ICB1: Reflection

Mahamud Abdi
Lecturer: Marco Silvani
406228
10-12-2019
Words: 618
 ICB1: Reflection
The most important aspect of intercultural competence is having the ability to understand the person who
you’re talking to and making yourself understandable, there are various ways to do so depending on the
person you’re talking to and your ways of communicating. I’ve grown up in the Netherlands for the majority
of my lifetime and adapted the Dutch way of communicating with others, but I’ve noticed when I came in
the international business environment in Groningen there are so many different aspects of communicating
that I’ve noticed among the students from different nationalities. I’ll be describing 3 of the 6 major
Stumbling blocks of intercultural communication I’ve experienced in the time here in Groningen.

Stereotypes:
When I was placed in a class with people from all around the world I noticed that I’ve been judging people
based on the stereotypes from the country they were from. In my head this made it easier for me to predict
their way of studying and working. For Judging the German students as probably hard-working students
with a low level of humor, so not so fun to hang around with but the perfect match to make my assignments
with them that’s what I thought. Soon I’ve realized that I wasn’t even thinking objective about my
classmates I had to do the work with but I was more tunnel-vision by the beliefs in the stereotypes that have
been going around. Later I realized that the judgment about the German students was completely wrong and
they are funny, sometimes.

People are people

Another Stumbling block I had to face is assuming that everybody who came here to study knew how
everything goes here, the way of studying and hanging around besides school, Just because we lived in the
same city and studied the same study I assumed we will be thinking and acting on the same level a lot of the
times. The first time noticed was when I offered a classmate who’s Persian some snacks and he refused to
take it until I almost shoved it in his hands. The only thing that made me offer him the food more than twice
was my cultural background. I was taught when I was younger that the person who was offering me
something had to insist on it before I would accept the offer. This was because I’m of African decent but I
think if I grew my whole life up in Europa this could’ve played differently. He would probably miss the
chance to get a snack.

Non-verbal Signs
Non-verbal communication is different from person to person and especially from one culture to another.
Cultural background defines their non-verbal communication because many forms of non-verbal
communication like signals and signs are learned by behavior. Around the whole world there are differences
in meaning of non-verbal communication, miscommunication can occur when inter-cultural people
communicate. People can offend others without even realizing and meaning to offend the other person. In
my own experience I noticed that misunderstandings via non-verbal communication occur pretty often in my
classes, the most noticeable ones were for instance eye contact. I noticed that some of the new Asian
students tend to avoid eye contact when talking, and when you make eye contact with them they seem a little
overwhelmed. I didn’t know this before reading Barna’s book. By actually investing some time and effort in
other students their cultural behavior, you’ll actually make it easier to communicate with them. And
eventually they’ll also notice that you kind of understand them and that makes groups projects, casual
conversations and other work that involves in communication way more smooth and easier to understand
each other.