Chapter 2 blog
Understanding Culture and the Workplace
Alex Peters
Brad Buche
Chapter Headlines
Noticing culture in the work Place
Understanding the importance of culture
Analyzing culture
Increase culture awareness
Noticing Culture in the Workplace
The United States is a multicultural, multiracial place. It is very hard to do anything with out having to interact with a culture that is different from your own. There was a census taken in the year 2000 that showed the following demographics;
Nearly 18% of people in the united states speak a different language other than English at home.
Racial minorities own nearly 15% of U.S. companies.
Slightly less than 70% of people counted by the U.S. census are white. Slightly more than 12% are black. Another12% are Hispanic or Latino origin. Nearly 4% Asian. About 1% are American Indian or Alaska Native.
Slightly more than 11% of people counted by the U.S. census were born in another country.
With that said, it is obviously important to know about, and understand different cultures. Your ability to communicate successfully in the workplace includes your ability to recognize and positively respond to culture-specific-attitudes, actions, and tools.
Understanding the importance of culture
More and more companies are paying attention to culture as part of making their organization a good place to work. Many organizations are addressing cultural differences by encouraging diversity and including forthright statements about culture, diversity, and human rights for its employees, contractors, and suppliers.
Analyzing culture
When examining two different cultures even something as little as a smile, or a head nod can mean totally different things. For example a head nod could mean that the person is listening to you and is understanding what you are saying, but not agree with what you are saying, for one culture, and in the next it could mean that they are agreeing with you, and that they are on the same page as you are. Small things such as this could throw business relationships of very easily.
Increase cultural awareness
There are a couple things that you can do to work more productively and respectfully with colleagues from various cultures;
Be a keen observer
Demonstrate respect for people and practices
Demonstrate interest in other cultures by your actions and attitudes
Listen carefully
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26 comments:
This chapter is about recognizing and respecting the cultural differences within the work place. The group raised a good point with respecting some cultures do not use the same gestures as Americans and we need to be mindful of that when making a business deal with a person of a different race than us. By being able to a aware of these differences, can make a business deal a great amount easier to make. By understanding that there are many cultural differences in the workplace, the better work, employee, and coworker you will be.
I can relate to this in a couple of different ways, I worked at a hotel where most of the house keeps did not speak very good English. Another way I can relate to this is not working with other cultures in the work place but have a lot of different cultures call up and order pizza from us. It can sometimes be difficult to work around but most of the time it really is not bad.
I do not have any personal experience working with different cultures in the workplace but I am sure I will be once I get out of school and into speech therapy. A different kind of culture I am learning about in my CDIS classes is the Deaf culture. I will be working with some deaf or hard of hearing people and it is important to understand their ways vs. the ways of hearing people. Hearing people must be very sensitive to the deaf. For example, if you wish to get their attention there is a certain way that you need to tap them. Knowing the little things like that will be very helpful.
Personally I never really had to deal with theese issues in High School. I didn't come from the middle of no where but it was still very lacking in any diversity. We actually talked about cultural differences in my geography class this morning. For example when the Tsunami devestated Indonesia one thing that you would not want to do to help is send pigs because pork is not a food that most natives eat. Of course most people will never have an oppirtunity to exchange a pig with a business partner.
I think this chapter provides important information about understanding, noticing, analyzing, and increasing culture awareness not only in workplace but almost everywhere. For example in schools, where there are students from different parts of the world. My personal experience is that I have been involved in various team work projects here at school with people from different cultures. Sometimes it is so hard to work together but once you understand each others culture, it makes a whole big difference. The same case applies in the workplace or any other place where you have people from different cultures. I have met and worked with so many people that are always interested to know more about my culture, and every time they are asking me questions. I would doubt there are places where you will never find cultural differences. This chapter has been very well summarized by Alex and Brad.
this chapter is very relevant to the work enviorment today. i say this because we do live in a very diverse society so interacting with other cultures. this is not hard at all for me because my high school and hometown were very diverse places. that was very helpful for me because it exposed me to all kind of different people.
This chapter is really touching for me because,being an international student i have personal experience about the cultural differences. Personally, i think recognizing and respecting the cultural differences within the work place is really important. I have worked with people from several differnt cultural and had good experiance it took to some time to know and understand the culture and gesture but once you try to share it, it is really fun. We would rather share the cultural knowledge with each other, this really helped in our working environment too. To sum up, the chapter enlightened understanding of cultural differences in a adorable way.
i have not had any personal work experience with a different culture, i have also did not really have any diversity in my highschool, but i am sure i will be when i start me carreer.i will be working in the construction field, and most of those workers are hispanic. i have heard that if a construction manager would know spanish, he would be able to get a very good job.
this is a good chapter to go over, and very true things in one culture are not always the same in another. I work at minnkota, and there are many different types of people and we all have to watch what kind of jokes we make and who they may offend. Good work on this chapter
I think this chapter is very important becuase I think that we tend to over look this situation in our society. We automatically assume that everyone knows the rules or we assume everyone knows what we are talking about when we use slang terminology or even gestures. You have to be concious of everything and everyone around you so do not offend someone by accident. This can be a great problem in a business setting when working with different cultures. By understanding these differences we can greatly increase the compatability between groups in our society.
