Post #2: Observation of team behavior: intercultural and interpersonal communication

Inter-cultural and interpersonal communication.

A search on Wikipedia suggested that the word, "inter", is a Latin prefix meaning between or within a group. Hence, interpersonal communication would suggest communication between people, while inter-cultural communication would refer specifically to communications between people with different cultures.

Interpersonal communication, is a simple , yet intricate topic to understand. Its focus, well, is just to ensure two or more people correctly interprets what the others are saying. However, a lot of people often misunderstood that interpersonal communication have various channels, and not just based on verbal language alone. Simple words and phrases such as "sorry", can cause various emotions to different people.

sorry(In a solemn, soft voice) would imply empathy, sorrow.
sorry...(as per normally said after a mistake) would imply regret
sorry!(stunned look with tears) would imply deep regret and unexpected incidents
sorry la!(loud and proud ) would imply unwillingness and as a jest to the to the person apologized to .

Note that in these few cases, "sorry" had varied meaning as it is now expressed with varied body gestures and tones, even though the word used are still the same.

Inter-cultural communication is similar to interpersonal communication, except that it is between two person or more people with different cultural backgrounds. Often, people do not understand the cultures and beliefs of the people they interact with, hence, a lot of quarrels or aggression often resulted due to misunderstanding of their actions or words.
In Singapore, we often address the middle aged women that we meet with as "aunties" However, in standard English context, "auntie" actually refers to the sister of our parents. Hence when a foreigner comes to Singapore and be greeted "auntie", she would most probably be thinking, that how, is she actually related to this person.
Another more prominent cultural communication is our very own hawker center culture. If you are ordering a Roti Prata and you told the seller that you want an egg prata and a plain prata, some of them will go "huh?", however, if you said" one kosong one egg!", the seller would understand immediately. Same to black tea and milk tea or black coffee, where " teh o, teh and kopi o" would make it more easily understood.

Post #1: Communication and teamwork: why they are important for me?

Communication and teamwork.

When we talk about communication, we are basically looking at ways to bring information from one host to a peer or a group of peers, in order to convey an instruction, or an idea. The medium used could be through air (verbal), communication electronics such as computers and mobile phones, by written formats, or simply, a short note.

However, as the host and the peers could come from different background, differences in understanding messages from the former could occur due to culture, slangs or language mismatch. In Asian context, this is especially evident in Bahasa Indonesian and Bahasa Melayu. Both are technically, malay. But some of the words used in Bahasa Indonesian have different meaning as with Bahasa Melayu even though both have the same spelling and pronounciation.

The error in decoding the message sent by the host often result in what we termed as “misunderstanding”, which, when happened between two individuals, would create unnecessary conflict, confusion and undesired embarrassment. The potential damage that this could bring about could be drastic, a minute misunderstanding could bring about a small quarrel, while an acute one would result in aggression.

Hence, effective and concise communication is important to ensure that such incidents do not occur.

Teamwork will look at the fundamentals of a group of people working together, towards a common goal or idea.

It forms a very important part of life as we learn to help each other, complement each other to create good pieces of work and achieve better innovations through exchanging of ideas and delegation of work.

However, good teamwork is difficult to achieve as different people have different concepts of what they want to do or achieve.

Hence, effective communication have to be ensured between the team to make sure that the team be able to understand each others’ goals as well as to come up with positive means towards the target.

First!

Hey now!

This blog here was started on the 16th of January 2010 for academic purpose, the module CG1413 wishes to enable us to have good and effective communications. Hence, the language used in the blog, will be proper and and standard English as per the requirement of the module.

This blog would also hold the updates on the progress of another module, CG1102, which is held in collaboration with CG1413. Hence, do expect to see some pictures of programming methodology and other relevant items.

-Byron