Final Thoughts

By understanding the iceberg theory of culture, we can get to the root causes of problems in the company and transform human behaviour on a large scale. Organizational culture has an immense impact on employee engagement , productivity, performance, and overall experience.

Understanding the nuances of organizational culture can empower you to improve overall organizational performance. Though only a tiny part of the culture is reflected above the surface for people to perceive it, the deeper values and beliefs can profoundly drive the organization towards success.

Leadership behaviour, beliefs, and actions play a crucial role in influencing culture within the organization and driving the organizational strategies.

When strategy-culture-leadership are in sync, we see organizations where:

Employees understand how the leadership expects them to respond to a particular situation,
Employees genuinely believe that the expected response is the right approach, and
Employees are sure they will be appreciated for demonstrating organizational values and beliefs.

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Tip of the Iceberg: Collaboration and Scientific Writing

Lisa detora and sabrina sobel, hofstra university.

Many scholars study different types of writing in the sciences, like published manuscripts, presentations, letters, or reports. Science journalism, blogs, and science textbooks are sometimes also studied. Halliday and Martin’s influential book Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power (2015), for example, presents the authors’ analysis of popular science and high-school textbooks. Alan Gross, a famous rhetorician of science who discussed peer-reviewed literature in his book Starring the Text (2006), also discussed popular science writing (2018) which, to him, creates a more “sublime” version of the literature. For some people, especially experts in nonscientific disciplines, any text that conveys science can appear to be part of just one large community of thinkers and authors. This is not really the case, but it can be difficult for “outsiders,” including undergraduate science students, to understand how these communities are organized. One way of identifying the relationships between texts and the communities of people who write them is by examining collaborative practices.

We draw on Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” of writing (Johnston, 1984) to consider the disciplinary and cultural practices beneath the surface of scientific writing. Central to this discussion is the role of collaboration. We will describe how we use our knowledge of information beneath the surface of scientific texts in the teaching of scientific writing for science majors. One complication in this type of teaching is that standard undergraduate laboratory experiments are often intended to impart specific manual, conceptual, and writing skills, not to discover new information. Hence, teachers of scientific writing must find ways to make visible the myriad sources of information that must be conveyed to a reader by students working in artificial situations.

The Scientific Iceberg

In “Hemingway and Freud: The Tip of the Iceberg,” Kenneth G. Johnston (1984) describes the origins of the “iceberg theory” of writing in the “fortunate loss” (68) of draft manuscripts that represented years of Hemingway’s creative work. As he reconstructed texts, Hemingway developed a theory of “omission” (68) that relies on the writer’s deep knowledge to deliver the minimal text needed to achieve an intended effect. As Johnston notes, the “oft-quoted iceberg passage in Death in the Afternoon” (69) explains how the power of writing, like the “dignity of an iceberg” (69) derives from fact that most of it remains submerged. Johnston also connects the “implicit and explicit” (69) modalities of communication in Hemingway with Sigmund Freud’s construction of the conscious and the subconscious, creating an intersection of a scientific context and the iceberg theory. We believe that recognizing the interplay of implicit and explicit communication, as Johnston describes, is an essential component not only of psychiatry but all scientific writing. Scientists assume that their readers understand the depths of investigation beneath the written word.

The iceberg under scientific writing can be used to inform undergraduate writing pedagogies. Critical to understanding the iceberg beneath any scientific text is an implied voyage of discovery that led to a scientific question. It’s always tempting, especially to nonscientists, to think of a study in Platonic terms, as an isolated act of lone genius enacted by its author. However, a crucial characteristic of the scientific iceberg is a series of collaborations that both implicitly and explicitly inform the design and conduct of each study and the writing of their papers. Each new collaboration is like a new community of scholarship. Linguist John Swales (1990) used the term “discourse communities” (9), to describe any group of people who exchange ideas and texts with one another and who create rules that determine the nature and form of different writing genres. In the sciences, shared habits, like the structured research format of introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion may make it difficult for nonscientists or students to understand which groups work together. Helpfully, Bawarshi and Reiff (2010) have described genres in terms of communities and conversations, which may be easier for students to understand than more philosophical terms. Students need to learn how to identify scientific work that builds toward a common goal and work that intends to address new questions or disrupt current understanding.

We believe that the opacity of writing practices within the sciences makes it difficult to identify, and therefore differentiate, the different communities of research and exchange. Understanding the demands of a discourse community (or not understanding them) also can be an important advantage (or barrier) to success in the sciences. In fact, inequalities in undergraduate science education can be linked directly to an understanding of writing demands, which may be unyielding and inflexible. Ironically, social scientists Yerrick and Gilbert (2011) found that programs developed with an aim to transition underrepresented students into STEM majors often used scientific language in a way that marginalized the students further. These programs inadvertently failed to help these students learn how to think and write more scientifically, which resulted in students leaving the sciences. hese authors identify the stakes of failing to characterize and make visible the deep knowledge beneath the surface of scientific writing in student attrition. We would like our students to find ways to discern the boundaries between discourse communities and to produce acceptable texts, while also learning how to manage structured genres.

Undergraduate Writing Pedagogy

As co-teachers of a course called Seminars in Chemistry , we explore the iceberg of scientific writing by explicitly describing how our knowledge and experience might apply to students. Seminars in Chemistry is intended for advanced majors in chemistry, including dual majors in chemistry and physics. The course description seems relatively straightforward:

Exploration of current chemical literature on a specific topic with presentation of a seminar and production of a review paper. Oral and written scientific communication following JACS format is emphasized.

Of note, proficiency in American Chemical Society style, the organization that publishes JACS ( Journal of the American Chemical Society ), is required to maintain program accreditation.

It may seem that learning the American Chemical Society format might not have very much to do with collaboration, professionalization, or original thought. However, one of the primary features of Seminars in Chemistry is that students select topics and read published literature to develop professional-quality review materials. One way we teach these skills is by modeling professional collaborative behavior. Thus, Seminars in Chemistry supplements the usual apprenticeship mode of collaborative authoring, which concentrates on task management. We describe this process in the following dialogue:

LD: I’ve been working with you for a few years now and I’ve noticed how you try to get students to formulate review papers. With your research students, how do you approach writing for publication?

SS: The work done by research students in my lab usually involves experiments paired with theoretical calculations. They have already gotten mini lessons in this sort of work when writing in their lab reports. As you know, a classic lab report has an introduction, background/purpose section, a materials and methods section, a results section and a discussion section.

LD: Yes, definitely. I’ve worked with your department to help students achieve success in these papers in classroom settings. And I have worked in more professional environments with people who already have advanced degrees, but how do you impart these skills to undergraduates?

SS: I always start with the concrete content. For instance, I can have them write up methods and results, which is an easier task for them than an introduction or discussion. I spend time editing and shaping their initial drafts in dialogue with them because they often lack the skills to be concise enough for published work. An experienced scientific reader will understand how to decipher the accepted highly condensed language needed in scientific publishing, but it is very difficult to learn how to write that way. We also have to work on tables, graphs and figures to move from the lab report standard to more publishable quality. Creating these items is a real art and students must gain technical and analytical skills to be successful in transitioning to making more professional outputs. They also have to be quite organized when dealing with data.

LD: Not surprisingly, you and your colleagues seem to me to complain most about the introduction and discussion sections in student lab reports. I hear the word “incoherent” rather a lot. How do you overcome this sort of tendency when preparing work for publication?

SS: Students must be able to write a solid lab report before they can progress to a publication. For original research papers, I have the students identify relevant published literature, then we compare what I found and write up mini summaries of each paper. Students often might struggle to identify relevant key words for effective searching. I have a deeper knowledge of the field – the greater underside of the iceberg, and I can better see the figurative forest and how our tree fits into it. Although I have one notable exception: a high school student found the most important key words for her research after months of us chasing our tails. She felt so proud, and I was so impressed. From that point, I take the lead in drafting the introduction. For discussions, we parse and fuss over the results that we have, and I shape and write based on these conversations. If I have a stronger student, then I will ask that student to write a discussion section that I can edit.

Mentoring students creates a sort of iceberg, with some information presented explicitly but a great deal only implied. The final paper, for instance, reveals none of this process (Sobel et al., 2020). In this account, a mentor maintains focus on the end product, a submittable paper incorporating writing in different tones, styles, and voices as well as visual information like tables and figures within a prescribed word count. The students operate only on the surface of the work, relying on their mentor for deeper knowledge and guidance.

Seminars in Chemistry furthers such mentorship by instructing students regarding the nature of scientific collaboration, situating different scientific discourses relative to one another, and preparing students to become effective collaborators. A further area of interest for us as instructors is how we can make use of our knowledge and experience to impart knowledge about writing in the sciences. One of these areas is the means by which we can use wisdom gleaned from rhetoric and writing studies to help students develop facility in drafting text. Another is the ways that cultural information about the sciences is implied rather than stated in scientific papers. We can liken these texts to Hemingway’s iceberg theory of writing.

Scientific Writing, Collaboration, and Outlines

In Seminars in Chemistry , we often discuss how interdisciplinary collaboration is embedded behind the scenes of the final written accounts in all scientific contexts. In the fall of 2020, for instance, we used global warming as a general framework to encourage students to situate their work relative to existing knowledge and the projects of other students. As one of us has expertise in rhetoric and biomedical writing, we drew on her past experience and ongoing research to help students understand how their in-class projects might be related to future endeavors and their coursework in other subjects. Our choice of global warming as a broader theme permitted the use of any scientific specialty as a focus, allowing students to choose from many different types of projects while still using some related examples.

Seminars in Chemistry , by encouraging students to review published literature and concentrate on their own projects, also allows students to refine their own writing practice so that they can become more effective collaborators in the future. Effective collaboration requires an ability to think about coauthors as well as the end audience. Coauthoring, then, often requires an ability to contribute part of a text in such a way as to invite further comment or added information. To this end, we forward a mentoring practice introduced to our chemist by a family member:

SS: Laura, I’m feeling really overwhelmed with writing my Ph.D. thesis. It seems like more than I can handle.

