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1.3

Check for real understanding

Over the years numerous comedy sketches and real-life anecdotes have produced belly laughs or awkward situations based upon a simple lack of understanding of cross-cultural communication. The problem is sometimes simply that one party clearly doesn’t understand the other and sometimes it is due to both parties having a clear understanding but the understandings being different.

Here are some DOs and DON’Ts to help you ensure that you avoid the situation that I (and countless others) fell into:

DOs

▪ Allow extra time to brief people who are not native speakers of your own language.

▪ Issue your input in short chunks.

▪ Get them to explain back to you their understanding of the task, situation, standard or resources after each ‘chunk’.

▪ Allow them time to make notes – the bluntest of pencils is better than the sharpest of minds when trying to remember something you heard in a foreign language.

▪ Once you have finished, get them to summarize to you their understanding.

DON’Ts

▪ Assume that you can brief a non-native speaker in the same time that you can brief native speakers. Be aware that this may create tensions if you are briefing the two ‘types’ of people together.

▪ Ask ‘closed’ qualifying questions: ‘OK, does everyone understand/agree with that?’ You are almost bound to get a resounding ‘Yes.’

▪ Don’t take silence to equal consent/acceptance.

▪ Leave it too long before you check that instructions are being carried out.

case study In the 1980s I was a young officer in the British Army. Attached to my unit was a unit of Gurkha specialists. At the end of a briefing the team, including the Gurkha in charge, went off to join their men and get on with the tasks they had been given. Several hours later I visited the Gurkha team and found that nothing had been done at all. I asked the senior chap if he had understood his instructions, ‘Yes, Sir,’ he replied. So I asked if he was now able to get on with the job in hand, ‘Yes, Sir,’ he replied. But he didn’t move to start. So I asked what the problem was. ‘Yes, Sir,’ he replied again. It dawned on me that he was too proud to admit that he hadn’t understood the instructions and I had been too dozy to realise that I wasn’t being a very good communicator.

Leave nothing to chance; check that everyone has a common understanding.