Cultural Norms vs Effective Communication

While preparing to lead the class on the topic of interview skills, it was a pleasant coincidence that I met up with two girls who had just graduated from a top junior college in Singapore and were shortlisted for scholarship interviews in the coming week. With the materials ready for the ES2007S class, I decided that I would offer my services in an attempt to prepare them for their interviews. During this process though, I realised that the girls were faced with several cultural dilemmas that seem to conflict with recommendations made about effective communication during interviews.

Firstly, when dealt with the questions regarding themselves, the girls seemed uncomfortable with explicitly stating their strengths (e.g. analytical, self-motivated). They preferred to talk about their experiences, and hoped that the interviewer could extract implicit personality traits of theirs from the stories being related. Similarly, they too were reluctant to talk about their weaknesses, and attempted to find a “correct” weakness for which the interviewers could not fault them for having.

In addition, when suggestions were made about possible methods to tackle various questions, the mini-workshop that was set-up as a dialog very quickly changed into a lecture, with notes being written down at a rapid pace. Despite repeated attempts at making an impression that interviews are about allowing the parties involved to find out more about each other, the girls seemed more interested in providing “correct answers” to the question.

While these responses might be specific to the two girls involved, these incidental discoveries made me ponder deeper about how one might, in this globalised world, balance one’s cultural norms and the need for effective communication. For example, should one adopt explicit methods to promote oneself just in fear of losing out in an interview to an effervescent speaker? Similarly, should one conform to social norms and provide “standard” answers or attempt at providing unique insights in an attempt to shine among the crowd? Finally, if this is truly a balancing act, what are some of the parameters that one can use to assist in the determination of the “sweet spot” between preserving cultural norms and subscribing to rules of effective communication?

I look forward to responses and thoughts on this issue.

What are you requesting for?

The below email was sent by a conference organizer after meeting up with the professor that this email is addressed to. The purpose of the email was to remind the professor of the requests put forth during the meeting.

Note: The names and organization have been changed to ensure confidentiality

While the conference eventually turned out to be successful, with excellent feedback from the participants, this email was far from an effective piece of communication. This included the lack of correctness, coherence and clarity, among others.

Firstly, from a correctness point of view, this email was littered with grammatical errors, such as “once is confirmed” (1st sentence) and “to see if Dr Vivan interested” (Action point 2), just to name a few. While it is a student organization being represented here, the numerous errors in the email projects an unprofessional image for the organization.

From a functional point of view, the subject of the email was “Filming Interview with Minister of MCYS” when the email was supposed to remind the professor of the requests that the organization has put forth, with the interview being only one of the three requests. This might have caused the professor to overlook the other two requests when processing the email. An alternative title might have been “Requests from (Organization Name) in preparation of the Entrepreneurship Forum”

On a more positive note though, the email was rather concise, and had action items which the professor would be able to act on immediately. In addition, having just attended the meeting, the professor would have a better understanding of the details of each request than what is mentioned here.

Overall, the necessary contents of such a piece of communication is already included, but the inability to express the requests correctly and coherently might lead to others having a negative impression of the organization.

The following is how I would write the email:

Tags: Email