Laura: I’m a linguist, as you know, and I always start with an outline. Then I slowly fill that in with more and more details and examples. It’s easy to outline sections, and the outline format is easier to organize than paragraphs at first. If you tried that, you could think about what you need in each section of your thesis separately. I gradually fill in the outline until I am writing practically full sentences. This should apply in your field, too. Just give it a try.

SS: That’s a great idea! I’ll try it. This process should help me to break up the paper into digestible chunks. I could even write little chunks separately for each part of a structured paper. Then I could integrate those chunks into a coherent whole more systematically.

Laura: Good luck! Let me know how it goes.

One of the benefits of the “outline method” is that initial text is easy to write and organize. It is also easy to lay out a series of sections so that different authors can choose one area to build up without losing sight of the whole project. To this end, in fall 2020 we encouraged our students to build interconnected mind maps and a shared background slide kit about global warming to help organize a set of key references and concepts. By using the slide set as an outline of sorts, students could use shared concepts and references to develop the introductions of their own papers while developing a discourse community of their own. Unsurprisingly, the outline method worked very well in Seminars in Chemistry :

(years later)

SS: I’ve been using your outlining method for so many years in my own work. Recently, though, my colleague convinced me to use it as a teaching tool in our Seminars in Chemistry class. I simply review the process for outlining, using a specific introduction section, usually from whatever my last paper was. It’s fun because students see the names of their peers, and they also see how a literature search can lead to a published introduction. We do a literature search in our class, and after the students spend some time selecting the most interesting articles, I can model how to organize the most relevant topics and then to fill in each section with bullet points.

Laura: It’s great to hear that you have used my ideas. I knew my idea was good, but it had more uses than I would have expected.

Seminars in Chemistry introduces students not only to specific writing formats, but also to the collaborative spirit that informs all scientific writing. As we have shown above, however, these practices gain more meaning when we situate them not only relative to scientific discourses, like journal articles and regulatory documentation, but also to writing studies, technical communication, and rhetorical studies of science. These studies provide the needed context that informs students why they should build outlines, read the scientific literature, or consider contexts outside an immediate product like an experiment, report, or paper.

Acknowledgements

SS thanks Laura Janda for casual conversations about writing. Both authors would like to thank the students of Seminars in Chemistry for their hard work and creativity, especially during the Covid-19 public health emergency. LD thanks Andrea Efthymiou for reference advice.

Parts of this paper were based on work completed while drafting an entry for the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication , edited by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch, Michael Zerbe, Gabriel Cutrufello, and Stefania Maci.

Works Cited

Bawarshi, A. S. and Reiff, M. J. (2010) Genre: An introduction to history, theory, research, and pedagogy . Parlor Press.

Gross, A. G. (2006) Starring the text: The place of rhetoric in science studies . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Gross, A. G. (2018) The scientific sublime: Popular science unravels the mysteries of the universe . Oxford University Press.

Halliday, M. A. K. and Martin, J. R. (2015) Writing science: Literacy and discursive power . Routledge.

Johnston, K. (1984) Hemingway and Freud: The tip of the iceberg. The Journal of Narrative Technique, 14 (1), 68-73.

Sobel, S.G., Kimura, M.W. and Laxdal, C. (2020) Chapter 1: Investigating trends in M-SALEN complexes: An open-ended lab experience. In Advances in Teaching Inorganic Chemistry Volume 2: Laboratory Enrichment and Faculty Community, Rebecca Jones, Ed.; ACS Symposium Series 1371 ; American Chemical Society. doi:10.1021/bk-2020-1371. ch001.

Swales, J. (1990) Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings . Cambridge University Press.

Yerrick, R. K. and Gilbert, A. (2011) Constraining the discourse community: How science discourse perpetuates marginalization of underrepresented students, Journal of Multicultural Discourses , 6(1), 67-91.

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Iceberg Thinking - What is Iceberg Thinking?

Iceberg thinking -, what is iceberg thinking, iceberg thinking what is iceberg thinking.

Iceberg Thinking: What is Iceberg Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is iceberg thinking, what is "iceberg thinking".

Maybe you’ve heard of the tip of the iceberg . In a new situation, recognizing that there’s a lot we don’t know can help us in our quest for knowledge and human understanding.

Dive Deeper

Discuss: An iceberg is a powerful symbol that many great thinkers have returned to time and time again. While it’s used in similar ways, the meaning changes a little, depending on the context. Take a look at the following two quotes. Think about what they might mean, and then share your ideas:
“The mind is like an iceberg; it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.” –Sigmund Freud, Founder of Psychoanalysis
“What’s powerful is when what you say is just the tip of the iceberg of what you know.” –Jim Rohn, Entrepreneur
Reflect: Think of your life as an iceberg. We all have parts that are hidden from view, which very few people know about. Take several minutes to write in your journal about what others can see versus what they don’t see. You don’t have to share—but you can if you want to!

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The Cultural Iceberg & Communication

Navigating differing communication styles & cultures in design.

In my last article, I introduced the concept of the cultural iceberg: the idea that culture exists both above the waterline and below. Above the water lies The What: that which we can observe with our senses. Below the water is The Why: the intangible, subconscious aspects of culture which include attitudes, beliefs, expectations, values and assumptions. The greater mass of culture lies beneath, and we must go out of our way to recognize and understand it.

Culture specialists often explore a particular aspect of culture in terms of a spectrum or continuum of values (Hall; Hofestede; Storti). Though individual preferences within a society do vary, these continua are useful tools for comparing the general values of one culture, relative to another. Some of the more commonly discussed values continua include Individual vs. Collective, Egalitarian vs. Hierarchical and Task-Oriented vs. Relationship-Oriented. In this article, we will focus on the area of communication: how words and context are used to communicate truth.

Every person from every culture communicates, both intentionally and unintentionally. Each of us uses a variety of means to do so – words, gestures, tone of voice, silence and touch. Even clothing, posture, and use of space and time convey a message. Experts estimate that anywhere from 70-93% of communication is nonverbal. With so many means of communication at our disposal, we have to choose which to prioritize when giving and receiving messages. Do we prefer to spell things out explicitly or do we let others read between the lines? Do we give more weight to words or to the context of those words? Our choices depend a great deal on our cultural background.

In a society where communities are close-knit and relationships are long-lasting, it is natural to rely on shared experience and mutual understanding to communicate ideas. In these High Context or Indirect societies, communication is usually indirect and non-verbal. Many things do not need to be spelled out explicitly. To be blunt might even cause offense, as it can imply a lack of respect or a desire for distance. Situationally, families and close friendships tend to be high context. Globally, most of Asia and parts of Africa, Latin America and southern Europe operate this way.

At the heart of the issue of context lies a basic question: What are words for? Are words primarily for transmitting data? Or are words primarily for navigating and strengthening relationships? In high context, indirect societies, truth (i.e. data) is usually communicated nonverbally, while words are used as tools for affirming relationships.

To someone from a direct, low context culture, this can sometimes feel like lying. A classic example of this is the use of the word “yes.” For a direct communicator, the word yes is understood in terms of its dictionary definition. However, someone from an indirect culture may not feel free to use the word “no” because its inherent negativity might damage the relationship. So an indirect communicator might use the word “yes” to mean “yes, no, maybe” or simply “I’m listening.” The verbal “yes” affirms the relationship, while “no” can be clearly communicated nonverbally in other ways.

Consider the project meeting I described above. A team of experts has come to design a training center. They are guests of the client, and they have been working hard to produce high-quality designs. At the meeting, the well-mannered, hospitable clients can only appropriately respond one way when presented with the team’s ideas: “Yes, we like this!” Both husband and wife smile and nod and indicate with their words that they agree with the team. But one of the clients, at least, is indicating with her body language that she is not fully onboard. Her body posture is saying “I am really not open to this.” She may not even be aware that she is doing this, but another person from her cultural context could pick up on her signals and work to literally turn her back toward the group.

Fortunately, our EMI team did notice the signals and recognize the disconnect. During project meetings, we paid close attention to nonverbal cues, and asked open-ended questions so that we could better understand our client’s vision for the training center. During informal interactions (such as meal times or trips to and from the site) we looked for opportunities to build rapport and understanding on both sides. As we got to know our clients as people, we were better able to read their indirect and nonverbal signals. Likewise, they were better able to understand our communication styles.

When discussing the concept of indirectness, designers from direct cultures often express frustration: “Why won’t they just tell us what they think?!?” This question reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. Indirect communicators are often, in fact, very clearly expressing their ideas. They are just using a different method than a direct communicator would. To an indirect communicator, using only words to express ideas, emotions and desires can feel a little like painting a picture in black and white rather than in full color.

The clients in the above scenario had sacrificed a great deal for this project and were willing and ready to communicate their desires to us. We just needed to be tuned-in to their cultural way of doing so. By the end of the week, we were all on the same page, excited to move ahead with design and construction.

From its founding, EMI has worked cross-culturally to produce designs for use around the world. But the need for cross-cultural wisdom is ever-increasing. While the majority of EMI’s designers still come from low context, direct cultures, most of the people we serve communicate indirectly. Moreover, as we work to recruit more diverse teams, all of us must learn to see and understand culturally different communication styles. As we combine the strengths of both modes of interaction, the potential for relating and designing “in color” is truly exciting!

Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture. (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1976).

Geert Hofstede and Gert Jan Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. (McGraw Hill, 1997).

Craig Storti, Figuring Foreigners Out: A Practical Guide. (Maine: Intercultural Press, 1999).

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Culture, communication and icebergs.

What exactly do we mean when we talk about culture? Is communication just about talking and getting your point across? Just as culture is not just about visible differences, nor is communication just about talking.

Let us start by looking at the meaning of ‘culture’. Many people who have spent a considerable time in a foreign country would probably agree that your own culture is something you take for granted until you are actually out of your usual environment. It is only then that you will realize differences and start missing a lot of things that till date you seriously took for granted. It could be something as simple as clean drinking water, bread for breakfast, a knife and fork for meal times, uncensored news broadcasting, parks, cafes and the list goes on and on. Yes, simple every day things that one is used to, that one may or may not always like, can already be considered as culture.

