Intercultural Communications as A Winning Global Resource

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia provides the following definition for Intercultural Communication: "Intercultural Communication is sometimes used synonymously with cross-cultural communication. In this sense it seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures act, communicate and perceive the world around them. As a separate notion, it studies situations where people from different cultural backgrounds interact. Intercultural communication plays a role in anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology and communication studies".

Nowadays the term Intercultural Communication seems to be on everyone's lips. No wonder in times of fast advancing globalisation. But what does intercultural communication really mean to a globally oriented group of companies today? Is it just the ability to communicate with people from other countries and cultural backgrounds linguistically? Or is it more than that?

First there is an understanding about habits and traditions, the knowledge of the dos and don'ts when visiting another country. Certainly intercultural communication has to do with local table manners and how to hand out your business card, but obviously that's not all. To finalise a business deal may require some different skills if you are in India rather than in France, or if you negotiate in China rather than in Saudi Arabia. Consequently, the ability of communicating in an intercultural way requires empathy, the capability to share and understand another person's emotions and feelings, in other words, the ability to put oneself into another one's shoes. People who have spent their career in export sales will confirm that it is this ability that has made them successful in closing their business deals. Let's be honest, do we always look for the cheapest price in a product or do we value perhaps even more other aspects such as service, reliability and trust in the person who wants to sell us that product?

In an international group like WAMGROUP® everybody is both sender and receiver, supplier and client. Here intercultural communication, as an every-day reality, needs to be constantly nurtured. For WAMGROUP® this represents an added value, a paramount benefit to customers, virtually in every corner of the planet.

To carry out projects globally, whether developing new products or organising flow charts in information technology, is common practice at WAMGROUP®. The collective development of problem solutions always turns out to be a mutually rewarding achievement. To be able to use the Group's own human resources has been an invaluable advantage since the setting-up of the first foreign subsidiary back in 1984. Today its long-term experience in intercultural communication puts WAMGROUP® in pole position amongst its competitors from any place and from any cultural background