overview Cultural awareness helps you understand and connect with others better.

overview
Cultural awareness helps you understand and connect with others better. Part of developing your cultural awareness depends on how you give and receive feedback. In this assignment, you will reflect on how you give and receive feedback and how diversity awareness impacts communication and collaboration. (As you may recall, diversity awareness involves recognizing, respecting, and embracing others’ differences.) Reflecting on how you give and receive feedback will help you approach feedback as an opportunity to strengthen your own communication skills and your relationships with others.
Directions
In this journal submission, you will describe how you give and receive feedback. You will reflect on past feedback and how it has shaped your approach to receiving feedback now. You will also discuss the impact that diversity awareness has on communication, collaboration, and feedback situations. Finally, you will describe strategies you can use when interacting with people with diverse backgrounds.
Specifically, you must address the following:
1. Describe your perceptions regarding receiving feedback.
A.How does receiving feedback make you feel?
B.How can you improve your reaction to feedback?
2. Describe how you can use past feedback to inform how you give and receive feedback now.
A.What have you learned from past experiences in which you received feedback?
B.How can you apply what you learned to future feedback situations?
3.Describe the impact that diversity awareness has on giving and receiving feedback when communicating and collaborating with others.
3.Describe how you can use strategies for interacting with diverse groups of people as you give and receive feedback.
Additional Help Do Not Copy
In this course, you have explored intercultural communication and conflict navigation. This week, you will apply these concepts to your experience as an online student. You will continue to use the communication skills you’ve learned in this course in your personal and professional life and in your community.
Your communication is influenced by many factors, including emotions like joy, surprise, frustration, excitement, and anger. When you think about your audience, you need to consider culture. Throughout your life, you will interact with people from different cultural backgrounds. That might occur in this online course, another course at SNHU, or in your personal or professional life. Martin and Nakayama (2022) break down intercultural communication by framing culture, communication, and power as building blocks. Let’s examine how culture and communication relate to your life.
Culture in Your Online Learning Experience and in Your Personal and Professional Life
What do you think of when you hear the word culture? Culture is defined as the “learned patterns of perception, values, and behaviors, shared by a group of people, that are dynamic and heterogeneous” (Martin & Nakayama, 2022). Based on that definition, how would you describe the culture of your online learning experience?
Martin and Nakayama (2022) describe culture by exploring the following themes:
Culture is learned. For example, cultural norms are learned through observation. Think back to when you were a child and some of the cultural norms your experiences instilled in you. How do those cultural norms play out in your life now? Remember that a cultural norm for you may not be a cultural norm for someone else and can impact your ability to communicate with others due to unconscious biases that you learned. What are some cultural norms you’ve experienced in your online learning experience, and how have those norms made you feel or impacted your learning? Consider how this may translate to your future personal or professional experiences. Because culture is learned, you can learn to shift your perspective about different cultures and how to interact with people from other cultures.
Culture involves perception and values. In this course, you are learning others’ perceptions and values and your own. Perception has three phases: selection, organization, and interpretation. Each phase can impact how you communicate and receive information in online learning experiences and in your personal and professional experiences. Perception and values can also determine how successful your communication will be, especially because unconscious bias may impact your perceptions. How have your perceptions and values impacted how you receive communication from others in this class or in other online experiences?
Culture involves feelings. Feelings are important in every area of your life, including your online learning and your personal and professional life. It’s important to remember that culture and feelings are linked to connection and belonging. When there is a deep sense of connection and belonging to the culture, people tend to thrive. However, when familiarity with the culture is nonexistent, it is hard to feel a sense of belonging, because there is nothing to connect to. Think about your own culture. What are some practices, beliefs, or traditions that connect you with others within your culture? Now, consider others from different cultures. How can you connect with others and form a sense of belonging? You can even consider your experience taking this course. How are you and your peers connected, and how can you use that connection to thrive in this course and beyond?
Culture is shared. When culture is shared, it connects people to groups. For example, school clubs or employee resource groups connect people to a shared goal or interest. What kinds of groups are you part of, and what are the shared goals or interests of each group? You can even think of this course as a group with a shared interest or goal of taking your education to the next step. The group we are part of creates the culture within the group and highlights two fundamental aspects of culture: visible culture and hidden behavior.