So we can define culture as a way of life of a group of people. This includes their behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept and which come naturally to them - usually without giving it much thought. These values are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.

Cultural Iceberg

However, many aspects we first encounter, if on a holiday, business trip or traveling, are the more visible signs of a culture which only make up a small percentage of what we define as our culture. An often used illustration is the so-called “cultural iceberg”. The examples mentioned above can be considered the tip of the iceberg which can also include further aspects of how people behave (meaning the more obvious behavior you see in public and people you meet, e.g. communication styles, approaches to knowing a person or decision making style).

The part of the iceberg which is still underwater and which makes up the majority of a culture can be considered the invisible signs. These are things such as values and assumptions of a culture which are implicit in nature and cannot be seen straight away and therefore unlikely to be understood – if ever – in a short time.

Communication

Now if communication is not just about talking, what else is it about? We can define communication as the imparting or exchanging of information or news. Just as we can put culture into two categories (visible and invisible signs), we can also identify two different types of communication: verbal and non-verbal - or we can categorize it like culture: explicit and implicit.

Verbal communication (explicit) includes the words we choose and our voice we use to utter our thoughts to speak our mind. Non-verbal communication, the implicit part of a culture, makes up so much more when it comes to communication. It includes gestures, postures, facial expressions, eye contact, vocal characteristics, personal appearance and touch. Therefore, the old saying is true that it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it!

Intercultural and Cross-cultural Communication

So if we are to put both parts together, what do we get? There are many names for it, but let’s stick with two commonly used ones: intercultural and cross-cultural communication.

What is the difference?

We can define intercultural communication as the process of sending and receiving messages between people whose cultural background could lead them to interpret verbal and non-verbal signs differently. Intercultural communication involves interactions among people from different cultures and backgrounds.

Cross-cultural communication on the other hand involves a comparison of interactions among people from the same culture to those from another culture. It is looking at a certain idea or concept within many cultures so that these cultures can be compared to one another.

So what is it we want to aim for?

We want to be able to communicate effectively. This does not mean that we will not make mistakes along the way or may even completely avoid offending someone from a different culture, but we want to gain a better understanding so that when we do encounter a certain situation, we have a better understanding of how to go about it, and let the other person see that we are trying. And I believe that universally if someone from a different culture sees that you are trying your best to accommodate them and understand them that they will also likely be more open and forgive any minor mistakes.

So to communicate effectively we need to speak effectively, try to understand other people’s perceptions and listen.

Wait for my next article on “Problems in Intercultural Communication” to find out more about common problems when trying to communicate across cultures.

Need help to overcome these obstacles? You don’t know how to overcome differences? You need more information or training for your company or as an individual? Please check out my cross-cultural lessons including basic cultural etiquette and cultural indicators from many different countries!

#verbalcommunication #nonverbalcommunication #interculturalcommunication #explicitcommunication #implicitcommunication #foreigncountries #ESL #EFL #culture #crossculturecafe #crossculturalcommunication #communicationskills #culturaliceberg #visibleculture #invisibleculture

Cross-Cultural Communication

Is culture an iceberg?

Catherine Macquart-Martin
October 4, 2019

The cultural iceberg

As metaphors capture complex concepts, they are often convenient to define “culture.” Since Edward.T.Hall’s seminal publications (1973, 1979), the cultural iceberg metaphor has a prosperous career in the intercultural communication field. One might admit that it meets the requirements. First of all, its aesthetic produces an excellent effect on a PowerPoint slide. Secondly, it brings down a consensual trait of culture: some aspects such as food, greetings, clothes are visible, but most of them as values, beliefs, assumptions are below the see-level. In this model, developing an intercultural awareness means being able to identify those hidden characteristics. Who would dare to contradict a trainer or professor who presents such a catchy representation?

A static approach

Other metaphors have competed with the iceberg with a better fortune than the Titanic. Culture is sometimes compared with an onion (Hofstede, 1991) whose layers represent symbols, heroes, rituals, values; a tree , again with hidden and visible parts; lenses through which we see the world.

As convenient and consensual as they seem, those metaphors convey the underlying idea that culture is static, frozen – if I dare say -, even monolithic. They reinforce a positivist model postulating that a given culture has once and for all these given hidden traits for any of its members. In this vein, a confident North-American VP visiting the European head-office amazed the sales team when he announced that he would quickly close a deal with a German client company “because Germans are such and such.”

The positivist paradigms, unfortunately, oversimplify the concept of culture. They conceal that cultures are dynamic social constructs that need to adapt to new constraints, manifest internal tensions, and uniformly apply to their members following their status, age, gender, subculture…

In a 2013 blogpost , Milton J. Bennett, a leading figure in the intercultural communication field, proposed abandoning the iceberg metaphor and considering culture as a river “that both carved and was constrained by its banks.” Fluidity, adaptation, tensions…, this metaphor dramatically improves the understanding of culture.

A mixing desk

As is often the case, intercultural communication being a recent field is worth crossing the lines and exploring other horizons. In How the World Thinks, A Global History of Philosophy, Julian Baggini suggests another metaphor: a mixing desk where the sliding controls represent values. “The differences between cultures is largely a matter of how much each is turned up or down.”

This metaphor captures attention for three reasons. The first one, advocated by Baggini, is that the mixing desk highlights that different combinations produce different and harmonious results. In a time of intense polarization, this evidence is worth to be repeated: “listening” to the music of another culture does not threaten yours. In contrast, I am not so sure about an iceberg.

The second reason why Baggini’s metaphor is so interesting is that it is not static anymore, and individuals can “fine-tune” the channels and adapt to different situations. The “tunings” will differ whether you are in a recording studio, a concert hall, or a stadium. Similarly, we “attune” our wording, actions, and expectations depending on whether we are with relatives, colleagues, or total strangers.

Finally, I will argue that the mixing desk metaphor captures the fact that multicultural individuals – as we all are ?- can display a variety of combinations, being one and many all together.

Baggini’s mixing desk offers a dynamic way to define culture. In her newly published and worth reading book, Mai Nguyen-Phuong-Mai (2019) strongly advocated for such a dynamic paradigm. Does that mean that the positivist metaphors mentioned above should be straightly consigned to oblivion and that the mixing desk should reign? I suggest not.

The power of metaphors

As powerful as metaphors are, they are just rhetorical tricks that foster understanding and memorizing. Let’s not be charmed by the simplistic view that they offer. Indeed, far too often, they shed light on a particular aspect but ignore others. Furthermore, as a fervent defender of diversity, I congruently suggest considering the strengths and limits of a variety of metaphors and associating each one with an identified paradigm. Considering different approaches better conveys the complex concept of culture. Let’s mix, shall we?

Edward.T.Hall, Silent Language , 1973

Edward.T.Hall, Beyond Culture , 1979

Geert Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations, Software of the mind, 1991

Julian Baggini, How the World Thinks, A Global History of Philosophy , 2018

Mai Nguyen-Phuong-Mai, Cross-Cultural Management, With Insights from Brain Science , 2019

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Enhancing Intercultural Communication Through Active Listening

The Iceberg Model Of Culture And Behavior

Think back to the beginning of this year before the pandemic started. Did you ever imagine your organization and colleagues…

Think back to the beginning of this year before the pandemic started.

Did you ever imagine your organization and colleagues would be working remotely for months on end? Or that universities and schools would shift their teaching online?

Probably not.

Still, the world adapted to the unexpected challenges thrown up by the COVID-19 pandemic by introducing new systems at work, school, and home.

This was not an easy shift.

You need to adapt, innovate and think out of the box to solve such problems. You also need to understand them completely, identify their root causes, and focus on resolving the causes.

One way of understanding how to solve complex problems is to adopt the Iceberg Model of Culture, a tool to discover patterns of behavior.

Let us look at the Iceberg Model in detail.

The Iceberg Model Of Culture

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall developed the Cultural Iceberg Model in the 1970s as an analogy for the cultural codes that prevail in any society.

The term ‘Iceberg Model of Culture’ is inspired by the icebergs found in polar seas. An iceberg has visible parts on the surface of the water and invisible parts that are underwater. Often, up to 90% of an iceberg’s actual area remains hidden underwater.

Similarly, culture and behaviors have both visible and invisible components. The visible part of culture is the way we live and interact with each other, our traditions, food, and attire.

The invisible part is our preferences, opinions, values, beliefs, and value systems. Just as much of an iceberg remains hidden underwater, much of the culture and behavior remains hidden but it cannot be ignored.

The large chunk of the iceberg that exists underwater determines the behavior that is visible above the surface.

Organizational Culture As An Iceberg

Organizational cultures also have visible and invisible elements.

A company’s corporate brand, values, and behaviors are visible to all. But like an iceberg, organizations are also driven by often unseen behaviors, and leaders have to go beyond visible factors such as turnover rates and disengaged staff.

They have to dig deeper and identify less invisible elements such as employee resistance to change or misalignment between a company’s culture and strategy.

Organizations can use the Iceberg Model to develop a deeper understanding of cultural differences and behavioral competence in teams.

This will help understand how to solve complex problems by changing aspects of behavior that may be hidden but are still important.

Three Pillars Of The Iceberg Model

Let us understand the three key aspects of this cultural iceberg theory.

Visible cultural practices:

The very first step of using the Iceberg Model is to focus on events or visible cultural practices.

For instance, a person from one culture who visits a different culture might get a cultural shock upon noticing the difference in dressing styles, food choices, lifestyles, and the way people greet each other. Understanding the variation in cultural practices helps one develop a deeper understanding of people and behavior, both at work and life in general.

One of the most important steps of using the cultural iceberg theory is to identify the beliefs, values, attitudes, and expectations that drive a particular culture. Most people tend to subconsciously learn their values, beliefs, and attitudes from their culture and community.

