Читать книгу Communication For International Business - Rus Slater - Страница 11

When you are in the same office, talking to a person face to face, it is easier to understand their situation. When you are communicating with someone in a different country, it is easy to forget that their situation may be completely different to yours. This will probably have an effect on their perception of you and your message.

You may be sitting in your office in Europe or North America in the late morning. You are surrounded by colleagues sitting at their workstations in a large open-plan office. Everyone is wearing a suit and tie. The air conditioning is humming quietly in the background. You have your screen on your desk in front of you showing the latest figures. Outside the window you can see snow on the ground. You are on the phone talking to a colleague in another country. What is their environment like? Do you know?

Your colleague could be talking to you as she walks around the production facility. There could be manufacturing machinery working as she walks past. It could be 97?F and 78% humidity. She could be wearing a pair of shorts and tee shirt. It could be dark outside and 11 o’clock at night where she is; the night shift started 30 minutes ago. The local accounts office is closed for the night and most of the management are at home in bed.

A question you may innocently ask may be impossible for her to answer for another eight hours. But her environment is so different to yours that you have no idea how much pressure that innocent question may put her under.

Take a bit of time to investigate the situation in which your international partners work, whether they are colleagues, suppliers or customers. Even people who seem to have the same type of job as you may be in a very different situation; local politics, the climate or weather, the season, the time zone and local working practices can all make for very different circumstances.

Then try to remember this each time you speak with them or send them an email or text message.

You dialled their number and they answered but it is easy to forget that they may be in a completely different environment to you.