I think this chapter is very important becuase I think that we tend to over look this situation in our society. We automatically assume that everyone knows the rules or we assume everyone knows what we are talking about when we use slang terminology or even gestures. You have to be concious of everything and everyone around you so do not offend someone by accident. This can be a great problem in a business setting when working with different cultures. By understanding these differences we can greatly increase the compatability between groups in our society.
I have heard of many occurances in which there have been mix-ups similar to the head nod thing that has caused many insidence, some even being very public and international. Having the left hand on the table while eating is considered bad in some countries, nods for yes and no are swapped, finger pointing can mean various things, the list goes on. Many of these are so habitual that is hard to keep from embarassing yourself and others in these situations.
This chapter is important to know different culture with their traditional. Moreover, being a international student, we face more difficulties with different culture and interaction will be also difficult too. I worked with different people and how we can interact with them was differences.That why we learn more culture and knowledge about them to adapt with them.Therefore, this chapter is useful to tackle with culture
Cultures in the workplace are very similar to every day life having to encounter people in public places. For me the hardest issue is the language barrier. I come from a small town and therefore, have not been exposed to a large variety of cultures. When I go to large, highly populated places, I feel horrible, as if I have hurt someone's feelings when I am not able to understand them.
This chapter is definitely important to talk about because of the fact of how many different cultures we communicate with every single day. It could be the simplest thing. For instance, at Jimmy Johns if I happen to ring someone up and ask them if they would like a pop and chips. Some say yes, and some look at me like I’m stupid. Because where they are from they do not drink pop, they drink soda. This is just one small scaled example on how we need to understand and be able to communicate with other backgrounds.
This chapter is definitely important to talk about because of the fact of how many different cultures we communicate with every single day. It could be the simplest thing. For instance, at Jimmy Johns if I happen to ring someone up and ask them if they would like a pop and chips. Some say yes, and some look at me like I’m stupid. Because where they are from they do not drink pop, they drink soda. This is just one small scaled example on how we need to understand and be able to communicate with other backgrounds.
I agree, as it is only obvious, that the American workforce is becoming more and more diverse. I see it everywhere. On the jobsite and in all the construction trades. As diversity increases, it will become more and more important to recognize differences in cultures. This helps co-workers understand each other on a more personal level, and makes the work place more comfortable. The last part of the blog may be the most important. It is important to understand and observe. This is done simply by showing an interest in others culture and simply listening.
I worked at the Mayo Clinic for a summer and had to help patients with various things, and a lot of them were from different countries and didn't speak any English. I had to try to communicate with them without words, and it was difficult to say the least. Communication through body language like head nods, etc, does vary by culture, but in there are a lot of signs and signals you can make to get your point across, even to someone who has never even been to America before. In a way, communicating with someone who doesn't speak the same language as you is easier than someone (from another culture) who does because signals can be misinterpreted in a greater number of ways.
This is a subject that I am very aware of. I come from a community where in the public school system Caucasians are the minority, and Hispanics are the majority. This obviously brings a lot of communication problems because most of the Hispanic students aren’t fluent in English so it is harder for them to understand what is being taught. Another problem is that almost all of the Caucasians speak very little or no Spanish. I absolutely believe that this is a very important topic for the corporate world.
I just got done taking a class about this. Showing on how workplaces are becoming more and more integrated daily and we should try and understand the culture and hope it mutual. Some cultures find things a lot more offensive than someone else would in another culture and that's why it owuld be nice to understand it. Anywhere you go now you feel find some mix in culture and diversity. Look at fast food down to a office job. It's all round us and the sooner we learn to accept this the better off and better mood everyone will have.
Being conscious of other peoples cultures is very important, especially today with the rise in racial crimes. Accommodating racial minorities should be very high up on peoples priority list, because if we were unwilling to accommodate them we would be out a lot of workers from our society. Do onto others as you would want done onto yourself and everything should be fine. Even just one racial slur could very well cost you’re your job and your reputation in the wrong places, so being understanding of different cultures is essential if you really want to succeed in the workplace or life in general.
This chapter is more important for diversity which we should.Being international student, we are interconnecting with different culture.I think it will help to know different tradtional and understand the feeling of people.It will make aware from bad understanding from different culture. Moreover, we can know how other culture do, the same thing we do and know different factor which can be useful to us.Like USA has large diversity but we know discrimination is also there. This factor which we should involved with different culture so we can know what is that. This is what is learn now that we should respect culture which this world has
Culture in the workplace is a huge topic. I think this chapter summary is important because we need to understand that people come from different places with differnt backgroungs. You need to adapt to your surroundings and respect how people your work with and people around you want to live their lives. I am glad they chose this chapter!
Chapter 2 Understanding Culture in the Workplace
In the past, I have dealt with different people of different races. There are barriers present that can make it very difficult to do business. In a work environment, you need to ask plenty of questions so that every individual understands their role, what is expected and what they will be doing and why. With some cultures some individuals will not say what they are really feeling because they would not want to offend you or disappoint.
There are people that will say they understand and do not just to make you feel that they know what they are doing
Culture differentiates a community, culture defines an individual attitude and culture sets a boundary to everyone. A culture uniquely defines the ancestors and civilization. United States is multicultural nation. It’s not so surprising to interact with other racial group over here. Here we go with the sign “no discrimination”. For that we should analyze a culture and learn to respect it. The blog posted here is short and not much explained.
Always treat others with dignity and respect. Regardless of faith, creed, color, or sexual preference they are still people and will respond to how they are treated.
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