What passes for a cordial formal chart in Brazil might lead to a confrontation at best or a sexual harassment at worst if it happens in the USA. Culture differs exponentially from country to country even as it differs from one social group to another. International communication and competence (ICC) can be defined as the ability to relate, interact, and manage individuals from different cultures from a professional perspective without resulting in awkwardness (Gallois & Gilles, 2015). ICC is critical to the success of any international venture dealing with individuals from different countries. Further, ICC varies based on different nationalities and also the different cultures within these nationalities (Bird & Mendenhall, 2016). To be considered as competent from an ICC perspective, the professional must first have an understanding of the self from a cultural perspective, then a similar understanding of the customer. Being able to severe the divide between the two cultures and handle the client without a reflection of the handicap presented by individual culture is the key to ICC competence.
Root Causes for the Complaints
Lack of Freedom
All strangers are prisoners in their own eyes and will feel limited and harnessed as long as they remain in a foreign country or place. The visitors to the Hannover Messe have been victims, in their own eyes, from the time they landed in Germany. They have been second-guessing their every move and trying to be politically correct in everything they do or say. The guided tour was an opportunity for freedom, a chance where they could get to be themselves, free and informal, while still in Germany. The fees paid for the tour was a means to purchase freedom through a friendly chaperon. However, the extremely regulated tour that adhered to strict rules caused them to feel that they were back to prison and back to their best behavior. The tour guide, who was supposed to be their servant, doing their bidding, became their warden, taking them where they are supposed to go. Everything would have been different had these visitors felt in charge of their trip, going to the places they preferred or visiting the same venues in a sequence they chose for themselves.
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Mode of Communication
English is one of the widest used second languages in the world with most international players having at the very least an elementary understanding of it. However, most of these international players endure English more than they enjoy it because they only learned it because they had to. In the instant scenario, the delegates had shed formality and sought to have a good time through the tours. The official language in Poland, where a high number of delegates came from is Polish while the official language in China where the highest number of delegates came from is Mandarin. Most countries have their national languages which they take pride in (Shah et al., 2017). These individuals may speak and understand English when they have to, but some would prefer not to unless it is mandatory. It may not be possible to conduct the tours in the local languages of all the delegates but a little effort goes a long way. For example, a Chinese person would have been happy to hear that a landmark would have been named in Mandarin depending on the meaning of its name in English and so forth. The fact that someone in Germany had taken the pain to learn a little Mandarin, Polish or Spanish would have gone a long way in creating customer satisfaction.
Social Competence
ICC begins with social competence which enables cognitive and behavioral flexibilities (Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2015). Social competence in this regard requires social malleability cognitively and behaviorally. In Brazil, for instance, the concept of personal space does not exist like it does in America. People stand close together when they talk, look each other in the eye and touch one another every now and then. Not doing that in Brazil will be considered aloof while doing that in America might be considered as rude. A socially competent person should be able to adjust to the different behaviors of different nationalities and treat them accordingly. All the tour guides are engineering students and in engineering, a 12 gauge spanner always fits a 12 gauge nut. Malleability and social adjustment is not a forte of engineering students or the engineering profession in general and this must have been a major cause of the complaints.
Critical Analysis of the Concepts and Theories in Question One
Lack of Freedom
Among the fundamental elements of ICC is mindfulness and tolerance of ambiguity. One of the most archaic statements in English is the one that asks visitors to feel at home. In spite of it being archaic and to some extent redundant , it is still in constant use due to its significance. It is not possible for a visitor to feel at home naturally. Any competent host must be mindful of this fact and capable of enabling the guest to feel at home (Gallois & Gilles, 2015). When the host follows the local routine, the guest will not feel at home and this amounts to a lack of mindfulness. However, when the host throws in cues of the guest to be part of planning and control, a middle ground will be found between how things are done locally and how the guest expects them to be done, creating harmony. On the other hand, everything is formal for the guest when in a strange land but formality is always a burden (Bird & Mendenhall, 2016). At the tour, there was a manifest ambiguity with the host knowing that everything is informal while the guest only hoped that they are. It was incumbent upon the hosts to appreciate the existence of the ambiguity and move to extenuate in it.
Mode of Communication
Cross-cultural empathy is a significant element of ICC more so on the international arena. Tours are not only about learning but also about having a good time and the low rating resulting in a 10% referral may have had little to do with learning and everything to do with having a good time. Empathy in this context includes the hosts getting out of their comfort zone to find a middle ground with the guest. To their credit, the organizers used the English language, not German for the tours. However, they can be seemed by the Pole and Chinese to have taken a secondary comfort zone in the most common international language. The absence of an effort to meet the guests halfway could not be clear to the guest who does not normally speak English in their native country. Lack of empathy for a guest makes the guest either feel unwelcome or like a burden both of which reflect poor ICC skills (Shah et al., 2017).
