At the Czech Hairdresser

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Czech hairdresser for the last time. While in the Netherlands it is usually a challenge to keep the conversation going after the small talk about my education, the weather and my holiday plans, in the Czech Republic it is a challenge to have a conversation at all. The level of English of the hairdressers is very basic, so I usually state some Czech words about my hair while pointing at an old picture and thank her in Czech after the job is done. 

This is how all my visits to the hairdresser in the Czech republic went, but my last visit changed everything. I had heard before that the level of German in the Czech Republic is higher than the level of English. I never tested it, but after the usual start in Czech and English the word 'Deutsch?' escaped from my lips. The hairdresser smiled and with new energy we started the small talk phase in German. Why didn't I try this before? I realised that I missed a lot of opportunities for small talk with Czechs. 

The interesting thing is that when I switched back to English, I immediately faced the consequences of miscommunication. The Czech hairdresser asked if I wanted some wax or hair gel to style my freshly cut hair. I usually prefer to do this myself, so I answered with 'It's ok'. Between two native English speakers this would be understood as 'no', but for the hairdresser this was an affirmative answer. It is OK? Then I'll style your hair. With my waxed hair I walked out of the hair salon with a grin on my phase. I improved our communication by switching to another language, but then used an English expression which she would have never understood. 

The message of this story is that, although English is the lingua franca in our globalising world, it is worth trying to switch to other well-known languages such as German. Moreover, if you speak to a non-native speaker, be careful with expressions, as they can lead to miscommunication. 

Communication, Culture and Creativity

My blog is called communication, culture and creativity. I think that these three words shape and define humanity, are key to solving problems, whether they are personal or global and can create a better world.  In this post I will briefly explain how this works. I do not pretend that I found the egg of Columbus, as many people have wrote about this before, but I will describe my personal view, how I apply it and spread the word.

A world without communication is not possible. We are who we are because of the relation to others and communication establishes this. Communication, whether it is verbal or non-verbal, created our complex world on different levels. It is therefore also the key to solving problems, how simple this may sound. People can laugh about jokes, get offended by insults, fall in love, get angry and so on, all results of communication. Improving this can avoid many problems, but how to improve it? One could be more polite and keep talking with a slow pace, but what really matters is the content, what is the communication about, what does the other mean and why does he or she say that? Understanding your communication partner is therefore crucial.

In other words, it is not just the communication that cause problems, the way the message is delivered, but the thoughts and feelings that are expressed. This brings me to the second aspect, culture. To understand the thoughts and feelings expressed, understanding the culture of your communication partner is important. Culture in this sense is not just someone's ethnic, national or regional background, but also someone's social-economical and educational background. They all shape the individual and a misunderstanding of this could lead to problems. On top of that, personality, character and gender should also be taken into account. Often we blame problems on ethnic cultural aspects, while it could be caused by other factors, I will illustrate this with an example.

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A young woman from Tunisia starts to work at a new company.After a while it becomes apparent that she is not integrating very well in the company and that her relationship with the other colleagues is weak, just some small talk every day. She also does not come to the Friday afternoon drink and a team building event in the weekend. Her colleagues start to guess that this is because of her Muslim background, how women are oppressed and that she is not allowed to drink alcohol. The manager decides to talk to her and mentions these things. It turns out that she is not a Muslim and does drink alcohol, but that she has just broke up with her boyfriend and is going through a hard time. Due to this and her introvert personality, she finds it hard to make friends on the work floor with her colleagues who form a strong collective.

This example shows how easily we draw conclusions and put people in certain boxes. The problem of the woman not integrating in the company was immediately related to her presumed Muslim background. This was not the case and her problems with becoming part of the team were all related to her private life. This example shows the importance of the third C, creativity. We must consider different possibilities and keep other options open at all times in order to solve communication problems. One could assume that a problem is related to ethnicity, but it could also be a different personality, or assume that someone does not fit well in the company due to a lack of assertiveness, but maybe this a different cultural attitude towards authority and only wanting to follow orders. In other words, always be open minded and be creative in order to figure out what the (communication) problem really is.

I hope  my concept of the 3 C's is clear now. In my opinion, communication makes our world, different cultures (whether ethnic, social-economical, regional, personal) influence this and can cause problems and creative thinking is the way to solve these problems and improve each situation. Personally, it helped me a lot to always take different cultures into account and consider multiple possibilities and solutions to solve communication problems that occurred. Furthermore, always keeping this mindset will change your daily life and world view. In the end we are all the same, we are looking for a job, for someone to love and for a great life.