Career: The importance of understanding different cultures at work

The job place in America is composed of many employees from all kinds of cultures and it's best that people understand other culture in order to achieve successful communication and avoid misunderstanding. Different culture think differently and do things differently. This is how people develop conflicts.

Conflicts and misunderstanding can lead to really negative work outcome. People can become angry and withdraw once the conflicts have progressed. Miscommunication is not a good thing in the work place because people don't work well when they're angry or withdraw. This is a common thing that people misunderstood each other. The work productivity will be less if people aren't willing to work together smoothly.

The NASA team says it themselves that a mission is more successful if people are able to get along with each other and therefore that is one of their focus. This is true. People work better if they can get along easily. This should be a focus to the managers. The managers should monitor for employees relationship and try to put the best team together. If you know that two employees are fighting, you would avoid putting them in a team project because they won't cooperate and can even make things worse.

Workplace politic is always an issue at work. There will be different groups and they can affect your business negatively. The manager should always try to keep workplace politic low so that employees won't run into interpersonal problems. This can be avoid by good policy enforcement in the workplace.

Employees nowadays are very diverse and they come from all over the world. This can be a very positive thing and also a concern too. Certain people prefer to do things a certain ways and that can create some conflicts. The way people communicate verbally or non-verbally is also completely different with each group of employees. The work ethics will be different too. Certain group likes to do a swell job and other are on the nonchalant side. Stereotypes are not always true but it's out there.

Let's take the Americans into focus, Americans like to use legal contract as a mean of business. They like to say "yes" or "no" a lot. They don't work by relationships. They like to communicate directly to each other even if it means being straightforward and hurting someone's feelings. They can be blunt sometimes. Americans like equality and freedom. They expect their employers to follow all the rules. All of these are not true when it comes to other culture. For example, some Eastern culture don't use business contracts. They don't like to say "yes" or "no" a lot because it's view as a rudeness. They use relationships to advance in business. They care about each others feelings. They depends on relationship to get their business done.

There are some cultures in the East don't have equality or freedom because of their government practice. When they carry all of their differences into the work place, people will misunderstood and develops conflicts with them. One group who is blunt will be hurting the other group's feelings. One group who is sensitive will be giving other people a headache with their needs to be loving and caring. Understanding each other will better the work place and avoid miscommunication.