Social Competence
Cognitive flexibility and behavioral flexibility are closely intertwined when it comes to ICC. The host needs to be able to receive communication and consider it with flexibility. For example, a person who does not understand English properly can say something very rude without even knowing it. A cognitively flexible person will not be quick to take offense but rather try to understand the context of the message in order to respond accordingly. It is at this point that cognitive flexibility meets with behavioral flexibility (Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2015). A good host will not behave the way decency or normalcy demands but rather the way the specific situation demands. Therefore, flexibility is primary to the competence of a host who is handling international guest and the ordinary engineering student will be handicapped when it comes to flexibility.
How to Improve Profitability and Recommendation Rate
Selection of Tour Guides
The fact that the Hannover Messe is an industrial fair makes the use of engineering students as tour guides make sense from a casual evaluation. From an ICC perspective, however, having engineering students, predominantly from Germany and whose international language proficiency is limited to English is a bad idea that must be changed. Variety is among the principal concepts in the Hannover Messe. Thus, the visitor who pays for a guided tour is not seeking specialized information about something but rather general information about everything. Selecting tour guide for the international guests, therefore, should not be based on their understanding of technology but rather on their ICC competence and suitability. A majority of the visitors in the fair are Germans, and for this group, German engineering students would be suitable. China leads in the number of visitors to the fair. Having Chinese students in Germany or German students who understand Mandarin conduct the tours would be most suitable. Mexico, being the partner country is also expected to have thousands of visitors and having tour guides who understand Spanish would be most suitable. The fair expects visitors from all over the world, having tour guides from all over the world or at least a cross-section of it would be most suitable. With Germany being a global academic hub, finding such students would not be a major handicap.
Training of Guides in ICC
ICC is a competence, not just a skill and can be compared more to piloting a jet than riding a bicycle. ICC is not about a good upbringing or being a good person but rather having a formal training and acquiring the necessary competence (Kim, 2015). The team selected to guide international visitors must be trained in ICC to better interact with the visitors during the tours. As indicated above, the understanding of ICC is more important than the understanding of technology since the exhibitors can explain the technological aspects. Any tour guide who will be guiding Chinese visitors, for example, should have an elementally understanding of Chinese culture, language, and mannerisms. Through the trained guides, the visitors will be able to feel at home, away from home. Further, training in ICC also involves understanding the self from a cultural perspective. Competence based on ICC means that who the guide is, does not interfere with who the guide is supposed to be (Kim, 2015). Generally, ICC-based relationships are about give and take to arrive at a compromise. However, in this case, the visitor is giving 15 Euros and cannot be asked for more compromise. It is incumbent upon the guides to go out of their way and become what the guides need them to be. The transformation will require elements such as cognitive flexibility and behavioral flexibility that call for a character alteration. All these require training.
Program Deregulation
The fixed program for the guided tours is, as indicated above, a bad idea that is in need of review. Like algebra, a good tour should begin from the known, then be worked out towards the unknown. For example, the Polish visitors would have appreciated being able to see what their compatriot have to offer first then move on to what other countries have to offer and finally see what Germany has to offer. The exact opposite would also be true. Further, some visitors would want to know what is on offer in advance so as to determine where to visit and where not to visit. Therefore, the best option is to let the visitors decide what sequence they would want the visit conducted. A visitor- controlled guide would eliminate the semblance of rigidity and introduce freedom to the visit. A visitor who feels in charge is more likely to enjoy the fair more, feel more at home and have a higher level of customer satisfaction.
Creating Different Tour Packages
International visitors come to the Hanover Fair for different reasons. Some are visiting Germany as tourists and just happen to have come during the festival. Others have come because of a specific segment of technology that they would like to invest in while others would just want to see the current trends in technology. Empathy begins with understanding the intent of the visitor with good ICC being geared towards the ability to satisfy that intent. A blanket regulated and formal tour of the entire fair might be exactly what a segment of the visitors want. Others would want to be treated exactly as a local and have been working very hard on their understanding of the local language and mannerisms. Yet others would be comfortable guiding themselves for most of the fair and only need help with the German section or the Mexican section. When visitors need a variety but do not have choices, they will only accept the tour under protest and no matter how positive the experience is, customer satisfaction may be diminished.