Patterns and habits:

According to the Iceberg Model of Culture, behaviors often follow a pattern. Finding patterns can make it easier to work together or bring about change.

For example, an organization’s employees are late every day, but the team leader can’t understand why. It’s only when she digs deeper that she discovers a pattern: they stayed at work for a late evening meeting every day which often went over the allotted time. So they came to work late the following day.

Looking for invisible patterns helped the team leader get to the root of the problem. She shifted the daily meeting to the morning and ensured her team left the office on time.

Mental models:

All of us continue to believe some things about ourselves even though we recognize that they may not be true. These beliefs can be about you or the world around you. They can lead to negative emotions like stress, anxiety, and frustration.

For example, when someone believes that they can’t do something because no one from their family has ever done it before, they hold a limiting belief. This was evident in the popular film Gully Boy where the hero believed he could not change his life and follow his dream to become a successful rapper after being told so repeatedly.

He changed his mental model and achieved his dream.

For a large-scale change that requires a cultural and behavioral shift, it is necessary to change the mental models of individuals.

Cultural differences can often lead to problems while working in multicultural teams and doing business in international markets. However, the Iceberg Model of problem-solving can help you overcome these challenges. By understanding the cultural iceberg theory, we can get to the root causes of the problems.

Similarly, the Iceberg Model of Culture can help understand and transform human behavior on a large scale.

Harappa Education’s Leading Self course contains a section on the Iceberg Model of behavior. This approach to problem-solving and behavior change can help achieve long-term and sustainable solutions. Sign up for the course to understand how to use the Iceberg Model.

Explore topics such as Career Development , Career Planning , the Benefits of Taking Ownership , Career Path Planning , the Importance of Planning from our Harappa Diaries section and lead on a path of self-development.

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What is the iceberg model

The factual level: the tip of the iceberg, the relationship level: beneath the surface, the iceberg model in the context of companies.

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Cross-Cultural Communication
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Defining Culture

Communication across Cultures in Practice

A country's culture has layers and a hidden core - just like an onion.

Theories of Culture: Iceberg or Onion?

A helpful alternative to the “iceberg model” of culture is to imagine another culture as an onion. Culture is not something you can measure. It is mostly invisible, but these invisible values guide behavior and social interactions. However, like an onion, you can “peel” culture and strip down its layers.

The outermost layer of the “onion”, i.e. of a different culture, is what you can see, hear, and touch: artifacts, products, and rituals. For example, a Japanese Shinto shrine is an artifact from that culture; a bento box full of sushi is a typical product, and the tea ceremony is a traditional Japanese ritual.

The next layer of a culture consists of its systems and institutions. One could describe the US government, with its three branches and its principle of checks and balances, as an institution that’s clearly important to lots of American citizens.

Systems and institutions, in turn, are based on certain beliefs, norms, and attitudes. To stay with our previous example, the US government: The way it is organized has its roots in specific beliefs. For instance, democracy is a good thing, and every citizen should have a say in government. The government, however, shouldn’t have too much power and interfere too much in the life of citizens.

These beliefs then stem from the core of the “onion”, the most basic values of any culture. In the US example, one of these values would be the freedom of the individual – something that might be of less relevance in the unspoken core values of other cultures.

Five Dimensions of Cultural Core Values

It’s that core that is both the hardest to get at and the most influential element of all. In the field of intercultural communication, it has become usual to profile the core values of a culture according to several dimensions:

Identity or individualism vs. collectivism : What matters more to a person from that culture – their own personal wants and needs or the social harmony of the group they belong to? The United States and Japan could be seen as examples of an individualist and a collectivist society, respectively.

Hierarchy or power distances : Do people treat each other in a relatively egalitarian manner, or are status and seniority very important? The Scandinavian countries are frequently cited as egalitarian cultures, whereas Chinese culture emphasizes the importance of hierarchies.

Truth : This has nothing to do with truth in the philosophical sense. The dimension is also called uncertainty avoidance vs. uncertainty tolerance.

People from the first kind of culture simply don’t like uncertainties. They want to know what exactly is appropriate and right. Regulations and structures are essential, while ambiguity, risks, and differences may upset them. Germany is frequently described as a classic case of an uncertainty-avoidance culture. People from uncertainty-tolerance cultures tend to fare better with spontaneity, flexibility, and relativity.

Gender or masculinity vs. femininity : The original researchers found that some cultures appreciated values they (the researchers) associated with men, while other cultures valued things that the researchers commonly ascribed to women.

Achievement-oriented vs. care-oriented would be a better way of describing this dimension. An achievement-oriented (or “masculine”) culture emphasizes competition and success. Care-oriented (or “feminine”) societies, on the other hand, prefer equality and solidarity.

Virtue : Again, we aren’t talking about virtue in an ethical sense. It’s more about which basic behavior a certain culture likes better: that which brings long-term benefits or what benefits you immediately.

The virtue dimension opposes “long-term oriented” to “short-term oriented” cultures. A long-term oriented culture holds hard work, fulfilling your goals, and never giving up in high esteem. Short-term oriented cultures rather value a person’s dignity in a specific context, social demands, and immediate reciprocity.

Some researchers occasionally add a sixth dimension to this model, i.e. universalism vs. particularism. However, the five-dimension model is the most common one.

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Chapter 3: Message Preparation and Delivery

3.2 think, then write: writing preparation, learning objectives.

Think critically and employ strategies to overcome common fears of writing.
Describe the concept of perception.
Describe the process of selection and the factors that influence it.
Describe several principles of organization.
Explain how interpretation influences our perceptions.

Introduction

Examine Figure 3.2 “Iceberg Model” , often called the iceberg model. When you see an iceberg in the ocean, the great majority of its size and depth lie below your level of awareness. When you write a document or give a presentation, each person in your reading or listening audience is like the tip of an iceberg. You may perceive people of different ages, races, ethnicities, and genders, but those are only surface characteristics. This is your challenge. When you communicate with a diverse audience, you are engaging in intercultural communication. The more you learn about the audience, the better you will be able to navigate the waters, and your communication interactions, safely and effectively.

Figure 3.2 Iceberg Model

The iceberg model (there is much more under water than the tip of iceberg, which is above the water).

Theodore Roosevelt pointed out that “the most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” Knowing your audience well before you speak is essential. Here are a few questions to help guide you in learning more about your audience:

How big is the audience?
What are their backgrounds, gender, age, jobs, education, and/or interests?
Do they already know about your topic? If so, how much?
Will other materials be presented or available? If so, what are they, what do they cover, and how do they relate to your message?
How much time is allotted for your presentation, or how much space do you have for your written document? Will your document or presentation stand alone or do you have the option of adding visuals, audio-visual aids, or links?

Where did you start reading on this page? The top left corner. Why not the bottom right corner, or the top right one? In English we read left to right, from the top of the page to the bottom. But not everyone reads the same. If you read and write Arabic or Hebrew, you will proceed from right to left. Neither is right or wrong, simply different. You may find it hard to drive on the other side of the road while visiting England, but for people in the United Kingdom, it is normal and natural.

We can extend this concept in many ways. Imagine that you are doing a sales presentation to a group where the average age is much older or younger than you. In terms of words to use to communicate ideas, references to music or movies, even expectations for behaviors when dating, their mental “road map” may be quite different from yours. Even though your sales message might focus on a product like a car, or a service like car washing, preconceived ideas about both will need to be addressed.

For example, how many advertisements have you seen on television that have a song from specific time period, like the 1980s, or perhaps the 1960s? The music is a clear example of targeting a specific audience with something distinctive, like a familiar song. When speaking or writing, your style, tone, and word choice all influence the reader. The degree to which you can tailor your message to their needs will be associated with an increase in the overall effectiveness of your message. These differences in perspective influence communication and your ability to recognize not only your point of view but theirs will help you become “other-oriented” and improve communication.

Look at the puzzle again and see if you can avoid seeing the solution. It’ll be hard because now that you know where it is, you have a mental road map that leads you to the solution. The mental state where you could not see it, or perceive it, is gone. Your audience has a mental road map that includes values, experiences, beliefs, strategies to deal with challenges, even scripts for behavioral expectations. You need to read the maps as closely as possibly in order to be able to communicate from common ground.

This discussion illustrates what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls preunderstanding , a set of expectations and assumptions from previous experience that we apply to a new problem or situation. We draw from our experiences to help guide us to our goal, even when the situations may be completely different. We “understand” before we experience because we predict or apply our mental template to what we think is coming.

Expectations affect our perceptions. If the teacher says, “I need to see you after class” your perception might involve thoughts like, “What have I done? Why me? What does he or she want?” and you may even think back to other times in similar situations. This may contribute to a negative perception of the meeting, and then you might be surprised to learn the teacher only wanted to tell you about a scholarship opportunity. The same idea applies to your audience. They will have certain expectations of you as a speaker.

“The customary forms and configurations (of communication) that members expect” are called conventions (Kostelnick, 1998). You’ve probably heard the terms “conventional,” perhaps in relation to a “conventional oven.” This use means a standard type oven with a heat source as opposed a microwave oven. Who decided that a stove, for example, would have burners on top and a front-opening door to the oven? Why four burners and not three, or two? Many modern stoves have ceramic burners that are integrated in to the top of the oven, or even into the top of a counter, separate from the oven. These new applications “stretch” the notion of what is the standard for a stove.

People use conventions to guide them every day. On which side of the plate will you find the spoon? In a formal place setting, the answer is “right.” If, however, you are at a potluck supper, you may be handed a plate with all your utensils, including the spoon, just sitting on top. Or you might find a pile of spoons next to the plates and have to get one for yourself. In each case there are a set of conventions in place that we use to guide behavior and establish expectations. At a formal dinner, eating with your fingers might be unconventional or even rude. The same actions at a potluck might be the dominant convention, as in everyone is doing it.

