Kazi Israt Jahan
MBA 592

Article: Mindful Communication
By David C. Thomas Joyce S. Osland

Communication is the act of transmitting messages to another person who interprets the message by giving it meaning. In order for such exchange of meaning to occur, the sender and receiver must share common understanding. Mindfulness means attending to one’s internal assumptions, cognitions, and emotions, and simultaneously attuning to the other’s assumptions, cognitions and emotions.

Mindful communication can be judged by the criteria of appropriateness, effectiveness, and satisfaction. A deep knowledge about different cultural activities, values, attitudes, and communication practices makes our communication with others more meaningful. Mindful intercultural communication can be defined as a symbolic exchange in which individuals interactively negotiate shared meanings. The first stage concerns how messages are sent, perceived, diagnosed, and decoded. In the second stage, individuals must identify how to respond, which involves making attributions about the meaning of the message they have received. Finally, people must choose from their repertoire of possible responses and enact those that they think are most appropriate in the third stage. Fluency in a foreign language affects a global manager’s ability to accurately perceive and diagnose the situation. Non verbal communication is also important which add meaning to our verbal messages. For example, tone of voice, body position, facial expressions, and eye contact can play important roles in effective communication with different cultural people.

Intercultural communication skills are our ability to interact effectively in a given situation; they consist of mindful observation, mindful listening, identity confirmation, and collaborative dialogue. Mindful observation involves an analytical sequence of observing, describing, interpreting, and suspending evaluation when we encounter new behavior. Mindful listening refers to hearing more than just the words that are said, checking for accurate perceptions and paraphrasing the speaker’s message into one’s own words. Identity confirmation means addressing people by their preferred titles, labels and identities, and using inclusive rather than exclusive language. Collaborative dialogue means suspending one’s assumptions about culturally different people and refraining from imposing one’s views on them. Willingness to communicate is involved in both perceiving and decoding the intercultural situation and identifying appropriate behavioral responses to that situation. So cross cultural training can be effective in sensitizing individuals to cultural issues, enhancing cultural self-awareness and empathy, decreasing the use of negative stereotypes and facilitates cross cultural interaction.