Example of Miscommunication |
Example of Cross-Cultural Miscommunication
Meet Clint
He was raised in Minnesota
He graduated with a Ph.D. from BYU, Utah
He now lives in Finland, and is the PhD supervisor for Temtim.
Meet Temtim
He is from Ethiopia.
But not all of Africa looks like this.
He lives in the capital city, Addis Ababa.
This is his daughter's birthday party.
They were working on the same project and set a time to meet online.
Clint was waiting, but Temtim did not show up.
This happened quite frequently.
He bagan to think that Temtim was lazy, or that he did not care as much about the project.
In reality, all the power went out in the entire city - so Temtim could not have made contact even.
"Hi Clint,
Sorry, there was a power outage in the city all day, so I could not have left you a message. Please let me know when the next time is that you have free.
Temtim"
"Yesterday it was an unexpected event."
"I thought it was kind of funny that the miscommunication example we created for the BrainHoney lesson was exactly what happened yesterday."
"I think external factors or environmental factors are important to consider in online virtual teams.
It seems like I observe in the west you plan and the external factors are not strong to affect your plan.
In Ethiopia and Africa - external factors - power, social committments, as well as not being as strict with plans, are important factors to deviate from your plan."
This miscommunication is one of many that we could have picked. Miscommunications usually occur because of certain expectations that each has. Then when those expectations are not met, each interprets them in the best way that they can - but do not have enough contextual information to make accurate interpretations.
Perhaps we should add another example of something that Temtim interprets incorrectly about Clint's behavior? Maybe something having to do with the ambiguity stage at the beginning of the group. E.g. differences in preferences toward the level of how structured things are.
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