In class last week, we played a game of "charades." At first, I thought it would just be a little stress reliever, but as it turned out, it had a deeper meaning. If you really think about body language, it is something we all do unconsciously every single day. However, we often fail to realize that our body language, specifically referring to our gestures, may not have the same meaning worldwide.
A crazy thought popped up in my head, which prompted me to make this entry. I was thinking about a virtual meeting through Skype, with some of my key stakeholders. There was one in Japan, one in Greece, one in the United States, one from Trinidad, and myself from Jamaica.
We are finally closing an anticipated deal, and we are all excited, so the United States partner signals a "thumbs up", I signal a "thumbs up" as well and the Trinidadian signals an "OK" sign.
Soon the partner from Greece begins to argue and decides to pull out from the deal and immediately signs off Skype and out of the meeting. Everyone wonders what is going on, we just closed an amazing deal!
The following article explains my hypothetical issue:
http://ingenira.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Read-Others-Thoughts-by-Their-Gestures
The "thumbs up" gesture is interpreted as a sign of profanity in countries such as Northern Greece. Yikes! That ruined everything right?
It is very important as someone who deals with business partners worldwide, or even a person interacting with friends/people from various countries, to understand what different body languages mean. It may not be as detrimental as a business deal falling through; it may be a situation where you hurt one of your dear friends from another country, without knowing it.
I have experienced this myself where giving a simple hug to my family members who were born and raised in the United States; you can almost feel the anxiety through their clothes, when you hug them. Its not normal for them to hug when greeting someone, they see it as an invasion of their personal space; while in Jamaica, we hug A LOT!!
We should all ensure that we are knowledgeable of the different meanings body languages have cross cultures, so that we do not send the wrong message or insult someone unintentionally and ruin a very good business deal! lol
You can check out this link as well where Sam Diener goes into more detail about body languages:
http://www.samdiener.com/2009/10/body-language-in-different-cultures/
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