Cultural Differences

Cultural differences may pose a vast barrier to effective communication. Having different opportunities to travel overseas, I had the chance to interact with people from various regions. It is sometimes surprising that despite the similarity in the heritage roots, there are still differences in the work culture between people of different regions.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to go on an student exchange to this nearby Asian country last spring semester. There were also few others NUS students who were on the same trip with me. However, unlike my course, the courses that my other NUS friends took were more project-based and they had many opportunities to work with the locals.

Being a city that was that was known to have high work efficiency, the locals indeed portrayed their efficiency in their projects. However, this had frustrated my friends who were their project mates. The locals are used to start their discussion and work at the very last moment before submission and they will work through the night before handing in their work to the lecturers. Unlike the locals, my friends were mostly accustomed to working towards the deadline and making progresses along the way. This hence led to misunderstandings, as my friends saw that as the lack of concern about the project; while on the other hand, the locals did not see the need to start early. No doubt, the projects were eventually completed but many unhappiness could have been avoided if there was this understanding of the cultural difference right at the beginning.

Perhaps, if I am in my friends’ shoes, I will most probably feel the same way as they did. After all, we were grew up in the similar environment and will most likely have the same attitude and sentiments towards work. I will probably be just as frustrated and irritated by their work attitude as my friends because I too will want my final product to be as perfect as possible.

Indeed, cultural differences will lead to misunderstanding if it is not carefully handled. Therefore, it will be important for us to understand and appreciate the differences that we have. After all, it is such differences between different cultures that make our world a much more vibrant and interesting place, don’t you agree?

Application Letter

The job description taken from the website of the company:
Analysts fulfil a multitude of roles across the business. To become an Analyst, you need to have performed well in your undergraduate degree and possibly have a Masters. For a full-time role, work experience gained through internships will be an advantage. You should be highly numerate, with strong communication skills. Fluency in more than one language is an asset for some roles and the ability to work as part of a team is essential.


My Application Letter

[My Address Here]

2nd September 2010

Roy Powers
Human Resource Department
[Company]
[Address of the Company]

Dear Mr Powers:

I am writing to apply for the position as an Analyst in your organization. I got to know about the position opening during the recruitment talk at National University of Singapore last Wednesday and I am interested in working for this position.

As a graduate from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Physics, I have been exposed very much to quantitative analysis and have developed acute sensitivity to numbers and am able to make logical deduction from the data sets given. The position requires strong research and analysis skills and I believe that my training in the field will allow me to perform and produce useful results for the organization.

I appreciate your time in reading my application letter and I look forward to your reply. I have attached my resume in the letter. Please feel free to contact me at [my HP number] or email me at [my email address] should you need me to furbish you with more information. Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,




Tan Da Yang

The Origin of Job Interviews

My friend posted this on Facebook and I thought it is pretty funny actually. =)

Communicating in Teamwork

Picture source: http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/15/1576/RQMDD00Z/charles-schulz-peanuts-teamwork.jpg

When working in a team, effective communication is important to ensure that there will be no unnecessary misunderstandings and everyone will finish the project happily at the end of the day.

Mr. Z was part of the project team for an event and he was in charge of a particular segment of the programme. During every meeting, he assured everyone that his segment would be fine and he had an ambitious plan to make his segment a success. When the plan was presented to the team, many members in the team found the plan to be overly ambitious and wanted to make changes to his plan. Furthermore, many parts of the plan were vague and there were very little details about the execution of the programme.

However, being stubborn, Mr. Z refused to change and edit his plan, and he decided to work on the segment alone. From then on, Mr. Z provided very few updates on his segment; even when he did, it was lacking in details and the rest of the team were not able to figure out what he was trying to do. Before the event, he merely gave orders to the members of the team and commanded them around with very little specific instructions. Eventually, his segment of the event turned out to be an awkward moment and he kept quiet and laid low for the rest of the days.

The working experience for both the project team and Mr. Z were very unhappy. From the planning process to the execution, there was very little relaying of the programme details and discussions between Mr. Z and the rest of the project team. The rest of the team had to follow his instructions blindly since they had very little idea about what Mr. Z was trying to do. The project team was further frustrated as the instructions from Mr. Z were unclear. At the same time, Mr. Z was angry with the project team as he thought that they were not helpful during the actual day.

It is often important that instructions should be relayed in a clear manner and sufficient details are provided. In the scenario described above, Mr. Z refused to provide any details and thus communication between the team and Mr. Z broke down. When there are very little details available, it makes it difficult to clarify any possible doubts since there is nothing to clarify about in the first place. In the case of Mr. Z, the team had to guess and figure out his intentions. When instructions are unclear, people often have to depend on their own interpretation and perception to carry out the task and this may deviates from the original intention.

It didn’t help that Mr. Z was commanding the rest of the team, instead of asking them politely. Given the prior frustration from the lack of understanding about the project, the project team was already unhappy with Mr. Z. Right before the event, Mr. Z pushed the team around to get things done and used an aggressive tone when he was relaying the instructions. Furthermore, it didn’t help that the instructions were brief and short, and this further led to the anger of the rest of the project team. The use of the inappropriate tone will also lead to further misunderstanding between people, and in this particular case, the team felt that Mr. Z was being bossy and this made it hard for them to work well together.

Both Mr. Z and the rest of the team could have sat down and discussed about the issue. Perhaps, if Mr. Z was willing to put in more effort in giving more details and state his point of view clearly, the rest of the team might have been more accommodating towards him and more willing to work alongside with him.

However, it takes two hands to clap. Perhaps the team themselves did not try to communicate well with Mr. Z as well and discuss the issues with him. What could have the team done to improve the working relationship with Mr. Z and save themselves from the awkward situation?

Applied Science

Source: http://www.xkcd.com/435/

I met some of the fellow classmates yesterday, and I mentioned about this particular comic strip to them while having an discussion about science. So here it is! =)

Enjoy!

Why Professional Communication?

Hello everyone!

During the first week of the course we have covered the possible barriers of communication, the general flow of how communication will be carried out (see diagram below) and the essential qualities required to be an active listener. We also discussed about the various non verbal communications and their interpretation.

Source: http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/CommunicationIntro.htm

For the rest of the weeks, we will be covering the important skills needed to build up interpersonal and intercultural communication, the 7Cs in writing, as well as writing effective business letters. We will then proceed to learn the essentials of job hunt, covering a range of topics from writing resumes to handling job interviews. Finally, we will make use of Wikis for our collaborative project work.

After the short preview on the course in the above paragraph I cannot help but to think about the amount of life skills that I will (hopefully) learn and acquire by the end of these 12 weeks.

Personally, being able to communicate effectively is one of the most important life skills that one should acquire at any point in life. By being able to relate and convey the message as intended, it will help to reduce most of the unnecessary misunderstandings due to miscommunication. From my personal experience, such miscommunication though most of the times can be resolved fairly quickly, it may however at times create irreversible damage to the parties involved. I will elaborate on this point in my next blog entry.

As a musician, effective communication also comes into play in conveying the intended message with regards to the playing of music. In an orchestra, we often have to standardise the various styles of music playing, for instance the bowing for strings instruments, the phrasing of the sentence of the melody, the intonation and the dynamics of the music. Hence, it becomes very important that such information can be conveyed clearly to all the other fellow musicians so that everyone of us will be playing the same thing, without too much variations in terms of style between individuals.

Having mentioned the importance of effective communication, I am full of anticipation about how the next 12 weeks will unfold. I certainly look forward to the weekly 4 hours of learning through a hybrid of serious and fun activities and also hope that I will gain more insight about effective communication through this course.