American English Business Communication
My first question to you is this: What frustrates you about your work relationships with Americans? In other words, what makes you feel alienated or 'not part of the group'? Thank you in advance for your responses. Maria www.americanculturecoach.com
4 comments:
These days we often use the world global or international. Frequently we experience many kinds of culture especially in US. However, a cultural gap still exists in our lives. The cultural gap is the most difficulty in relationships with Americans to me.
For example, I can’t understand my colleague’s jokes or proverbs very often. Even though other American co-workers laugh or response, I can’t do anything because I don’t know what they mean. Sometimes I even misunderstand or misinterpret them. In this case, I feel separate from the group.
As I know, Americans are generally verbal and silent periods are uncomfortable to them. In my culture, people would rather silent than speak too much. So, it is difficult for me to start a conversation with American by talking about the weather, sports, and so on whenever I sit with them.
The last example is that American social relations are complex and hard to maintain. Americans are friendly formally. On the other hand, it is not easy to make friends with Americans privately. They would not open their hearts. So I have American colleagues, but I don’t have American friends.
I often feel alienated or separate in this society. I think I need the time and my efforts to step up to the American culture as well as the understanding between different cultures.
I'm working in a very technical business environment, and what is very shocking about business relationship with Americans is the huge amount of acronyms used at work. At the beginning I was not even able to understand a single sentence.
Hi Byung Ju,
Thank you for your comments. It's very nice to hear from you. Your comments make me think on a deeper level about culture. First, your concern about jokes. I often feel like you when I am speaking to someone in Spanish or Italian, and I don't understand the jokes. Jokes can be very culture-specific. That is, Americans may like to joke about certain things, while you do not. For example, there are many jokes about religious people or about blondes being stupid. Many Americans start hearing these kinds of jokes from when they are kids, so for a foreigner, it is not easy to follow this kind of humor so easily. We have many years of experience listening and telling special kinds of jokes. Americans also use slang that is also culture-specific. On a deeper level, there are values that dictate which topics are okay to talk about and which are not. So, in normal conversation it's not okay to talk about religion and make fun of a person's looks, but it's perfectly okay in a joke. Part of the reason you may not be able to follow a joke, is that you may not be following the conversation completely before the joke is said. So, I would concentrate on trying to following conversations more closely. Don't worry if you can't catch every word, and don't be afraid to ask "What happened?" to jump into the conversation and get other people to repeat some of what they said. Let go of your negative feelings of being left out, and just be happy if you can catch just a little understanding of the jokes. Right now, you may not be able to understand it all, but the more you practice concentration, the more you will catch the general meaning.
About silence versus speaking, you are right that this is also cultural. I understand that you do not feel comfortable making comments about sports or weather just to fill in space, but you must remember what your goal is. Your goal should be to connect to people, so that you can build good relationships. People in the US do this by talking, not by creating silent space. This is just an American habit. But if you look at the American way in a positive way, you will see people connecting with each other. When you make the effort to reach out to the other person, you are creating a bond. This is the only way to get to know the other person. If you don't feel comfortable talking about sports or weather, make a comment about work. Humans need to make a human connection. This also ties to your last concern, about friendships. I know that you really want to have friendships here, because that is also a basic human need. I'm sure that you would want someone to ask you about your likes, dislikes, hobbies, famiy, etc. and maybe sometimes get together to enjoy socializing, playing sports, or doing other hobbies. But who will make the first step? Many Americans are in their 'comfort zone', meaning they already have friends and sometimes do not feel the need to open their hearts. You, on the other hand, need to make new friendships because you are in a new place. It would be the same for me if I lived in another country. I would need to make new friends. If you want people to be interested in you, to get to know you, then you must first make the effort to get to know them. Ask them questions about what hobbies they enjoy or what kind of food they like. I don't mean that you should be superficial and just speak to anyone. If there is someone that you think you may have some things in common with, maybe a co-worker who is married and lives in your area, you may begin by asking some questions to get to know him. One thing you may reflect on is this: Maybe the other people are waiting for you to open up, so that they can get to know you. Here in the US, instead of immediately asking questions to new people, we tend to offer personal information about ourselves or talk about our lives in general and if someone responds, we start to ask them questions back. So, for example, if I come to work on Monday and I am standing or sitting next to a colleague, I might say, "How was your weekend?" and listen to his response. And then I would tell him about something interesting I did, like hike a mountain, or eat a really good restaurant. Then he will get to know me a little.
I hope some of my comments are helpful. I know the process of friendship is a long one, and it's not easy to do. One thing you may want to consider is your definition of friendship. What do you expect from a friend? I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Take care Byung Ju, Maria.
Hi Stefano, thanks for posting. I understand your concern. It's true that Americans love to use acronyms, especially because we put all of our information into compartments. We need to do this to control the vast amounts of information in our worlds. It makes it all very logical for someone who is already in the system (meaning in the job area that you do). But for someone who is new to the system, it seems like a foreign language. Let me ask you two questions. First, now that you are learning the acronyms and are 'in the system', if given the choice to change things, would you still use technical acronyms, or would you use some other names? The reason I ask this question is because acronyms are so helpful that once we learn them, we don't want to use anything else. Now, the last question is about culture: The US is a culture of information flow...how about your culture? If you looked closely within Italian technical language, would you find acronyms being used? I'd be happy to know what you think. Take care for now, Maria.
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