[SOUND] In this week's lesson of establishing a professional self through effective intercultural communication, I will be focussing on the multicultural dimensions of communicating in a globalized workplace. In particular, in this week's lessons, I will cover four aspects. I will start by talking about the definitions of culture and intercultural communication. These are terms that you heard in the introduction video, but I will go through and explain to you what it means and what it entails to become an effective communicator in a globalized workplace. I will then go to talk about the cultural dimensions to highlight to you why it is important to consider culture when we communicate in a globalized workplace. I will then end the lessons with intrapersonal and interpersonal communicating strategies and of course we will discuss what all these terms mean in terms of workplace communication. By the end of this week's lesson, you should be able to, one, understand what culture and in particular intercultural communication means appreciate how cultural values are reflected in a workplace and consider some of the intrapersonal and interpersonal communicative strategies that you need to apply in your workplace. Do you remember I mentioned terms such as, culture and intercultural communication in the introduction from the course? Well I'm going to explain to you what these terms mean. In essence culture is defined by a set of norms that are valued, that are regarded as important by people in a particular community or culture. So for example it could be a set of common beliefs that people share, traditions that people practice, or very importantly, language that people have to communicate with each other in a particular community or culture. So take a tradition, Chinese festival in or as an example, one of the traditions that people have for Chinese New Year is that people go to each other's house to wish each other well. Whereas some cultures don't even practice this tradition. So that is one intercultural difference. Another example might be that in some communities greeting people by kinship is very important. So in such a culture greeting people by their first names would be considered rude and would not be appropriate. Whereas in some other communities it would be highly appropriate to just address people by first name rather than using their titles. So intercultural communication is very important because we have to demonstrate that we are culturally and linguistically sensitive to each other while we coexist in the same place. So then, what does intercultural communication mean? The intercultural part is where people from different cultures or communities co-exist in the same place. So then what about intercultural communication? So intercultural communication is where people from different cultures and communities co-existing in the same place have to find a common language to communicate with each other while being culturally an linguistically sensitive to each others background. This is why we must look at what cultural aspects are important to consider in the work place before we start talking about effective communication in a globalized workplace. In this lesson, I will describe how some cultural dimensions influence communication in a culture and very importantly, how such dimensions are valued in a globalized workplace. In total, there are six dimensions. They are firstly a uncertainty avoidance, so this relates to how community views uncertainty and how the community as a whole will view appropriate to deal with an unknown future secondly, indulgence restraint. This relates to the level to which a community desires to enjoy life. In more practical terms the level to which people focus on the work life balance. Certainly, power distance. So this relates to how a culture or community values or accepts power use. Fourthly, individualism and collectivism so this relates to the extent to which people in a community appreciates our more individual base or a close integration of individuals as groups. Fifthly, masculinity and femininity, so this relates to the division of roles between men and women. And lastly, long/short term orientation. So this relates to the choice of focus for people's efforts in a society as a whole. So whether people view the past or present are important, or the present and the future are more important, or the past, present and future are equally important. In this lesson, I will focus on describing only four dimensions that influence communication in a multicultural, and multi-linguistic society, and workplace. So firstly, power distance. So we'll look at some common characteristics, valued by small and large power distance cultures. Secondly, we look at common characteristics amongst the individualist & collectivist cultures. We will also look at common characteristic value by masculine & feminine cultures. And lastly we'll look at characteristics of values in cultures with long term and short term orientation.