In business communication, conventions are always in place. The audience will have a set of expectations you need to consider, and you need to keep an open mind about the importance of those expectations; but you also need to achieve your goal of informing, persuading, or motivating them. If you are presenting a sales message and the results are zero sales, you’ll have to take a long look at what you presented and develop alternative strategies. Providing a different perspective to your audience while adapting to their expectations and finding common ground is a good first step in gaining and maintaining their attention.

We often make assumptions about what others are communicating and connect the dots in ways that were not intended by the speaker. As a business communicator, your goal is to help the audience connect the dots in the way you intend while limiting alternative solutions that may confuse and divide the audience.

Taking care to make sure you understand before connecting your dots and creating false expectations is a positive way to prepare yourself for the writing process. Do you know what the assignment is? Are the goals and results clear? Do you know your audience? All these points reinforce the central theme that clear and concise communication is critical in business and industry.

Can you imagine what life would be like if you heard, saw, and felt every stimulus or activity in your environment all day long? It would be overwhelming. It is impossible to perceive, remember, process, and respond to every action, smell, sound, picture, or word that we see, hear, small, taste, or touch. We would be lost paying attention to everything, being distracted by everything, and lack focus on anything.

In the same way, a cluttered message, with no clear format or way of discerning where the important information is located, can overwhelm the listener. It is handy, therefore, that we as humans can choose to pay attention to a specific stimulus while ignoring or tuning out others. This raises the question, however, of why we choose to pay attention to one thing over another. Since we cannot pay attention to everything at once, we choose to pay attention to what appears to be the most relevant for us.

This action of sorting competing messages, or choosing stimuli, is called selection . Selection is one very important part of perception and awareness. You select what to pay attention to based on what is important to you, or what you value, and that is different for each person. Let’s pretend you’re reading an article for class, or perhaps you’re not as much reading but skimming or half-listening to the author’s voice in your head, and only following along enough to get the main idea, as you do when you scan rather than read something word for word.

At the same time you are thinking about the attractive classmate who sits in the third row, wondering when it will be noon, and starting to think about what to eat for lunch. In this real-world example, we can quickly count the four stimuli you’ve selected to pay attention to, but not all of them receive equal attention at every moment. Perhaps your stomach starts to growl; while the mental image of the attractive classmate is indeed attractive, your stomach demands the center stage of your attention.

A stage is a useful way to think about your focus or attention. There are times when you see everything on the stage, the literal stage in terms of theater or the page you are reading now, in print or online. The stage refers to the setting, scene, and context of the communication interaction, and can be equally applied to written or oral communication. This page can be a stage, where objects, symbols, and words are placed to guide your attention in the same way an actor striding across a theater stage will compel you.

You may perceive everything happening at once—while your attention is divided, you still have a larger perspective. Suppose you have just come home from work and are standing by your kitchen table opening the day’s mail. At the same time, you are planning what to cook for dinner and trying to get your dog leashed up to take a quick walk outside. You open a letter in a preprinted envelope whose return address is unfamiliar. The relationships between the words or characters are readily apparent. With one glance you can see that the letter is an introduction letter with a sales message, you assess that it doesn’t interest you, and into the round file (garbage can) it goes.

If you were the author of that letter, you might be quite disappointed. How do you grasp a reader’s attention? Part of the solution lies in your ability to help the reader select the key point or bit of information that will lead to “what else?” instead of “no, thanks.”

The same lesson applies to public speaking, but the cues will be distinct. The audience won’t throw you into the round file, but mentally they may ignore you and start planning what’s for dinner, tuning you out. They may fidget, avoid eye contact, or even get up and walk out—all signs that your sales message was not well received.

There are other times where you are so focused on one character or part of the stage that you miss something going on the other side. In the same way, as you sit in your late-morning class and focus on your growling stomach, the instructor’s voice becomes less of a focus until you hear laughter from your classmates. You look up to see and hear a friend say, “We can clearly see the power and the importance of nutrition and its impact on attention span,” as he or she gestures in your direction. You notice that everyone is looking back at you and realize they too heard your stomach. Your focus and attention are important and constantly challenged.

As we follow the bouncing ball of attention, we see how selection involves focusing on one stimulus while limiting our attention on another, or ignoring it altogether. We do this as a matter of course.

The process of selection and ignoring has been discussed in both contexts of a learned behavior as well as something we are born with, as in instinct or preprogrammed behavioral patterns. Regardless of whether this process is instinctive or learned, we can easily see from the previous example how the speaker, to a degree, competes with internal and external stimuli.

Internal stimuli are those that arise from within one’s self, such as being hungry. External stimuli involve stimulation from outside one’s self, such as the image of the attractive classmate or the sound of the instructor’s voice. As a communicator, your awareness of both of these sources of stimuli will help you recognize the importance or preparation, practice, and persistence as you prepare your message with them in mind. How will you help guide the audience’s thoughts about your topic? How will you build attention-getting features throughout your written work? How will you address issues like sleepiness when you cannot change the designated time of your speech, scheduled right after lunch? All these issues relate to the selection process, and to a degree the speaker can influence the perception of both internal and external stimuli.

Selection has three main parts: exposure, attention, and retention (Klopf, 1995). Selective exposure is both information we choose to pay attention to and information that we choose to ignore, or that is unavailable to us. For example, in a class you may have been required to view a student-created YouTube video presentation on which is better for you, Gatorade or water. As your levels of exposure to stimuli influence your decisions, you may think, “Oh, I’ve heard this before,” and tune the speaker out. Selective attention involves focusing on one stimulus, like the image of an attractive classmate, and tuning out a competing stimulus, like the instructor’s voice. Selective retention involves choosing to remember one stimulus over another.

You may be out walking and spot a friend from the same class. Your friend may say, “The program we had to watch for class said Gatorade has trans fat in it. Do you think that’s true?” and you may be at a loss, having no memory of hearing any such thing because, while you were present in your room, you were paying attention to other stimuli. Furthermore, you may not be a nutrition major like your friend so that the term “trans fat” may not mean anything to you. To someone majoring in nutrition, it might be a common term used across their classes, but if you are an accounting major, you may not be familiar with the term. This illustrates how one aspect of selection, like exposure, can influence another aspect, like retention.

You might then think to yourself that the point in which you tuned out in the Gatorade program has something to do with this term and realize that as the speaker became technical about the nutritional and metabolic properties of Gatorade, you lost interest because you were unfamiliar with the terms being used. This highlights one aspect of a presentation that a speaker can focus on to influence the perception process. Not everyone in the audience will understand all the terminology, so by defining terms, providing visual aid cues, or speaking in common terms, you can make your topic and its presentation more accessible to a larger percentage of your audience.

Now, if you were asked to recall the basic properties of Gatorade after watching the program, could you? Even if you recall the general idea of the program, you may have a hard time remembering any specific property because you were focused on your hunger. Although you may have heard the words, you may not have chosen to listen to them. Hearing means you heard words, but listening implies you actively chose to listen to the program, processing the sounds, following the thread of discussion, making it easier for you to recall. This again illustrates the point that you chose one stimuli over another, in effect selecting what to pay attention to, and if the speaker was competing for your attention with more attractive, interesting or distracting stimuli, you probably just tuned him or her out, in effect deselecting them.

Organization

Organization is the process of sorting information into logical categories or series. We often take things we perceive and organize them into categories based on what we have perceived previously. Think back to the Gatorade video. Suppose the speaker started out with an attention statement and quickly moved to highlight three main points in the introduction. While the attention statement got you, by the second main point you were already starting to think, “This is going to be just another speech on how great Gatorade is for my body.” You may think this because you have already heard other speakers presented similar information and you classify what you think this presentation is going to be in relation to your previous experiences.

But this speaker may have given some thought to the presentation and how to make it unique and interesting, and prepared their discussion on the nutritional aspects in more depth. As a result, the information may have been organized into categories like ingredients, how your body uses the ingredients, and what the net result is. The final conclusion might be that if you exercise and burn off the calories present in Gatorade, it might be a positive choice, but if you drink it just to drink it, then it will only provide you with empty calories just like any other soft drink.

Organization Schemes

The organization scheme used to create three categories focuses on nutrition and the process by which Gatorade’s ingredients are used by the body. The conclusion creates two categories of consumers. This organization scheme can promote active listening and allow the audience to follow, but the speaker must take into account the possibility that an audience member might think, “Oh no, not again.” To set this presentation apart from others the audience might have heard, the speaker could include a phrase like, “Is Gatorade always for you? Not necessarily. Let’s look at…” which gains attention and penetrates a stereotype.

When you write a document or give a presentation, you may not be able to anticipate all the ways an audience might organize the information you present or how they might use it, but by investing time in seeing it from their perspective, you can improve your organization and be a more effective communicator.

For example, suppose you are assigned the task of writing a cost-benefit analysis report on a specific product currently in development. Do you already know the essential points you need to include and the common industry standards for this type of report? You may not know, but you have written an essay before and appreciate the need for organization. Your ability to organize information, taking something that you know or have experienced and applying it to new information, helps you make sense of your world.

Gestalt Principles of Organization

In the early twentieth century, some psychologists thought we could examine parts of things, much as a scientist would examine an atom, and make a whole and complete picture regardless of context. Their theory was that the setting and scene would not influence the picture or perspective. In response to this view, other psychologists developed what they called Gestalt principles—the German word “Gestalt” referring to the unified whole. According to Gestalt theory, context matters, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. What you see and how you see it matters, and you yourself play a role in that perception of organization.

If you were asked to connect nine dots with four straight lines, without retracing any line, could you find a solution? The key to solving this puzzle is finding a way to “think outside the box”—in this case, to take your pencil outside the implied square, or box, formed by the three rows of dots. The physical configuration of the dots contributed to the illusion of the “box.” But in fact there is no box, and our tendency to see one where one does not exist creates barriers to solving the puzzle. Gestalt theory states that we will perceive the nine dots as belonging to a whole—a group or set having a certain shape—whether or not that whole actually exists.

