Good cross-cultural communicators usually have a good store of empathy up their sleeves.
What is empathy?
Empathy is the capacity of putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and understanding his point of view.
This is why empathy is often an element of good cross-cultural communication.
Now some people appear to be more capable of empathy than others, especially when it is empathy for people from different cultures.
Curiosity Opens Understanding
This leads to the question:
- How can you improve your capacity of understanding different cultures?
Well, obviously curiosity plays a role. Empathy is understanding other people. In order to understand different people you need curiosity.
- Curious about what they think differently. How they think. Why they think differently.
- Curious about why they do things differently. How they do things. Why they do things differently.
Questions Lead To Understanding
Let’s take this one step further.
Curiosity means asking questions:
- Asking questions directly to the person concerned.
- Questions to other people around you.
- And many more questions to yourself.
When you ask questions, you look for answers.
When you ask a series of questions you are looking for answers to tell a story.
With a series of questions you can find the answers that will help you to understand.
And if you continually ask questions this will even help you understand a different culture.
Questions, Curiosity And Empathy
Your international success can start simply with questions. Questions and curiosity in cross-cultural communication develops empathy with your international markets.
More From Cindy
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This is part of the Get International Clients Business Guide 5 Connect With Your International Markets Be sure to check out the other useful tips to connect with your international markets. |
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