Introduction
Intercultural communication refers to the process of sharing information across distinct social groups and cultures, such as people with differing social, religious, educational, and ethnic backgrounds. It aims to comprehend the differences regarding how persons from various cultures communicate, act, and perceive their surrounding environment. Culture has significant implications concerning how individuals undertake businesses, among other daily undertakings. As such, cultural implications are vital to enhancing success when communicating with distinct groups of people. Failure to exercise culture sensitivity in different daily undertakings can offend current and potential customers, alienate workforces who come from different cultures and result in negative implications on the bottom line of enterprises (Turistiati, 2016). The public transportation sector serves as one key area that encounters individuals from different cultures, both workforces and customers, while these face religious differences as well as language barriers. Organizations in the public transportation sector face challenges in addressing the different intercultural communication issues, especially when it comes to accommodating employees and customers without violating Title VI rules and regulations. Transport operators lack proper staffing and education frameworks to allow them to deal with people of different cultures. The key issue here is ineffective communication in the public transportation sector in different platforms, resulting in various complaints due to miscommunication or even lack of effective communication. Whereas public organizations might fail to reach all individuals, training as well as availing different tools to improve communication would play a critical role in improving communication in the public transportation sector (Nåls & Hyde-Clarke, 2017). The communication plan discusses the issues facing intercultural communication in public transportation, a solution to the existing challenges, and a plan to communicate the proposed solution.
Business Case
Public Transportation Intercultural Communication Issues
Issues in intercultural communication in the public sector emerge when message recipients receive messages from the sender differently than anticipated. Usually, communication breakdowns emerge due to the absence of clarification or failure to attempt clarification. When such hindrances to interpersonal communication emerge, failure to address and acknowledge them can lead productivity and reputation of public transportation organizations to suffer. Language differences serve as the primary forces behind interpersonal communication breakdown in public transportation. Interpersonal communication suffers when message receivers and senders speak distinct languages, either figuratively and literally (Dong, 2017). Not all individuals in the public sector understand jargon, slang, and acronyms, among other terminologies. As opposed to seeking clarification, incidences emerge when the stakeholders in the public transportation sector might guess the meanings of certain messages while acting on mistaken presuppositions. Moreover, misunderstandings might emerge among individuals who do not speak a similar primary message. As such, it is probable for feelings to be hurt due to misinterpretation of body language or even words (Moore, 2016). These issues hurt interpersonal communication in public transportation significantly.
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Additionally, cultural differences hinder intercultural communication in public transportation. These hurt interpersonal communication due to cultural misperceptions, absence of cultural understanding, stereotypical beliefs, and bias. It is probable to encounter limited experience and skills in communicating with individuals from distinct backgrounds. Many organizations might offer diversity training to aid their workforces on comprehending how to communicate effectively across distinct cultures and associate with those they might have different background encounters. Similarly, gender issues might hinder interpersonal communication by treating women and men differently while at the same time, holding them to different standards (Nåls & Hyde-Clarke, 2017). These result in conflicts when communicating in public transportation.
Also, people using public transportation have distinct personalities, while these can limit effective intercultural communication. As it is the case with any skill, certain individuals are better at interpersonal communication as opposed to others. Personality traits might influence how people relate with their peers, customers, supervisors, and subordinates. For instance, extraversion might offer advantages when it comes to sharing opinions, speaking out, and disseminating information. Nonetheless, introverts might have an advantage when it comes to reflecting, listening, and remembering. Interpersonal communication barriers in public transportation might emerge when employees in the sector lack sensitivity, self-awareness, and flexibility. These kinds of behaviors might undermine teamwork that needs mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise (Turistiati, 2016). Backstabbing, bullying, and cutthroat rivalry result in toxic organizations that usually strain interpersonal communication, which contributes to the ineffective services delivery to public transportation users.
Furthermore, people of different generations usually use the public transportation sector, which creates communication issues. Generational differences in dress, speech, priorities, values, and preferences complicate interpersonal communication in the public sector. For instance, it is possible to encounter a generational divide regarding how individuals usually communicate with others. Younger generations might utilize social networking as their key means of communication, which might alienate them from older generations who prefer utilizing one-on-one communication. Wide generalizations and stereotypes can also result in interpersonal rifts when individuals from one generation feel superior to older or younger generations (Dong, 2017). Biases based on age can contribute to forms of discrimination, which usually hurt the effective running of the public transportation sector.
