As Peter Drucker once said: “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” – that statement can be widely applied from everyday life to your business. However, if you want to understand what it isn’t said, you also need to be aware that depends on the cultural heritage of your talker, personality traits, subject, intimacy etc.
In my last article Understanding Nonverbal Communication, in which I explained the basics – what it consists of, role of emotions and audience. In this article, I will focus on different aspects of nonverbal communication across cultures.
1) Eye contact
Eye contact occurs when two people look each other in the eyes at the same moment. You can stare, quickly avoid it when it happens, move with your eyebrows, blink or just stare through them. In Asian countries, avoiding eye contact is a sign of respect, but in Latin countries and in USA, it is important to get that connection for transmitting equality among individuals. In Croatia, there is also a big emphasis on staring in each other eyes because it is a sign of respect and awareness. In addition, if you blink too much it is a sign of nervousness in most cultures!
2) Touch
Touch means getting in physical contact with someone. It could be a kiss, hug, slap on the back, handshake, poke etc. While in Croatia, there isn’t so much emphasis on a touch between strangers, still in Latin countries it is considered a MUST do thing from establishing friendships to business deals. In Western countries, it is acknowledged that using a firm handshake is considered appropriate to greet a stranger or another business professional, and it is a sign of trustworthy and credibility of a person. In the Middle East, the left hand is customarily used to handle bodily hygiene. Therefore, using that hand to accept a gift or shake hands is considered extremely rude. In addition, there are special rules for interacting to a person who is the opposite gender of you.
3) Gestures
A gesture means a movement of part of the body, especially a hand or head, to express an idea or meaning. The most typical are thumbs up and the OK sign. The thumbs-up gesture is generally used in many cultures to represent a job well done. However, if it is used in Australia, Greece, or the Middle East — especially if it is core as a typical hitchhiking gesture would be — it means essentially “Up yours!”. In the USA the “OK” hand sign is used to „say“ that something is acceptable, but in Japan means „money“ and Argentinians, Belgians, the French and the Portuguese all use the symbol to mean “zero” or “nothing.” In Croatia, OK and thumbs up sign has the same meaning as in USA.
Author: Valentina Zajec
Sources:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/gayle-cotton/cross-cultural-gestures_b_3437653.html
http://online.pointpark.edu/business/cultural-differences-in-nonverbal-communication/
http://www.communicationinterne.net/proximity-in-multicultural-classes/
