3 Situations Where Cross-Cultural Communication Breaks Down

The strength of cross-cultural teams is their diversity of experience, perspective, and insight. But to capture those riches, colleagues must commit to open communication; they must dare to share. Unfortunately, this is rarely easy. In the 25 years we’ve spent researching global work groups, we’ve found that challenges typically arise in three areas.

15 Ways To Fight Communication Breakdowns

Communication is key in all relationships, from personal to professional. However, sometimes even the strongest teams can suffer from poor communication.

This breakdown can be especially problematic when employees are scrambling to complete a major project or meet a tight deadline. To help you combat this issue, we asked 15 members of Forbes Coaches Council how leaders can improve team morale and get the lines of communication back on track.

Why Data Is The Lifeblood Of Modern Organizations

Intelligent organizations, these are organizations where the flow of data is harnessed to achieve core business objectives, such as improving customer experience, developing better products and services, and driving efficiency in internal operations.

This involves developing a level of data maturity. This means understanding what data is available to an organization, what can be done with it, and what tools and technologies are needed to put it to use.

But perhaps most vitally, it involves building a culture of data literacy throughout the entirety of an organization. From the boardroom to the shop floor, every individual and area of operation should be aware of the value of data, its power to drive innovation and efficiency, and best practices when it comes to collecting, storing, and using it.

Get things done

Getting Things Done by David Allen is one of the staples of personal and professional productivity. Getting Things Done, or GTD for short has been on the top sellers’ list for more than a decade (it first came out in 2001) and with good reason.

David Allen has managed to create a system that you can use both at work, at school and at home – it is almost universal. The book though is rather complex and lengthy and you can get lost in the nitty-gritty of the it all.

Knowledge Is Power, But Not In The Way You Think

She was that person everyone liked, but no one could work with. Eventually, she was fired. Her biggest issue was that she was a hoarder—of knowledge. Jenny (not her real name) thought knowledge was power and while she was smart about creating it, she never wanted to share it.

Jenny was right. Knowledge is power. But she was wrong about what do to with it. Actually, knowledge can change the world—or the company—but only when it is shared, and shared in the right ways.

Information density describes a situation where many people in a company know many important things. They know them in the moment—in real-time when it counts most to inform their decision making. The information-dense company is one in which people are informed and in which there is a level of radical transparency.