Addressing the Problem
Improving intercultural communication in public transportation is crucial to ensuring the sector functions optimally, ensuring to meet the diverse needs of the different stakeholders, including customers, employees, managers, owners, and other involved parties from diverse cultural, religious, ethnic, and other social backgrounds. Here, a key solution to the intercultural communication issue in public transportation is to embrace agility in the communication process. The unwillingness and inability to adapt to change is a key issue surrounding intercultural communication in public transport. Often, individuals show reluctance in accepting new things owing to their unconscious fear that engaging in certain acts would alter their belief systems and cultures in certain ways. Failure to question these assumptions would result in actions, which would be detrimental to organizational and personal growth (Moore, 2016). When individuals become aware of the subconscious biases and unconscious barriers, they would become increasingly open to adapting. Also, the organizations that become too set in their ways can hinder improvements since they would not be open to trying distinct ways of performing their tasks. Rather, public transport organizations should remain focused on continuous improvement while exercising certain degrees of willingness and flexibility of trying distinct things of undertaking their activities (Dong, 2017). Unluckily, no one-size-fits-all solution exists to handle such an issue. Instead, the ideal way of overcoming such issues should emphasize starting at individual levels. They can commence by stepping beyond their comfort zones and trying new ideas, which would meet the changing needs of their teams and employees. Regarding intercultural communication, the ideal way of embracing the idea is to adopt new approaches to doing things (Turistiati, 2016). These can aid in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the perspectives of other individuals in public transport.
An additional solution to interpersonal communication issues is to exercise open-mindedness. Closed-mindedness is an issue that surrounds interpersonal communication, which would hinder the public transport sector from emerging successful. Individuals are usually caught in traps of adopting the perspective of undertaking things while regarding other approaches as wrong. From a personal standpoint, exercising open-mindedness might be simple, such as learning more concerning ideas that would not have warranted attention before. Exposure to new standpoints and exercising efforts to comprehend them usually has significant implications on how individuals make decisions moving forward (Nåls & Hyde-Clarke, 2017). By contrast, when in situations where persons need to work with closed-minded individuals, it becomes essential to ask questions while at the same time looking for avenues of providing distinct thoughts by availing valid and reliable data pieces. Taking advantage of accurate data would serve as a powerful tool for convincing other people to consider other notions. Listening and discussion options would be vital to establishing trust among the conflicting parties, especially on how to run public transportation more effectively (Moore, 2016). Nonetheless, challenges might emerge when it comes to presenting the information effectively. If individuals feel that the information overwhelms them or that they cannot trust its validity, positive implications might emerge. From this perspective, it is crucial to identify and present the information carefully to encourage others to approach the proposed ideas with an open mind successfully (Dong, 2017). Such an approach would play an essential role in allowing effective operations in public transportation due to the increased understanding individuals would have for each other ranging from customers to employees to managers in an organization.
Facilitating meaningful conversation would also play a critical role in solving the interpersonal communication issue in public transportation. The absence of communication in an organization can worsen cultural differences among people. An environment that fails to facilitate open communication leads individuals to refrain from speaking up and sharing comments as well as feedback with others. From this sense, concerns arise as to how organization members can facilitate free and open interactions with others. Whereas organizational culture cannot change overnight, facilitating efforts to spark conversations at an individual level might serve as a step in the appropriate direction (Dong, 2017). An ideal means of doing so is to connect with individuals who share differing perspectives. People should initiate conversations with others from other departments and raise questions while trying to understand their viewpoints better by listening actively. Such an approach would be crucial in fostering increased appreciation and understanding of the perspective of others while at the same time building strong relationships in an organization (Moore, 2016). Thus, the parties involved should ensure they ask questions, exercise curiosity, and exercise openness to distinct standpoints. Facilitating meaningful interactions also has considerable influence on the overall atmosphere by establishing a conformable environment where individuals can share their ideas and thoughts on ways to improve the transport sector to benefit all the stakeholders.
Moreover, becoming increasingly self and culturally aware is vital to addressing intercultural communication in public transport. From a personal standpoint, individuals should ensure they make efforts to acknowledge their implicit biases together with assumptions, which affect ways in which they relate with others. Whereas it is possible to say this as opposed to doing it, persons can commence by making conscious attempts of empathizing with their audience in line with gaining an ideal understanding of their standpoints (Dong, 2017). From an organizational perspective, it would be essential to start by auditing internal communications. During this process, they should ask ways their company missions and visions are defined in line with whether they are inclusive. It would also be vital to consider whether the various cultures of distinct individuals have been considered. Undertaking such an analysis would present an ideal idea concerning the state of organizational culture, including the areas on communication approaches that would require improvements to serve different stakeholders and realize organizational goals (Nåls & Hyde-Clarke, 2017). These approaches would be crucial to aiding in overcoming the interpersonal communication challenges surrounding public transport.
