Asian Cultures For Example example essay topic

Nonverbal communication, what we do not say, can cause as many problems as what we do say in everyday life. We are often quite aware of the effects of our words because we can see the expression or hear the response. The effects of what is not said may be much more restrained, but they are critical to our success or failure in an organization. You may have observed many Asians, whether they are relatively new immigrants or well-assimilated Asian Americans, still display many of the delicate nonverbal communication signals carried over from their childhood. In many Asian cultures, for example, it is ill mannered to look someone in the eye for too long, especially a person you have just met or you consider being in a superior position. In the American culture, however, not looking someone in the eye while addressing a person is considered rude or disrespectful.

I dealt with this situation after moving to United States in the first few years, and while I was a good performer at work, when placed in situations of face-to-face confrontation, I tended to look directly at my superior very briefly before averting my gaze. It made my boss wonder at APAC Telecommunications Services, if something was wrong with him or his management style. My failure to make eye contact was also adversely affecting the way I was coming across to my peers. I was practicing what I felt was the polite way to respect my superior, and my boss was misconstruing my behavior and concluding that I was either being dishonest or absolutely insecure.

After all in American culture, if people divert their gaze when confronted with a tough question or pressing issue, the immediate tendency is to assume they are trying to mislead or hide something. Another observation I would like to make is regarding the email. The biggest challenge with this medium is that a written message requires the reader to imagine nonverbal behavior, and it must come entirely from interpretation with minimal factual basis or visual signals. For example, when you send a message, the recipient cannot tell how he or she is feeling unless we say so, and even if we spell it out, the intensity of our feeling is lost. All they get is our words and their prior hallucinations about who we are as a person.

So, if you notice that you are getting dug in or angry in the face of something you just read on your computer screen, perhaps you should consider taking sometime before sending a reply. You may also want to pick up the phone and call the person who have send you the message, or arrange for a face-to-face meeting. Just because a conversation started in E-mail does not mean it has to end that way.