communication

“Have you eaten?”

“How are the kids?”

Depending on your cultural background one of the statements above is considered friendly conversation during the business day and the other is considered awkward.

Any tech-savvy communicator with a penchant for instant messaging will have at one point in time misread the emotional responses of someone at the other end of a text message.  Only 160 characters to say what you want, a puny mobile keyboard and no ability to express non-verbal cues is a recipe for interpersonal communication disaster.

The physical distance you keep between yourself and others during social situations is your personal space.  In normal conversations we don’t give our personal space much thought; it’s a natural distance that we grant between ourselves and others based on our culture, gender and personality.  However, when you enter into a cross cultural conversation, you may want to keep your personal distance in mind.

As the role of a company in the market changes, so does the corporate culture.

So much of what makes a company successful lies in the culture within it.  This is why when a change is made, even if the change is from an external force; we need to closely manage how the change impacts employees.

There is a great wealth of communication tools available for managing change.  From town hall meetings to individual coaching sessions, the biggest challenge is selecting the right tool for the job.  It’s common for project managers to get the process backwards—selecting a communications tool inside a project plan before actually understanding their audience or the type of information that needs to be addressed.