Communicating Selected Solutions
Public transportation is ever-changing and becoming increasingly diverse, requiring a need for skills that go past conveying messages efficiently and accurately. The most effective public transportation managers today should have the ability to lead their teams with experience, knowledge, and distinct intercultural communication tools. The tools should comprise of communication insights that would aid in leading highly diverse groups in handling numerous communication issues with distinct stakeholders (Turistiati, 2016). These skills would create opportunities for passing them along to workforces to raise awareness while teaching them concerning organizational phrases and gestures that others might regard as a misunderstanding in line with those that individuals from other cultures might misunderstand. Cultural mistakes might emanate from simple tasks, such as offering a handshake to other misunderstood gestures. Also, in certain religions, some common gestures which comprise of high-five or fist bumps with females might be considered as offensive (Nåls & Hyde-Clarke, 2017). Other religions, such as Islam usually hinder non-essential touching with people from the opposite genders.
An appropriate means of communicating the solution in public transportation should revolve around getting value as well as team-building by training on interpersonal communication. The training should support a program that emphasizes building a community program that does not single out groups or persons. It would be essential to utilize the newfound skills to train intercultural communication, which would aid in connecting and motivating the teams in an organization (Moore, 2016). Also, it would be essential to ensure individuals receive fairness, understanding, and respect while at the same time showing commitment to these areas. For instance, the managers in the transport sectors should learn ways of avoiding mistakes, such as holding happy hour meetings, which exclude those who do not attend for religious reasons or do not take alcohol (Nåls & Hyde-Clarke, 2017). Managers who are capable of developing cultural sensitivity among workforces in line with redirecting conflict associated with culture can rise above others. As such, they should be prepared to understand as well as respond to the existing needs of customers and employees. They also need the ability to connect as well as network with others facing similar issues while learning from the skills they identify (Turistiati, 2016). Overall, effective communication of intercultural communication solutions would require individuals to have the capacity to develop awareness in line with recognizing the cultural issues surrounding their organization. They should offer training to their subordinates to ensure they comprehend the issues that surround the organization and those affecting the employees and customers (Dong, 2017). When they have increased understanding, they would be able to develop skills that would sensitively and competently relate with individuals from other cultures to foster successful interactions and smooth running of the public transport organizations.
Conclusion
In conclusion, intercultural communication is a critical area to emphasize in public transportation. Public transportation is a key area that faces individuals from different cultures, while these face religious differences as well as language barriers. Organizations in the public transportation sector face challenges in addressing the different intercultural communication issues, especially when it comes to accommodating employees and customers. Issues such as language differences, cultural differences, different personalities, and different generations serve as various intercultural issues, which hinder effective communication in the public transportation sector. To address the problem, it would be crucial to embrace agility in the communication process, exercise open-mindedness, facilitating meaningful conversation, and become increasingly self and culturally aware. Since public transportation is ever-changing and becoming increasingly diverse, it requires skills that go past conveying messages efficiently and accurately. Here, an appropriate means of communicating the solution in public transportation should revolve around getting value as well as team-building by training on interpersonal communication. The training should support a program that emphasizes building a community program that does not single out groups or persons. In this sense, addressing the issues facing intercultural communication in public transport would ensure customers and employees realize an amazing experience while ending any communication issues that emerge from the differences that people from different cultures and other social standings portray.
References
Dong, J. (2017). Voice making in intercultural communication: the Chinese transcontinental ‘commuters’. Language and Intercultural Communication, 17 (2), 150-165.
Moore, K. R. (2016). Public engagement in environmental impact studies: A case study of professional communication in transportation planning. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 59 (3), 245-260.
Nåls, J., & Hyde-Clarke, N. (2017). Lost and found: Making sense of foreign spaces and the self with public transport. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 46 (4), 346-359.
Turistiati, A. T. (2016). Intercultural Communication Competence: Its importance to adaptation strategy towards people with different cultural backgrounds. Ijtimā'iyya: Journal of Muslim Society Research, 1 (1), 63-78.