Gestalt principles apply not only to images or objects, but also to ideas and concepts. You can associate two or more bits of information in predictable ways, but your perspective can influence your view of the overall idea. We don’t always have all the information we need to draw a conclusion, literally drawing a series of relationships to form a whole picture in our minds, so we often fill in the gaps. We guess and make logical leaps, even suspend disbelief, all in an effort to make sense of our experiences.

In your presentations, if you jump from topic to topic or go off on a tangent, what happens to the listener’s ability to listen and follow you effectively? Why make barriers for your audience when you’ve worked so hard to get their attention? How does this relate to Gestalt principles? By failing to recognize our natural tendency to want ideas, shapes, or words to make sense, the author is confusing the reader. What happens when the reader is confused? He or she moves on to something else, and leaves your writing behind. The opposite of clear and concise, confused, and poorly organized writing can distract and defeat even the most motivated of readers. Table 3.3 “Gestalt Principles of Organization” lists some of the Gestalt organization principles.

Table 3.3 Gestalt Principles of Organization

Let’s examine some of the commonly used Gestalt principles: proximity, continuation, similarity, and closure.

It makes sense that we would focus first on things around us and the degree to which they are close to us and to each other. Proximity is the perceptual organization of information based on physical relationship of space to objects. In creating a scene for a play or movie, a stage designer knows that the audience will tend to pay attention to objects in the foreground, unless special emphasis is added to objects farther away. This principle extends to people and daily life. Just because someone is walking down the street next to someone else, this does not necessarily mean they have a connection to each other—they are simply in close proximity.

We also see a similar tendency in the principle of continuity . We like things to be orderly, and our brain will see lines and movement where none exist. Examine Figure 3.4 “Continuity” . What you see? Do you perceive two lines crossing one another? Or an X? The principle of continuity predicts that you would demonstrate a tendency to perceive continuous figures. The two lines cross one another, and you might even say from top to bottom or the reverse, when there is no motion indicated.

Figure 3.4 Continuity

Continuity can also lead to a well-known logical fallacy, or false belief, involving sequence and cause-effect relationships. If something happens after something else, does that mean that the first event caused the second event? You wish for rain and it rains. Connected? Logic and common sense would say no. You have a dream about a plane crash, and the next day there is a major airline crash. Did your dream cause the crash? Obviously not.

When objects or events are similar, we tend to group them together in our minds, again making the assumption that they are related by their common characteristics. Similarity is the perceptual organization of information based on perceived points of common characteristics across distinct items. For example, a horse, a mule, and a donkey are distinct, but we perceive them as being similar to one another.

The principle of closure underscores our tendency to use previous knowledge to fill in the gaps in an incomplete idea or picture. If you are talking to a friend on your cell phone and the connection breaks up for a few seconds, you may miss some words, but you can grasp the main idea by automatically guessing what was said. You do this based on your previous history of communicating with your friend on similar topics. Do you always guess correctly? Of course not. Look at Figure 3.5.

5 circles with a sixth missing from each. This gives the illusion of a star, but also an illusion of every circle looking like pac-man

Do you see a ring of Pac-Man-like circles?

When we say we see a star, we don’t really see one because there is no star. The five Pac-Man shapes in that arrangement, however, allow our mind to say, “If this was connected to this and that was connected to that, there would be a star.” Sometimes the sense we make does not match reality, and we see a star where there is no star.

Sometimes we “fill in the blanks” without even being aware of it. When we speak on a topic and fail to clearly articulate a point or substantiate an assertion, we leave a “hole” in our presentation that the listener may or may not be aware of, but will predictably fill. This tendency to jump to conclusions may seem like a disadvantage, but it is only a disadvantage if you are unaware of it. If fact, it’s a positive ability that allows us to infer and guess correctly, often in times of crisis when time is limited. But we don’t always guess correctly. If your goal is to communicate your message to the audience, then by definition you don’t want a “pothole” to interrupt, distract, or create a barrier that leads to misinterpretation.

Interpretation

After selection and organization, interpretation is the third step in the perception process. From your past experiences combined with your current expectations, you assign meaning to the current stimuli. If the word “college” for you has meaning, then what comes to mind? If a high school student has to take the PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test) in the morning, what does that word mean to him? Will his state of anxiety and anticipation over the importance of the exam and the unknown word of college influence how he responds to that word? If his parents ask, “Where are you planning on going to college?” when he is simply focused on the test that may influence his options, the word itself may take on a whole new meaning. It may invite issues of control (“Which college? You are going to the college we went to, right?”) or of self-esteem (“Am I good enough to go to college?”) to become associated with the word “college.”

The word itself may shift in terms of meaning across time. Let’s say the high school student did well on the PSAT and went to the same college as his parents. Is it the same college, or just the same location and buildings? It may have a tradition, but it is at the same time new and ever-changing, just like the students that arrive each year. Fast forward a couple of years and the college may represent a place where you studied, made friends, and came to know yourself. In a few more years, you may choose to become a member of the alumni association. The meaning of the word “college” can shift intrapersonally across time, and can mean different things to different groups.

Let’s rewind and look back at a test gone bad, taken by a less than adequately prepared student from a household where there may not be sufficient resources to make the dream of college come true. The image of college may remain an image instead of a reality; a goal not attained. Structural barriers like socioeconomic status, parental and peer influences, and the need to work to support yourself or your family can all influence your decisions and perspective.

Do a search on “M. C. Escher” or “tessellation art.” How does Escher’s work manipulate your perception? Share your opinions with your classmates.
Think of ways to describe something you know, such as what your home looks like. Organize the information using one of the Gestalt principles (e.g., proximity, similarity, continuity, or closure). Present the organized information to a classmate. Can your classmate tell which Gestalt principle you have used?
How does the process of perception limit our view, or expand it? Can we choose how to perceive things? Write a one- to two-page essay on this topic and discuss it with a classmate.
Think of a time when you jumped to a conclusion and later learned that it was incorrect. Write a brief summary of the experience. Share and compare with classmates.

Thinking Critically

As you approach your writing project, it is important to practice the habit of thinking critically. Critical thinking can be defined as “self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking” (Paul & Elder, 2007). It is the difference between watching television in a daze versus analyzing a movie with attention to its use of lighting, camera angles, and music to influence the audience. One activity requires very little mental effort, while the other requires attention to detail, the ability to compare and contrast, and sharp senses to receive all the stimuli.

As a habit of mind, critical thinking requires established standards and attention to their use, effective communication, problem solving, and a willingness to acknowledge and address our own tendency for confirmation bias, egocentrism, and sociocentrism. We’ll use the phrase “habit of mind” because clear, critical thinking is a habit that requires effort and persistence. People do not start an exercise program, a food and nutrition program, or a stop-smoking program with 100 percent success the first time. In the same way, it is easy to fall back into lazy mental short cuts, such as “If it costs a lot, it must be good,” when in fact the statement may very well be false. You won’t know until you gather information that supports (or contradicts) the assertion.

As we discuss getting into the right frame of mind for writing, keep in mind that the same recommendations apply to reading and research. If you only pay attention to information that reinforces your existing beliefs and ignore or discredit information that contradicts your beliefs, you are guilty of confirmation bias (Gilovich, 1993). As you read, research, and prepare for writing, make an effort to gather information from a range of reliable sources, whether or not this information leads to conclusions you didn’t expect. Remember that those who read your writing will be aware of, or have access to, this universe of data as well and will have their own confirmation bias. Reading and writing from an audience-centered view means acknowledging your confirmation bias and moving beyond it to consider multiple frames of references, points of view, and perspectives as you read, research, and write.

Egocentrism and sociocentrism are related concepts to confirmation bias. Egocentrism can be defined as the use of self-centered standards to determine what to believe and what to reject. Similarly, sociocentrism involves the use of society-centered standards (Paul & Elder, 2007). Both ways of thinking create an “us versus them” relationship that can undermine your credibility and alienate readers who don’t share your viewpoint.

This leads to confirmation bias and groupthink, resulting in false conclusions with little or no factual support for a belief. If a person believes the earth is flat and never questions that belief, it serves as an example of egocentric thinking. The person believes it is true even though he has never questioned why he believes it. If the person decides to look for information but only finds information that supports his pre-existing belief, ignoring or discrediting information that contradicts that belief, he is guilty of confirmation bias. If he believes the earth is flat because everyone in his group or community believes it, even though he himself has never questioned or confirmed the belief, he is guilty of sociocentrism.

In each case, the false thinking strategy leads to poor conclusions. Watch out for your tendency to read, write, and believe that which reflects only what you think you know without solid research and clear, critical thinking.

Overcoming Fear of Writing

For many people, one of the most frightening things in life is public speaking. For similar reasons, whether rational or irrational, writing often generates similar fears. There is something about exposing one’s words to possible criticism that can be truly terrifying. In this chapter, we are going to break down the writing process into small, manageable steps that, in turn, will provide you with a platform for success. To take advantage of these steps, you need to acknowledge any reluctance or fear that may be holding you back, and bring your interests and enthusiasm to this discussion on writing.

Having a positive attitude about writing in general, and your effort, is also a key ingredient to your success. If you approach a writing assignment with trepidation and fear, you will spend your valuable time and attention in ways that do not contribute positively to your writing. People often fear the writing process because of three main reasons:

Negative orientation
Risk of failure
Fear of the unknown

Let’s take each reason in turn. Negative orientation means the writer has a pre-existing negative association or view of the task or activity. We tend to like people who like us (Gudykunst & Kim, 1997), tend to pursue activities where we perceive rewards and appreciation for our efforts, and are more likely to engage in activities where we perceive we are successful. Conversely, we tend to not like people who we perceive as not like us, tend to ignore or avoid activities where we perceive we are not appreciated or are not rewarded, and are less likely to engage in activities where we perceive we are not successful. For some writers, previous experiences have led to a pre-existing association with writing. That association may be positive if they have been encouraged, affirmed, or rewarded as they demonstrated measurable gain. That association may also be negative if efforts have been met with discouraging feedback, a lack of affirmation, or negative reinforcement.

