Explore Rice

5/15/2006

Q&A: Communication essential across companies and cultures

Whether it concerns a crisis, a merger or an acquisition, or maintaining employee morale, communication is often the key to a company's success or failure. As a result, effective business communication and all that it entails has become essential, and, as Deborah Barrett of Rice University explained, increasingly complicated and challenging.

--------------

Q: What are some aspects of business communication that distinguish it from other types of communication?

A: Business communication encompasses organizational communication and corporate communication, and it involves both internal and external audiences. What distinguishes it from communication in general is that it usually leads to some kind of action. In addition, there are specific types of communication associated with it, such as e-mail, memos and reports, and they have expected formats and structures, just as found in the common genres of literature, such as novels or short stories.

Q: Are there aspects of business or leadership communications that could be useful or applied to other disciplines or work environments that are not necessarily business-oriented?

A: Leadership communication is broader than business communication. It is any kind of communication that involves a leader -- whether it is someone who is heading an organization or simply directing or providing guidance for someone else. Individuals in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, just as those in the business world, need to be able to communicate in such a way that they can be leaders in their disciplines.

Communication overall is critical in today's work environment where employees more and more are working in global teams or having to collaborate with one another to achieve their organization's goals.

Q: What are some of the trends or communication needs in today's corporate world?

A: One area of communication that is critical, particularly when a company is undergoing some sort of change, is employee communication. Change communication generally begins at a very high level within a company, but to be successful, it must contain meaningful messages that reach all employees throughout the entire organization.

What was once a human resources function or limited to those working in the corporate communication department has increasingly become the responsibility of all senior managers who are engaged in the organization's strategic planning. The most effective models of employee communications now take into account the organization's strategic objectives and require supportive management, targeted messages, effective media, ongoing assessment and skilled communicators in top positions within the company.

I am also seeing some interesting developments in internal communication. One company in particular, El Paso Corporation, is making very good use of its intranet as a way of reaching employees. It is designed to be proactive and interactive so that managers are able to send targeted messages and receive feedback or questions from their employees.

When employees first turn on their computers at work, they see a page from El Paso that alerts them to any announcements tailored to their group and function, and it provides them with human interest and business stories. The site also makes use of video clips produced by employees to communicate about various employee projects and achievements.

This intranet program has replaced the company magazine for employees, as well as most of the numerous e-mails companies normally transmit to employees when announcing company-wide or division-specific information to groups or individual employees.

Cross-cultural analysis as part of a company's communication strategy is also a relatively new and important consideration in business today. Analyzing the organization's cultures can be a critical step in a company's accomplishing its overall communication and business strategy, in particular when involved in change.

Q: What does a cross-cultural analysis involve, and when is it important?

A: We know that organizations have become much more diverse and cross-cultural, which requires us to view the world through the eyes of others with different cultures and languages. This is a huge challenge particularly in large organizations, such as Procter & Gamble, whose 100,000 employees represent over 100 different cultures, or M.D. Anderson, where 70 different languages are spoken.

Today's corporate leaders need to tailor their communication strategy to the diversity of their organization. One approach to developing such effective cross-cultural communication inside an organization is to appoint a cross-cultural advisory team, consisting of employees representing the major cultural groups within the organization, who are honest communicators, respected and trusted by their peers. They can help identify the different cultures among employees, assist in tailoring the message and help with employee interactions as the change takes place.

Q: What are some examples of cross-cultural variables that can affect a company's communications strategy?

A: Cultural differences can be reflected in how individuals view time, power, equality, whether they emphasize the individual or the community, and if they belong to a high- or low-context culture. One way to look at a high-context culture is to think of the meaning of messages as being between the words, whereas in a low-context culture, the meaning is in the words. So, as in the case of Japan, which is a high-context culture, relationships and everything that is occurring around the communication are more important than what words are used.

In a low-context culture, such as the U.S., individuals respond more to words than to the relationships and nonverbals.

The difference in how time is viewed across cultures is also important in communication, too, and can be suggested in language usage, as can most cultural differences. For example, the tenses used in different languages may reflect a different perspective on time and on life itself. In Arabic, the emphasis is on the present tense, the present time. Past and present forms of verbs exist in some Arabic dialects, but in classical Arabic, there is no future tense.

This could suggest how most Arabic speakers see the world. Talking definitively about how an industry will look in the future may seem presumptuous to many who speak Arabic. That individual's perspective may be that only Alläh knows what the future will bring, as suggested in the frequently spoken expression among Muslims, "In Sha ' Alläh," translated as "If Alläh wills."

A cultural conflict can occur when considering the organizational and work relationships of employees. In some cultures, for example, a tremendous respect for hierarchy is the norm. Therefore, employees expect that important messages as well as decisions should come from the top. A number of trends in today's business world -- from employees working in self-directed teams, to communication that starts from the bottom or moves across organizations, to the 360-degree feedback -- run counter to the way people in some cultures work and think.

An expert in internal and external communication strategies, change management and management consulting, Barrett has taught business, leadership, technical and team communication for the last 25 years. She was recently appointed a Rice University professor in the practice of communication and will be involved in the development of a university-wide communication program for Rice undergraduates.

Before joining Rice's Jones School of Graduate Management in 1998, Barrett was a senior managing director of Hill and Knowlton in Houston, and prior to that, she served as a communication consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she was a leader in their change communication practice. Her latest book, published in 2005 by McGraw-Hill, is "Leadership Communication."

For more information contact Barrett at barrett@rice.edu or Debra Thomas in the Jones School at dthomas@rice.edu.