 Today, I will be talking about cross-cultural communication. Cross-cultural communication is also known as intercultural communication and it is basically the study of how non-verbal and verbal communication take place among individuals who belong to different background communities and geographies. It is basically the study of how people from different cultures communicate with each other and across different cultures. It involves using words and your body language in order to convey meaning, message and to mediate among different diverse cultures. It is basically the way how people interact across different cultures either face to face or from a certain distance. So it is basically a process in which similarities or differences of a certain different cultural group can be engaged in order to see how they work in a certain given context. We need to see that why cross-cultural communication is important. First of all, we are living in a very diverse world right now where we need to interact with different people who belongs to different cultures. So the first thing is that it fosters trust and facilitates collaboration and the emphasis of cross-cultural communication is on giving appropriate response rather than giving appropriate message. When two people from different cultures interact with each other, they just do not have different cultures but also they have different turn-taking system in their own respective cultures. So we need to see what are the basic elements of cross-cultural communication. The first one is awareness that you need to be aware about different cultures which you are going to be working with. For example, you are working in a work in your environment where people belong to different cultures. So it's your responsibility to get a little awareness about their culture, how they interact or what are the etiquettes they follow in their cultural setting. The next step is preparation. When you are being aware, you read about their cultural practices. You need to prepare for those to engage with the people you are interacting with. So after preparation comes language. For example, even in a similar country, you have people who belong to different cultures. They do speak the same language but they have a different dialect. So language is very important. If you are in an environment where you have to interact with people who speak a different dialect from you, you can get to know about their language and it helps you to interact with them. Then comes humour. Humour actually plays a very important role in cross-culture communication because sometimes a joke which is a joke for you, it can be offensive for other people, for other cultures. So that's why you need to be very careful when you are using humour in cross-culture environment. And the last one is openness. You need to be more open and more flexible with the people around you. So if you are sitting with a person who belongs to a different culture, you need to give him a vibe of more openness so that he can be more relaxed and you can also communicate with him or her in an easy and comfortable environment. There are certain factors that actually affect cross-cultural communication. There are basically communities who belong to high-cultural communities and there are communities that belong to low-cultural communities. High-cultural communities are the communities that rely on implicit message and non-verbal cues and the communities that belong to low-context culture, these are communities that rely more on explicit message and proper verbal communication. Usually Asian communities, China, Japan, African communities, they belong to high-context culture where they rely more on non-verbal cues and they don't explicitly convey their messages. On the other hand, the communities like the United States of America, Canada, Australia, European countries, they are more low-context communities which rely on explicit messages. Other than that, we have non-verbal differences because your non-verbal, your body language, your gestures, your eye contact and they can be interpreted differently in different cultures. So you need to be more careful about using your non-verbal cues. And the last one is power distance. I mean, in various communities, power is taken as a factor which can affect communication because hierarchy plays a role where someone who is on the higher rank, you cannot approach or you cannot get to them easily. So power plays different role in different cultures. Some communities do not give so much importance to power and hierarchy and some communities and some cultures give more importance to power differences. There are few benefits of cross-culture communication. If you're a cultural competent person, it makes a team more competent and cross-cultural training helps you to excel in your career and also cross-cultural training helps you to develop relationships with different cultures and different parties. And the last thing is this that you become more competitive when you have cross-cultural training. There are few barriers of cross-cultural communication, anxiety, stereotyping, uncertainty and ethnocentrism. These are the barriers which can affect communication if you are not properly trained and if you are not given attention to these parameters, it can affect your communication negatively. You need to observe the etiquettes and the rules of etiquettes of different cultures and you need to give space to other people in order to say so that they can speak and they can follow the rules of communication. When we talk about ethics, we say that we need to give respect to others as we wanted that certain respect for ourselves. So element of respect plays an important role when you're communicating with people from different communities. You give respect and you take respect. So respect is a very important factor when it comes to the cross-culture communication. So when you're communicating in an environment where people belong to different communities and different cultures, it is good that you try to understand that culture accurately and as closer to as it can be possible and try to encourage people to communicate and to express themselves because sometimes people are shy and when there is a language barrier and language differences, people shut themselves and do not express as openly as they should. So you must encourage such people to express themselves. There are few tips that can help you to communicate effectively when you are in a diverse cultural environment. First thing is that you need to maintain etiquettes which is very important. Then the second thing is that you need to avoid slang. Slang language is not helpful when you are communicating with people from different cultures and try to make it very simple and easy to understand for people. Do not use language which is difficult to understand. Try to make it very comprehensive and very easy to comprehend for the listeners. Avoid active listening because you need to be a good listener when you are communicating because you need to give time to others to speak as well. Try to practice turn-taking because when somebody speaks, other needs to take pause and listen to that person. Another thing which is important is that you need to speak slowly because when you are speaking very fast or very quickly, it will be difficult for other people to understand when there is a language difference as well. There are few more tips that you can practice. For example, you can write things down. If you are unable to understand something or something is difficult, you can write it down. Try to avoid a close question. These are questions which require only one word answer yes or no. So try to avoid it because it ends communication. When you are using humour, you need to be very careful because sometimes it can be offensive for people and try to be more supportive for other people. Try to make a more relaxed and flexible environment around you.