Effective business writing is a highly valued skill, and regardless of the degree to which writing will be a significant aspect of your designated job duties, your ability to do it well will be a boost to your career. If you have a negative orientation toward writing, admitting this fact is an important first step. Next, we need to actively seek ways to develop your skills in ways that will demonstrate measurable gain and lead to positive affirmation. Not everyone develops in the same way on the same schedule, and measurable gain means that from one writing assignment to the next you can demonstrate positive progress. In an academic setting, measurable gain is one of your clear goals as a writer. In a business or industry setting, you may lack the time to revise and improve, meaning that you will need to get it right the first time. Take advantage of the academic setting to set positive, realistic goals to improve your writing. Surround yourself with resources, including people who will help you reach your goal. If your college or university has a writing center, take advantage of it. If it does not, seek out assistance from those whose writing has been effective and well received.

It is a given that you do not want to fail. Risk of failure is a common fear across public speaking and writing situations, producing predictable behavioral patterns we can recognize, address, and resolve. In public speaking, our minds may go blank at the start of a presentation as we confront our fear of failure. In writing, we may experience a form of blankness often referred to as “writer’s block”—the overwhelming feeling of not knowing what to write or where to start—and sit helplessly waiting for our situation to change.

But we have the power to change our circumstances and to overcome our risk of failure. You may be familiar with the concept of a rough draft, but it may compete in your mind with a desire for perfection. Writing is a dynamic process, a reflection of the communication process itself. It won’t be perfect the first time you attempt it. Awareness that your rough draft serves a purpose, but doesn’t represent your final product, should serve in the same way a rehearsal for a speech serves a speaker. You get a second (or third) chance to get it right. Use this process to reduce your fear of failure and let go of your perfectionist tendencies, if only for a moment. Your desire for perfection will serve you well when it comes to polishing your finished document, but everything has its time and place. Learning where and when to place your effort is part of writing preparation.

Finally, we often fear the unknown. It is part of being human, and is reflected across all contexts, including public speaking and writing. If you have never given a speech before, your first time on stage can be quite an ordeal. If you have never written a formal business report, your fear of the unknown is understandable. How can you address this fear? Make the unknown known. If we take the mystery out of the process and product, we can see it for its essential components, its organizational pattern, and start to see how our product may look before we even start to produce it. In many organizations, you can ask your supervisor or coworkers for copies of similar documents to the one you have been assigned, even if the content is quite different. If this is not an option, simply consider the way most documents in your company are written—even something as basic as an interoffice e-mail will provide some clues. Your goal is to become familiar with the type of document and to examine several successful examples. Once you see a couple of reports, you will have a better feel for what you have to produce and the unknown will be far less mysterious.

How would you describe your orientation to writing? Where does this orientation come from? Discuss your thoughts with a classmate.
If you could identify one aspect of your writing you would like to improve, what would it be and why? Write a one- two-page essay on this subject.
What kinds of writing do you like? Dislike? Explain why and provide an example of each. Share and compare with the class.
Who is your favorite author? What do you like about her or his writing? Discuss your opinion with a classmate.

Gilovich, T. (1993). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life . New York, NY: The Free Press.

Gudykunst, W. B., & Kim, Y. Y. (1997). Communicating with strangers: An approach to intercultural communication (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action (Vol. 1). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Hemingway, E. (1999). Ernest Hemingway on writing (L. W. Phillips, Ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.

Klopf, D. (1995). Intercultural encounters: The fundamentals of intercultural communication (2nd ed., p. 7). Englewood, CO: Morton.

Kostelnick, C., & Roberts, D. (1998). Designing visual language: Strategies for professional communicators . Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

McLean, S. (2003). The basics of speech communication . Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Nickerson, R. S., Perkins, D. N., & Smith, E. E. (1985). The teaching of thinking . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erbaum Associates.

Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2007). The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools . Dillon Beach, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking Press.

Ruffman, M. (2007, August 12). How to appliqué candles with flowers and other stuff. ToolGirl, Mag Ruffman’s Official Web Log . Retrieved from http://www.toolgirl.com/toolgirl/2007/12/how-to-applique.html#more .

Business Communication for Success 5.1. Authored by : University of Minnesota. Located at : https://open.lib.umn.edu/businesscommunication/chapter/5-1-think-then-write-writing-preparation/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Business Communication for Success 3.2. Located at : https://open.lib.umn.edu/businesscommunication/chapter/3-2-perception/.%20 . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

Communication Is Like An Iceberg

communication is like an iceberg

1. communication is like an iceberg

2. communication is like an iceberg.

opo kasi tayo

Explanation:

pa brainliest po

Based on how I understand the quote, when people try to communicate, sometimes there is more meaning to it that we tend to put aside. This represents the 10% but we don't fully understand it as a whole. It can also be taken as an example like, when you talk to a foreigner, you would understand some of the words that they are saying but not everything and what they ment.

hope can help ❤️

3. Communication is like en iceberg}

yes even though your close to the person.you are still shy sometimes

4. why communication is like an iceberg

Not all signs of communication are visible .

Communication is not just about talking, what else is it about? We can define communication as the imparting or exchanging of information or news. Just as we can put culture into two categories ( visible and invisible signs), we can also identify two different types of communication: verbal and non-verbal - or we can categorize it like culture: explicit and implicit .

Verbal communication (explicit) includes the words we choose and our voice we use to utter our thoughts to speak our mind. Non-verbal communication , the implicit part of a culture, makes up so much more when it comes to communication. It includes gestures, postures, facial expressions, eye contact, vocal characteristics, personal appearance and touch.

5. example of iceberg theory

The Iceberg Principle or Iceberg Theory is a theory that suggests that we cannot see or detect most of a situation's data. ... As with an iceberg, only its tip is visible, while the bulk of it is below the water's surface, i.e., invisible.

Pls leave a thanks or follow me thanks you

6. Explain the quote "Communication is like an Iceberg" 10% above the surface. 90% below the surface. Essay

to come into sight; become visible: A man suddenly appeared in the doorway. to have the appearance of being; seem; look: to appear wise. to be obvious or easily perceived; be clear or made clear by evidence: It appears to me that you are right.

7. an iceberg is floating in water

The fact that the solid form of water floats in water is one of the special properties of water. It's solid form — ice — is less dense than its liquid form. So ice floats in liquid water!

8. why communication is like an iceberg 10% above the surface 90%below the surface

because the 10% on top is wht we say whilst the 90% below is what we really what we want to say but cant say it or dont want to say it.

9. tip of the iceberg idiom meaning

I am quite sure that you have probably heard the idiom, “tip of the iceberg,” at least once in your life. This expression basically means an event that is merely a part of a larger and more complex (often a dark) issue.

10. Explain the Cultural Iceberg

Hall's Cultural Iceberg Model. In 1976, Hall developed the iceberg analogy of culture. If the culture of a society was the iceberg, Hall reasoned, than there are some aspects visible, above the water, but there is a larger portion hidden beneath the surface

11. 2. Let us compare the iceberg to human mind. How will you compare the two (iceberg and human mind) in terms of levels of consciousness?

-The preconscious consists of anything that could potentially be brought into the conscious mind.

-The conscious mind contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. This also includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily and brought into awareness.

-The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside of our conscious awareness. The unconscious contains contents that are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict.

Ice berg os luke himanind because is complex such as ice bergs

12. what percent of the volume of an iceberg

This means that ice has nine-tenths, or 90 percent of water's density – and so 90 percent of the iceberg is below the water's surface. In contrast, a piece of wood with a density of 0.5 g/mL (half that of water) would float with half of its volume below the surface of the water.

13. What is the important of iceberg in management

Socila Role

14. meaning of the middle part of the iceberg

The portion of iceberg submerged in water is called BUMMOCK. The visible portion or tip of iceberg is called as HUMMOCK. The 10% of the iceberg which is above-water is called the tip.

A bergy bit is a medium to large fragment of ice. Its height is generally greater than three feet but less than 16 feet above sea level and its area is normally about 1,076-3,229 square feet . Growlers are smaller fragments of ice and are roughly the size of a truck or grand piano.

Inside the iceberg, however, temperatures can be much colder -- as cold as -15 to -20 degrees Celsius (5 to -4 degrees Fahrenheit) for icebergs off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, for example

H o p e I t H e l p s

B r a i n l i e s t p l e a s e

: a large floating mass of ice detached from a glacier. 2 : an emotionally cold person

15. Iceberg Berge- mountain Meaning:_________

a large floating mass of ice detached from a glacier or ice sheet and carried out to sea.

the tip of the iceberg — the small perceptible part of a much larger situation or problem that remains hidden.

may mga ss na naka attach.

sana nakatulong

aral mabuti

T O G O D B E T H E G L O R Y ! ❤️

16. explain the anology cpmmunications in like an iceberg

The model suggests that communication should be appreciated as more than the exposed tip of the iceberg; the message; “reading, writing, speaking, listening, active listening, verbal language, body language, and kinaesthetics.” (The Iceberg Analogy, n.d. p. 1, para.

sana maka tulong

pa brianliest naden po salamat

the answer is in the image i hope this helps you.if this help you can you please brainliest me thanks.

17. what is meaning of iceberg

it is a large floating mass of ice

18. Explain the quote "Communication is like an Iceberg" 10% above the surface. 90% below the surface. Essay. PS. Kindly make it long.

"Shallow lang sha para sa iba but there's more meaning to it.." based on what you said..

19. iceberg below the seawater level is estimated to be 1,500 m 3 . If the density of the iceberg is 920 kg/m 3 and for seawater is 1,030 kg/m 3 , calculate the volume of the iceberg above the seawater level

mag aral ka fi nangingipya sa brainly

20. hot:lava:__:iceberg

cold. yan yung answer ayaw kasi dapat twenty characters long

21. why Titanic Collier to the iceberg

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking at the time the deadliest of a single ship in the West[4] and the deadliest peacetime sinking of a superliner or cruise ship to date.[5] With much public attention in the aftermath the disaster has since been the material of many artistic works and a founding material of the disaster film genre.

