“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

In our daily communication at home, school or at work in our own culture and country I have found that listening is hard work!  In some cultures like my own, American, there is much emphasis on expressing ourselves effectively and positively in meetings and in other public speaking situations and events so developing our listening skills takes a back seat.

Today I would like to take a moment for us think about how our culture impacts how we listen and process information.

When working  abroad with people many different nationalities and professional backgrounds you quickly realize that people listen differently. In many cultures listening is maybe more important than a polished and elegant speech. In these cultures, listening almost becomes a spiritual experience. In our globalized world we are overloaded with information and we have to zap quickly from one subject to the next and attend an endless stream of meetings. Therefore the energy and concentration required for active and intense listening is difficult to command.

When we don’t listen attentively we can easily make the wrong assumptions about what our interlocutor means.

There are many obstacles to active or intense listening: different languages, accents, pronunciation and articulation of words, distractions, problems of technology, attention spans that get shorter and shorter, mental saturation and fatigue are just a few that keep us from listening actively.

Very often we forget that our cultural programming also plays a decisive role in how we listen to others, and this can also create difficulties for us in a cross-cultural context.

How we listen and process information, what we concentrate on and how we think we are expected to react largely come from our cultural background. Our family and educational systems, ethnic group to which we belong play a role in how we listen. There are good and bad listeners in every culture. No culture has a monopoly on good listening skills. There are however differences in listening styles that must be taken into account.

Do you come from a “High” or “Low” context culture?

• In a “high” context culture (Southern Europe, Asia, south and central America, and Africa) communication is more implicit and context is important. The listener will often be interpreting the speaker’s message and “reading between the lines” for another layer of meaning. The high context listener will be attentive to the tone of voice, non verbal expressions and listening how things are said as much as the message itself.

• If you come from a “low” context culture (Northern Europe, USA, Canada, Australia..) where communication is more explicit the listener will take the message at face value. ” We mean what we say and we say what we mean.”  The listener likes nice tidy packages of factual information easy to understand.

Your orientation or preferences for people or tasks can also play a role in the way we listen.

•  If you are “People” oriented you probably listen with more empathy and more actively. The messenger is as important as the message.

•  If you are “Task” oriented you might have a tendency to listen in what we call “snatches” or pieces of information that interest you. “Give-me-the-facts and keep it interesting” attitude. For task oriented people we want people to get to the point quickly with concise and pertinent information.

In some cultures pauses are necessary for the listener to take it all in. In other cultures there is little space for silence in discussion or debates.

• In Japan, Finland and lesser extent Sweden as well as in many Native North American cultures, pauses of silence are normal and part of processing information.

• For French, US and most Southern Europeans pauses/silence can be uncomfortable. In these exuberant cultures, people often engage in rapid-fire conversation in which one person bounces off another’s thought before the first person finishes and vice versa. This type of communication requires a different set of listening skills  than what’s necessary for communication  with a “thought – then- a pause” listening style.

The advantage of learning to listen to different styles of communication is that you end up with more listening dexterity. This type of listening dexterity is emblematic of any great multicultural team.

So if building relationships across cultures, persuading others, understanding what is not being said, giving constructive feedback and encouraging are important for you active and attentive listening may be the place to start. Learning to adapt to different styles of communication and developing listening skills takes time, experience and a little flexibility, but in the end is rewarding.

For both managers and staff, listening across cultures can sometimes be the most difficult communication skill to learn. The message here is to learn to be a mindful, flexible and patient cross-cultural listener. Your listening skills as well as your interactions with different cultures always has to be adjusted.