Intercultural communication is unavoidable in today's
society, as we are living in an increasingly globalized world. Most of us will be travelling around the
world either for holidays or jobs purposes, it is important for us to have
culture awareness. Today I will post a story about a Singapore manager who went
to China to compete in a construction project.
Yang was the manager of Z Company, he was sent to China to
compete in a construction project which was important to the company. Within
one week Yang had prepared an impressive proposal and had done plainly amount
of researches about China’s cultures. He was confident that he would get the
project.
While Yang was in China he followed the cultures of China.
As expected, Yang had persuaded the China Company to give Z
Company the project. Few days before signing contract, Yang was told that the
CEO of China Company likes to collect antiques. Upon hearing the news Yang quickly bought an
antique scissors and wrapped it in red paper. After making sure it was nicely
wrapped he sent the gift to the CEO.
However few hours later Yang was told that contract signing ceremony
had been canceled. Yang was astonished by the news. He did not know what went
wrong.
Before continue reading make a guess what caused the China
Company to cancel the contract?
The mistake he made was that he should not sent scissors as
a gift, sending scissors is a signal to the receiver that the sender wants to
cut all the relationships and connections between them. Although Yang had done
researches about China’s cultures, it is impossible for him to known all the
cultures especially the non-verbal communication.
My question is how can Yang avoid such intercultural communication
misunderstanding?
