Effec­tive Commu­ni­ca­tion — the key to success for any busi­ness, whether global or local. As a global leader, getting your employees to commu­ni­cate effec­tively across cultures can be one of your greatest challenges. 

Having said that, here are four tips you can use to keep misun­der­stand­ings and mishaps at a minimum and produc­tivity at an all-time high.

1. Culti­vate a Culture of Openness

Promoting open commu­ni­ca­tion across the busi­ness gener­ally needs to be a foun­da­tional company value charter that is embodied throughout all levels of the company. 

So how do you culti­vate a culture of openness?

Have a solid feed­back culture

If the company doesn’t have a solid feed­back culture, then there will be an under­lying sense of intim­i­da­tion around construc­tive crit­i­cism. People become too fright­ened to chal­lenge the status quo and take all the ideas that would have propelled the busi­ness perfor­mance else­where. Such a waste. 

A good way to do this is to have an online social forum which can be used to present ideas. Employees can put an idea forward and the company or their depart­ment can comment on how they might contribute to making the idea come to life. 

For example:

Carrie Morris — Data Analyst (London) writes, “Hey guys. I was trav­el­ling to work recently and I realised that there’s a home­less shelter right on our doorstep. I got talking to one of the employees there and they said they could really do with finding people to help with work­shops that will help the home­less learn new skills. Is there anyone who could help with that?”

Diane Corden — IT Manager (London) answers “Hey Carrie, I think a couple of us from IT could run a computer work­shop teaching basic computer skills once a fort­night @Josh @Tejan @Julia what do you guys think?”

Josh — IT Consul­tant — is also on board: @Diane — “we’d defi­nitely be up for that.”

Alex Myers — Marketing Strate­gist (New York): “Happy to put together an awesome power­point presen­ta­tion and design some work­books for the people in the class!”

Angela Reynolds — EMEA Talent Acqui­si­tion Director (Paris): “I’ll be in your neck of the woods for the next six months. Would love to run an inter­view skills workshop!”

Carrie Morris — Data Analyst: “Over­whelmed guys, thanks so much! Will send over a some times for a meeting to discuss! #best­com­pa­nyever”

Give it a try and see what you think. The idea is to create plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties in company life for people to share their views, ideas and passions. The sky is the limit!

Lead by example

Top-level manage­ment has a respon­si­bility to engage in initia­tives and projects that go across depart­ments and require wider input. 

Make a huge deal when a project has been successful because of great collab­o­ra­tion, and make it visual. Pictures around the office, email bulletins, award cere­monies… do what you can to make people aware of the achieve­ments and victo­ries that come via effec­tive communication.

Have mech­a­nisms that keep commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels open. For larger compa­nies with thou­sands of employees, there needs to be some gate­keeping. But on the whole, employees should hear from you on a regular basis and see you phys­i­cally when possible. Keep commu­ni­ca­tion personal and don’t lock your­self up in a ‘high tower’ where your employees cannot get word to you about the state of company affairs.

2. Utilise Technology

Is it advis­able to let employees use Face­book, Insta­gram and Twitter during work hours?

Prob­ably not.

But there are some absolutely amazing work-based commu­ni­ca­tion apps that make effec­tive commu­ni­ca­tion a breeze. If you know that employees will benefit from seeing each other and hearing each other, don’t be afraid to utilise video-calling or voice calling to get your team commu­ni­cating regu­larly. This is partic­u­larly good if your team members are remote. 

Informal commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels will help your team relax and feel better about talking to each other. They’ll get things done a lot quicker and it’s a great way for people to express them­selves a little. Also, employees are more likely to use direct, simple language that commu­ni­cates the message in the most effi­cient way. This is espe­cially great if people get a little worried about under­standing accents, for example.

Tech­nology helps to level the cultural playing field in a really easy way. It brings whole teams together into a common commu­ni­ca­tion channel and breaks down any bound­aries around phys­ical loca­tions, cultures and company positions. 

Emojis even have a variety of skin tones now and ways to express cultural differ­ences in a fun upbeat kind of way. So really make the most of the great tech that’s out there as part of an effec­tive commu­ni­ca­tion strategy.

This brings us nicely to the next point. 

3. Encourage the Use of Universal Language

What­ever the main language in the company, be sure that employees use a universal version of it. The English language, for example, has an infi­nite number of vari­a­tions and expres­sions. Local phrases which make sense in America, may not make sense in India, even though every­body is speaking English. 

