Barriers to Intercultural Communication

Four barriers to effectiveness in

intercultural communication:
1. Walking on eggs
Certain topics create tension for ethnic minorities

2. Hot buttons
words that invoke an emotional response in other
person.

3. Container myth
Is assumption that words mean the same thing across all
cultures

4. Language, vernacular (‫ (عاميه‬and

accent bias
Tools of diversity:
Overcome personal Biases
• Racism, stereotypes and discrimination negatively impact our
communication with others.

• These are the source of hurt feelings and result in

miscommunication, damaged relationships and loss in
productivity.

• Not only be sensitive to your own racisms but also develop

strategies to resist the racism that may occur in your
workspace.
Forms of racism:

• Overt racism (‫ (علني‬: such as “all… are lazy” or “they should go back
where they came from”.

• Symbolic racism: is attacking some symbol of importance to a particular

group of people.

• Arms – length racism: is suggesting that you don’t mind to work or know
minority people, but you oppose any closer relationship.

• Tokenism: believing that knowing one person from (different race….) is

enough to prove that he is not racist.

• Institutional Racism: Ideologies and structures that are used to

systematically legitimize unequal division of power and resources
between groups on the basis of race.
 Some Important Definitions
Stereotype: negative beliefs about a particular group, it does not
consider people as individuals, it categorizes them as
members of a group who all think and behave in the same
way. We may pick up these stereotypes from what other
people say, from T.V or from what we read.

Prejudice: a set of rigid and unfavorable attitudes toward a

particular group. An unsupported judgment usually
accompanied by disapproval.
• Discrimination: the differential treatment based on unfair
categorization. It involves keeping people out of activities or
places because of the group to which they belong.
• Racism: the belief that one race is superior to another.
Scapegoating: The policy of blaming an individual or group when
the fault actually lies elsewhere. Those who we scapegoat
become objects of our aggression

Competence: Is an ability to accomplish goals while also

reducing misunderstanding and building strong interpersonal
relationships, these competencies will enhance your overall
quality of your life.
Effective Listening
Listening is important
 Interesting facts and statistics that describe the importance of
listening in our lives:
• 85% of what we know we have learned by listening.
• We remember only 20% of what we hear
• Less than 2% of us have had any formal educational
experience with listening
• Being listened to spells the difference between feeling
accepted and feeling isolated
• People are fired, customer are lost and working relationship
are strained , friendship suffer, marriage and families fail
because of ineffective listening.
• Shared understanding, is the goal of effective communication.
 Hearing VS. Listening
Hearing is sensory process Listening is a mental process
that includes: that includes:
•Conversion of acoustical •Choosing to attend
(mentally & physically)
energy
•Understanding thoughts and
•Sound reception
feelings
•Auditory sensation
•Confirming meaning
•Transfer to the brain
•Responding appropriately
Technicians of all kinds use Hearing skills to
Attending to the speaker (mentally and
monitor procedures, Judge the smoothness of
physically).Assigning meaning of both the
operations or locate problems.
verbal and non- verbal messages. Evaluating
the importance of message.
 Why Bad Listening Occurs?

• Because we are poorly trained to listen:

• Through our formal
education, we rarely offered
listening.
• Mistaken belief that because
we are bombarded with a high
number of messages daily.
We somehow learn to
listen automatically.
• Because we disagree with speaker.
When we doubt what the speaker is saying, when we
begin to formulate a response before the speaker has
concluded, or when we are preoccupied with our own
personal problems.
• Because we overreact to emotional words (we can
not listen if we are angry, happy)
Our listening effectiveness drops as our emotional
responses increases.
• Because of falling to use the thought- speed
advantage (i.e. we think faster than any one can
talk).