Readjusting Timelines
The timelines under the current regimens are extremely rigid. For a start, each tour is two hours long. Whereas this may be enough time to cover the entire fair, it is also extremely rigid and contributes to the concept of the visitor feeling as a prisoner or feeling alienated. In some cultures, people are always in a hurry and might be able to handle the entire tour in half the time. In other cultures, lethargy is a prided heritage and more time would be necessary to cover the fair. Having an open-ended duration would increase control on the part of the visitor thus alleviating the feeling of alienation. Secondly, as indicated above different packages would be available for different visitors thus necessitating different durations.
The second perspective of timeline adjustment is the availability of the tours. According to the 2017 schedule, guided tours were only available at specific times during the day. On Monday it was the afternoon, on Friday around midday and from Tuesday to Thursdays from 10 am to 2 pm . As indicated earlier, foreigners are prisoners in their own eyes whenever they visit another country. All forms of rigidity only add to their feeling of being prisoners. The guided tour schedules of 2017 mean that the guest must adjust to the whims of the host which lacks empathy and mindfulness. It would be better if the host adjusted to the whims of the guest, more so when the guest is also paying for the service. Under the circumstances, therefore, the guided tours should be available for as long as the fair is open. Premium prices can be included in segments of the day when providing services are more of a challenge, instead of making the guest have to wait.
Personal Action-plan
This is a personal action plan geared towards my transformation from my current state into a competent visitor guide from an ICC perspective. By the end of the action plan, I would want to be able to understand myself and anything about me that would be a hindrance to ICC. Secondly, I would want to have an understanding of the general concepts relating to ICC concepts and their application. Further, I would want to have an understanding of the international visitors that I will be guiding and their respective cultural affiliation to be able to interact with them competently.
Step One: Reason
The reason that will create motivation for the instant action is the realization of my limitations when it comes to ICC. This understanding is coupled with the appreciation of the gravity of my obligations as a guide for international visitors in the impending Hanover Messe. I intend to change from who I am into whom I am supposed to be.
Step Two: Specific Long-Term Goal
The long-term goal of this action plan is to be the best possible Hanover Messe guide then keep on bettering my best.
Step Three: Short Term Goals
Week One: To study ICC principles and concepts thus developing a theoretical understanding of the character traits that reflect good ICC.
Week Two: Have a positive understanding of the self and those traits that make it difficult for me to interact well with people of a different culture.
Week Three: Practice the ICC art of “thinking under the influence” to perfection so that when am interacting with individuals of different culture I can be able to have the right responses as per cognitive flexibility, and the right behavioral traits as per behavioral flexibility.
Week Four: Take time to study and understand the different national cultures of the visitors I will be interacting.
Week Five: Take time to practice and perfect the learned ICC competence from international friends and acquaintances.
Step Four: Preparation for slip-ups and setbacks.
Among the greatest challenges will be time for the activities above which must run contemporaneously with my studies. Among the measures put in place to accommodate this is t he limited weekly objectives. The timing of the work-plan is also set in a way that it can be adjusted forward in the case a week’s objective is not accomplished when the week ends
Conclusion
International Communication & Competence is based on the fact that there is nothing natural about being in a strange country. The world is gradually becoming a global village but national cultural affiliations are still deeply entrenched. When a visitor is in a different country, there is always an inordinate effort to fit in thus creates a consistent consciousness akin to being in prison. Paid up services by the foreigner provide an opportunity for the host to make the foreigner feel at home. It is towards the achievement of this obligation that ICC comes in. As argued above, ICC is two-dimensional. The first dimension involves the host who has to adjust in order to accommodate the visitor. The second dimension involves the visitor whom the host needs to understand from a cultural perspective so that the host can understand what adjustments are necessary. The Hanover Messe 2017 team may have been competent when it comes to understanding the fair and guiding the visitors through it. However, the team they selected, the lack of training, and the way the tours were carried out failed the competency test from an ICC perspective. It is this inability to make the visitors feel at home that resulted in the poor customer satisfaction and low referral revels. Improving in ICC as defined above would salvage the situation and make the 2018 Hanover Messe guided tours have positive outcomes resulting in positive reviews and higher revenues.
References
Bird, A. and Mendenhall, M.E., 2016. From cross-cultural management to global leadership: Evolution and adaptation. Journal of World Business , 51 (1), pp.115-126
Gallois, C. and Giles, H., 2015. Communication accommodation theory. The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction
Kim, Y.Y., 2015. Achieving synchrony: A foundational dimension of intercultural communication competence. International Journal of Intercultural Relations , 48 , pp.27-37
Shah, D.V., Thorson, K., Wells, C., Lee, N.J. and McLeod, J., 2017. Civic Norms and Communication Competence. The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication , p p .467 -471
Ting-Toomey, S. and Dorjee, T., 2015. Intercultural and intergroup communication competence: Toward an integrative perspective. The Handbook of Communication Science: Communication Competence , 22 , pp.503-538