#CarryOnLearning #GogoBlueTeam

22. what titanic collided to the iceberg

R.M.S. Titanic

Vicki Bassett. On April 14, 1912, the R.M.S. Titanic collided with a massive iceberg and sank in less than three hours. At the time, more than 2200 passengers and crew were aboard the Titanic for her maiden voyage to the United States.

Need pa ba to? But ok

Sinearch ko lang yan

23. how do iceberg form? is iceberg the same as sea ice? Explain

Icebergs form when chunks of ice calve, or break off, from glaciers, ice shelves, or a larger iceberg. Icebergs travel with ocean currents, sometimes smashing up against the shore or getting caught in shallow waters.

When an iceberg reaches warm waters, the new climate attacks it from all sides. On the iceberg surface, warm air melts snow and ice into pools called melt ponds that can trickle through the iceberg and widen cracks. At the same time, warm water laps at the iceberg edges, melting the ice and causing chunks of ice to break off. On the underside, warmer waters melt the iceberg from the bottom up

due to the extremely cold climate thus forming an iceberg

24. the mind is like an iceberg,it floats with one several of it's bulk above water means

when Freud, the founder of psychology, said that "the mind is like an iceberg;it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above the water" he was referring the importance of the unconscious in directing human behavior He believed dreams are also way to access what is in the unconscious

25. How to explain about iceberg?

An iceberg is ice that broke off from glaciers or shelf ice and is floating in open water. Iceberg located in Ross Sea, Antarctica.

26. A continent is composed of relatively light blocks that float high on the mantle, like gigantic, slow-moving icebergs. Select one:TrueFalse

27. how do icebergs formhow do iceberg form .

Icebergs form when chunks of ice calve, or break off, from glaciers, ice shelves, or a larger iceberg. ... When an iceberg reaches warm waters, the new climate attacks it from all sides. On the iceberg surface, warm air melts snow and ice into pools called melt ponds that can trickle through the iceberg and widen cracks.

Where do iceberg came from?

Icebergs float in the ocean, but are made of frozen freshwater, not saltwater. Most icebergs in the Northern Hemisphere break off from glaciers in Greenland. Sometimes they drift south with currents into the North Atlantic Ocean. Icebergs also calve from glaciers in Alaska.

28. What is Iceberg lettuce?

29. explain the quotations "the mind is like an iceberg it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water" by sigmund freud.

When Freud supposedly said "the mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above the water," he meant that people repress most of their thoughts, memories, and desires, especially those that are painful or socially unacceptable

30. Magnitude of an iceberg

0.5 magnitude point

sorry if wrong

The largest iceberg currently floating in the ocean, named A-76, calved from the Ronne Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea in Antarctica measuring 4320 km2. The largest iceberg in recent history, named B-15, measured nearly 300 km x 40 km

Typically about one-tenth of the volume of an iceberg is above water, which follows from Archimedes's Principle of buoyancy; the density of pure ice is about 920 kg/m3 (57 lb/cu ft), and that of seawater about 1,025 kg/m3 (64 lb/cu ft). The contour of the underwater portion can be difficult to judge by looking at the portion above the surface.

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COMMENTS

4.4: Cross-Cultural Communication
The Cultural Iceberg by L. Underwood Adapted from Lindner (2013) The iceberg, a commonly used metaphor to describe culture, is great for illustrating the tangible and the intangible. When talking about culture, most people focus on the "tip of the iceberg," which is visible but makes up just 10 percent of the object.
The Iceberg Model of Culture: How it Drives Organizational Success
The iceberg model of culture is a framework that allows you to measure your organizational culture. The model helps assess how well an organization's cultural values align with the goals and solve performance problems. In 1976, Edward T Hall developed the 'Iceberg Model of Culture' and explained that organizational culture is like an ...
PDF 1.3 The culture iceberg
1.3 The culture iceberg. When you observe people from a certain culture, some characteristics - such as dress and the way people greet each other - are easy to see. Others are not so easy. Culture is sometimes compared to an iceberg, some of which is visible, but much of which is difficult to see, or invisible. C things which you recognise ...
Tip of the Iceberg: Collaboration and Scientific Writing
As Johnston notes, the "oft-quoted iceberg passage in Death in the Afternoon" (69) explains how the power of writing, like the "dignity of an iceberg" (69) derives from fact that most of it remains submerged. Johnston also connects the "implicit and explicit" (69) modalities of communication in Hemingway with Sigmund Freud's ...
Uncovering the Depths of Understanding: The Iceberg Model
In summary, the Iceberg Model is a powerful concept that helps us recognize the hidden depths of culture, communication, and human behaviour. By understanding and respecting the layers beneath the ...
PDF Beyond the tip of the iceberg: Five Stages toward Cultural Competence
Gary Weaver (1986) uses the image of an iceberg to explain these many layers of culture (see figure below). Like an iceberg, part of a culture is "above water" in that it is visible and easy to identify and know. This part includes surface culture and elements of folk culture-the arts, folk dancing dress, cooking etc.
Iceberg Thinking: What is Iceberg Thinking?
Discuss: An iceberg is a powerful symbol that many great thinkers have returned to time and time again. While it's used in similar ways, the meaning changes a little, depending on the context. Take a look at the following two quotes. Think about what they might mean, and then share your ideas: Reflect: Think of your life as an iceberg. We all ...
The Cultural Iceberg & Communication
The Cultural Iceberg, adapted by Sheri Lazarus (2016) from work by Edward T. Hall (1976). Art by Anna Seeley and Abby Smith. Top banner photo: "There is so much value in having Indian architects & engineers in EMI to communicate design and negotiate with local contractors!". Photo by Ligy A., 2014, India-Bhutan border.
Culture, Communication and Icebergs
The examples mentioned above can be considered the tip of the iceberg which can also include further aspects of how people behave (meaning the more obvious behavior you see in public and people you meet, e.g. communication styles, approaches to knowing a person or decision making style).
PDF The Cultural Iceberg
Please keep in mind that the cultural iceberg, like any analogy, is limited. For example, the image of the iceberg is static and fixed, while culture is dynamic and complex. Culture is not a 'thing' as this image suggests, and the iceberg is used as a means of illustrating a concept. Take time to consider the values and beliefs that lie beneath
Is culture an iceberg?
The cultural iceberg. As metaphors capture complex concepts, they are often convenient to define "culture.". Since Edward.T.Hall's seminal publications (1973, 1979), the cultural iceberg metaphor has a prosperous career in the intercultural communication field. One might admit that it meets the requirements.
The Iceberg Model of Culture & Behaviour
The Iceberg Model Of Culture. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall developed the Cultural Iceberg Model in the 1970s as an analogy for the cultural codes that prevail in any society. The term 'Iceberg Model of Culture' is inspired by the icebergs found in polar seas. An iceberg has visible parts on the surface of the water and invisible parts that ...
Cultural Iceberg
The iceberg model of culture examines a culture in the context of an iceberg, which implies that the unseen aspects of a society's culture are the driving forces between the creation and ...
The Power of Systems Thinking: The Iceberg Model
One model that helps visualize systems thinking is the iceberg model. Just like an iceberg, which has only 10 percent of its mass visible above the water while the remaining 90 percent lies beneath…
Iceberg model: communication below the surface
The iceberg model in our context is a communication model. When you think of interpersonal communication, the iceberg serves as a kind of symbolic placeholder. Only the top 20% is conscious and visible information, containing numbers, dates, facts or clear statements. It is the part of the iceberg that is visible above the surface of the water.
Defining Culture
Culture is not something you can measure. It is mostly invisible, but these invisible values guide behavior and social interactions. However, like an onion, you can "peel" culture and strip down its layers. The outermost layer of the "onion", i.e. of a different culture, is what you can see, hear, and touch: artifacts, products, and ...
3.2 Think, Then Write: Writing Preparation
Introduction. Examine Figure 3.2 "Iceberg Model", often called the iceberg model. When you see an iceberg in the ocean, the great majority of its size and depth lie below your level of awareness. When you write a document or give a presentation, each person in your reading or listening audience is like the tip of an iceberg.
Lessons learned from icebergs: reflections on learning and teaching
Icebergs are spectacular, of course - massive, ancient, and inspiring. Icebergs offer peak experiences, in more ways than one. But the most important part of any iceberg isn't what you see - the classic towering pinnacle. What really matters is what you don't see: the mass of the iceberg that lies below the surface.
Breaking the Ice: Changing Company Culture with ...
Company culture is like an iceberg. Organizational icebergs dictate how a company operates from the bottom up. Just as the tip of an iceberg is visible above the water's surface, much of company ...
How Are People Like Icebergs? A Lesson on Self-Awareness
In the conversations still yet to take place, students explore self-awareness skills such as: -Linking feelings, values, and thoughts. As they finished their drawings, I again asked, "How are people like icebergs?". For third grade students, who still think very concretely, they commented on similar traits. "People and icebergs can float ...
PDF Understanding Behavior: Iceberg Model-Example
Expressive Language (Sessions 7-10): Could work on communication to express his dislike for transition in a more appropriate way (ask for 2 more minutes, say I don't want to, etc.- depending on child's current level of communication) Other skills we've discussed & taught: Toy play, imitation, joint attention, expressive
Communication Is Like An Iceberg
3. Communication is like en iceberg} 4. why communication is like an iceberg 5. example of iceberg theory 6. Explain the quote "Communication is like an Iceberg" 10% above the surface. 90% below the surface. Essay 7. an iceberg is floating in water; 8. why communication is like an iceberg 10% above the surface 90%below the surface 9.
[Expert Verified] Explain the quote "Communication is like an Iceberg
Explain the quote "Communication is like an Iceberg" 10% above the surface. 90% below the surface. Essay. - 3095046 ... Explain the quote "Communication is like an Iceberg" 10% above the surface. 90% below the surface. Essay. PS. Kindly make it long. See answer anjan na po.. but yeahh.. i mean, nung question ;'(