Intercultural Communication

Wesfarmers is one of the leading companies operates in Australia and New Zealand. “Wesfarmers has grown into one of Australia's largest listed companies and employers” (Wesfarmers 2013). The company consist of home improvement and office supplies, supermarkets, convenient stores, department stores that established on 1914. I’m working with the convenient store business since 2010 and company trading as Shell Coles Express that operates Australia wide. Coles Express follows equal opportunity employer and the company consist of employees from different cultures and they come from different countries in the world. The culture of the company is easy to adapt because they follow set of guidelines that respect people from different countries and cultures. When I was started to work with Coles Express the store manager is local person and he help me to adopt the work culture such as working with other people come from different countries. Manager use simple English when he explaining work related things and that helps me understand the tasks more easily and remember easily.  On the first day of my shift I worked with a person come from India and he was also international student like myself we discuss about the personal surroundings. English the common international language brakes the communication barrier between two countries. The work place consist of 10 people from two different culture backgrounds western and Asian but we share the ideas and opinions using one common language. Adopting to the western culture is not tedious task in regards to the work and personal environment. Tolerance and patience are the key things help in intercultural communication. Being open minded and empathetic to people from other cultures and nationalities and letting express the thoughts and ideas without interfering help to develop the bridge in communicating among the different cultures. In working with the people with different cultures body language is most important because facial expressions eye movements are the key areas that express the person more descriptively. When communicating with the people from different cultures let encouraging others with head nods, eye contact, and facial expressions this known as supportiveness in communication. In the work place we came from different cultural back grounds but together we achieve common goal which is organization success. In the workplace we always find the similarities among the cultures like respect each other and work for common goal rather than finding differences among the cultures. Speaking common foreign phrases to the relevant person such as how are you in different languages are the common practice in my workplace. This ensures building up good relationship with the people with different cultures. Smile when appropriate is another important factor in intercultural communication because when other person delivering sad news smiling is not appropriate and it will give the wrong influence about the person. Using most common English is one of the key success to the intercultural communication specially working with people from different cultures with in the workplace.  

References

CSU interact. (2013, 06 03). ITC105_201360_SM_I. Retrieved from http://interact.csu.edu.au: http://interact.csu.edu.au/access/content/group/ITC105_201360_SM_I/Lectures/itc105_wk10.pdf

Loewy, M. E. (n.d.). Effective and ethical communication. Retrieved from http://myhome.cengagebrain.com.au/: http://ng.cengage.com/static/nb/ui/index.html?nbId=15664&nbNodeId=2187602#!&parentId=2187604

wesfarmers. (2013, august 24). Retrieved from wesfarmers group: https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/about-us/about-wesfarmers.html