Intercultural communication

Intercultural communication can be tried to be understood by knowing about different approaches. Applying their guidelines helps improve intercultural communication:

Taking care of differences in

• cultural standards
• language
• stereotypes and prejudices

Academic work does not involve the social dimension of culture

Being aware of

• power inequities

• "appropriate" approach to work

• dealing with frustration and misunderstanding

• team-building processes, e.g., Tuckman's (1965/ 1977) model

Taking into account the diversity in languages and cultures, the world map would look different:

The world population is based on country population. The world map has to be redrawn when you consider the people living there. Each square represents 500,000 people.

Two books with theories based on field research show scales of measuring intercultural characteristics:

Erin Meyer (2015)
The Culture Map

Navigating cultural differences by using 8 distinctions in assessing mindsets and predispositions helps welcome diversity and foster the appreciation of various ways of thinking.

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• Communicating: explicit vs. implicit

• Evaluating: direct vs. indirect negative feedback

• Persuading: deductive vs. inductive

• Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical

• Deciding: consensual vs. top-down

• Trusting: task vs. relationship

• Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoid confrontation.

• Scheduling: structured vs. flexible

Source; https://www.thegeniusworks.com/vault-entry/xl-culture-map-erin-meyer/

Daniel Coyle (2018)
The culture code

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Successful groups have developed three essential skills that generate cohesion and cooperation.

1. Start With Safety: Great group chemistry isn't luck; it's about sending super-clear, continuous signals: we share a future, you have a voice.
2. Get Vulnerable and Stay Vulnerable: Strong cultures don't hide their weaknesses; they make a habit of sharing them to improve together.
3. Roadmap Your Story: It's not about nice-sounding value statements -- it's about flooding the zone with vivid narratives that work like GPS signals, guiding your group toward its goal.

Geert Hofstede (1980)
The 6D model of national culture

This first model of national culture reduces cross-cultural diversity to country scores on a limited number of dimensions. These are called dimensions of culture. Society needs to come to terms with these fundamental issues to organize itself. 

On this interactive world map, you can check it out.

These categories are not to be taken as absolute, as 'dimensions do not exist'. They are a product of our imagination, used for understanding.

Hofstede's dimensions were not postulated but found inductively. Each new study uses new respondent sets and different countries. Even if it used the same questions, these questions might have come to mean other things. So we should take dimension scores with a grain of salt. It is rare for different studies on different data sets to yield the exact dimensions.

Resources: 

The University of Jyväskylä, Introduction to Intercultural Communication

World map: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/population-cartogram.html

book Erin Meyer: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-culture-map-8-scales-for-work-2015-1?r=DE&IR=T

Peter Fisk on Erin Meyer: the Culture map with countries: https://www.thegeniusworks.com/vault-entry/xl-culture-map-erin-meyer/

Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code:  http://danielcoyle.com/#big-idea

Geert Hofstede, 6D Model: https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-of-national-culture/