Encourage your employees to use language as simply and as effec­tively as possible. Elegance has its place, but most of us are not actu­ally writers of beau­tiful liter­a­ture. Use a working language that can be under­stood by everyone.

The best way to test this is to send out a message to be proof­read by some­body who doesn’t speak the company language as a first language. If they can inter­pret correctly what has been said, it’s a good message. If it confuses them, go back to the drawing board until you’ve settled on commu­ni­ca­tion that’s much clearer.

4. Encourage Empathy 

Empathy is really about having the capacity to under­stand the perspec­tives of the people around you. It has a huge part to play because learning about people fuels empathy.

Bringing loads of cultures together really is a wonderful oppor­tu­nity. But global leaders should encourage their employees to learn enough about the culture of other team members so that every­body knows how to get the best out of one another. 

The behav­iour of people is often made up of a mixture of choice, customs they’ve grown up with, and a whole variety of creative and emotional expres­sion. Different person­al­i­ties will respond to the same conver­sa­tion in a myriad of ways. 

This does bring out different points of view, which is bril­liant for a busi­ness. But the other side of the coin becomes apparent during that exchange of views; the door is open to conflict, misun­der­stand­ings and poten­tial fric­tion within teams as passions run high.

To temper that, there needs to be a mech­a­nism to cool the flames and reduce the feeling of offence within the team. If you would love to see real collab­o­ra­tion, encourage your employees to be proac­tive in learning about their teammates.

Why?

When your team members learn about each other, they’ll be better able to gauge the best way to approach one another about work tasks. The overly polite, super quiet team­mate will know that with their super direct, lively colleague, they’ll need to take a different approach to get the results that they need. 

This does not mean that team members should abandon the prin­ci­ples of respecting one another as fellow human beings. This is to say that a team with high levels of empathy will expe­ri­ence lower levels of tension.

Here’s a great tip to do this… prepare for the light­bulb moment.

Get employees to sit down and write a short personal guide telling their work colleagues how to get the best out of them. Everyone shares them in a meeting and gets a copy to refer to later. At first, it feels a bit awkward but it even­tu­ally becomes second nature to think about how your team­mate is going to receive your commu­ni­ca­tion style. 

This 30-minute exer­cise will relieve anxiety and tension dramat­i­cally and you’ll see team members come out of their shells and give their best work. It will also stream­line the journey to effec­tive commu­ni­ca­tion across cultures because the employees give one another the tools to under­standing their work style and their preferred commu­ni­ca­tion style. 

There are no offen­sive stereo­types, guess­work or cata­strophic assump­tions that make HR want to leave the building. You just get an ency­clo­pedia of how to get the best out of one another. It’s a lot cheaper than hiring a corpo­rate team-building coach later on down the line when every­body dislikes every­body and the company is suffering for it.

If you encourage this soft skill as a global leader, you inad­ver­tently develop your employees to be some of the most valu­able people, because you can send them anywhere and they will thrive. If you can get your employees to under­stand that it’s a skill to not try to force your way on others, they’ll stop and think about the language, tone and manner they use to convey opin­ions, instruc­tions and ways to solve problems.

A good tool to see where you and your team stands is the Emotional Intel­li­gence Test. After a couple of minutes you know exactly how skilled you are in terms of self-aware­ness, self-manage­ment, social aware­ness and rela­tion­ship manage­ment. Take it here:

In short, there are four tips you can take away to ensure effec­tive commu­ni­ca­tion throughout the company.

1. Create that culture of open­ness — that has to be a foun­da­tional prin­ciple woven through orga­ni­za­tional culture where people feel like they can talk to colleagues across all levels of the business.
2. Utilise Tech­nology — if the team is global in a geograph­ical sense as well as a cultural sense, encourage people to use video-calling, voice calls and messenger apps to get stuff done.
3. Use Universal language — encourage native company language speakers to be mindful that they might be misun­der­stood using local phrases not known in other regions of the world. Keep commu­ni­ca­tion simple and easy to understand.
4. Encourage Empathy — possibly the most impor­tant point. Encourage employees to be proac­tive in under­standing one another.

An atti­tude of respect breeds a culture of appre­ci­a­tion. As a global leader, this sort of working envi­ron­ment will produce employees you’ll never cease to be proud of.

And if you want to learn more about global leadership…