Diverse group of people at the beach
Communication in Online Learning
Communication is often subjective, meaning that our messages are often based on feelings and opinions. How can this translate to your online learning experience? Communication is defined as a “symbolic process whereby meaning is shared and negotiated” (Martin & Nakayama, 2022). For communication to be effective, the parties receiving the message must understand what the other is saying. Remember, communication comes in different forms, not just verbal. Sometimes communication is nonverbal (body language), and unconscious bias can lead to misinterpretation of what one views as challenging or engaging. For example, in this online course, you and your peers don’t have the benefit of seeing each other’s body language, which can lead to misinterpretation. To work through misinterpretation, ask clarifying questions and assume positive intent. Remember, everyone is learning together, and it’s a great time to ask questions and connect with others. As you strengthen your communication skills, you’ll be able to use them more effectively in this course and in other areas of your personal and professional life.
Communication in Your Personal and Professional Life
Often, miscommunication can be unintentional due to cultural norms. There are social and cultural norms that may mean something positive for one culture and be an insult for another culture. Therefore, intercultural communication may cause harm unintentionally. How can you practice intention with intercultural communication in your personal and professional life beyond this course? Ask clarifying questions to ensure that you understand the communication. If you are the one communicating, you can rephrase your question or simply invite them to repeat what they heard you say. You should also avoid jargon, such as slang, idioms, slurs, or other culturally specific language, and use concise language to communicate your message.
Communication usually comes down to how you say something. This involves body language and your tone. Are your arms crossed as you say something? Are you making eye contact? Is your tone friendly and open or rude and cutting? To further develop your communication skills, let’s review some strategies for interacting with others with diverse backgrounds. You’ll be able to use these communication strategies in your online learning experience and in your personal and professional life in the future.
Strategies for Interacting with People with Diverse Backgrounds
At first, it might be challenging to communicate with people who are different from you, but there are strategies you can use to make these interactions better. The resources in this module describe the following strategies:
Share your opinions respectfully.
Seek out opinions different from yours and use that as a learning opportunity.
Be open and willing to accept change.
Be a good listener and use reflective feedback. Reflective feedback involves rephrasing what you heard or understood from the other person. This ensures the other person listened and understood what they said.
As you review the resources in this module, what other strategies stand out to you? How can you use these strategies in this online course and in your personal and professional life?
Power and Intercultural Communication
Power is another building block of intercultural communication and often demands attention and respect. Martin and Nakayama (2022) argue that power is constant and ever-present in communication and that the groups with the most power and privilege determine communication for the entire society. To determine how power is related to group communication, Martin and Nakayama (2022) identify two types of group-related power:
Membership in involuntary groups is based on social identities, including age, ethnicity, gender, physical ability, race, and sexual orientation.
Membership in voluntary groups is based on educational background, geographical location, marital status, and socioeconomic status, which are identities that you can more easily change. For example, you are in the process of changing or enhancing your educational background by attending SNHU and earning your degree.
Membership in these groups can impact positional power and control how messages are curated and distributed. Ideally, messages should be curated in a way that relates to audiences, but what happens when messages intended for everyone are communicated in a way that excludes people? The resources in this module will help you understand how dominant cultural groups may leverage communication that excludes minority groups from sending and receiving communication. As you review the resources in this module, ask yourself if you are in a position of power and privilege. If you are in a position of power and privilege, how can you use your position to help others’ voices be heard?
As you review the resources in this module, reflect on the groups you are in and your visible and hidden cultural behaviors. Consider the following questions:
What are your involuntary and voluntary cultural groups, and how can you use that knowledge to connect better with others in your online learning experience?
How does your awareness of your involuntary and voluntary cultural groups make you feel as an online student?
How are your beliefs and values impacting culture in your online learning experience and in your personal and professional life?
How can you use your beliefs and values to positively impact your online learning experience and connect with others in your personal or professional life?
Understanding Cultural Differences
Now that you have more awareness of the complexities of intercultural communication, it is time to explore cultural differences that can impact additional layers of intercultural communication. Martin and Nakayama (2022) use social psychologist Geert Hofstede’s value dimensions to understand cultural differences:
Power distance
Masculinity/femininity
Uncertainty avoidance
Long-term versus short-term orientation to life
Indulgence/restraint orientation
Hofstede’s value dimensions speak to the impacts of inequity and the lack of justice. SNHU President Paul LeBlanc said, “The world in which we live equally distributes talent but does not equally distribute opportunity.” Consider this statement from the perspective of intercultural communication. If less powerful members of groups accept that power is distributed unequally, how does that impact how they expect to receive communication? If you are in a position of power, how can you leverage that awareness to deliver a message that is inclusive of all? Consider this as you navigate spaces where you have opportunities to weave in and out of powerful positions.
Throughout your life, you will interact with people from different cultures, and the knowledge you gain in this course will help prepare you for those interactions. Anytime you engage with people with different views, you can learn more about the world. Ask open-ended questions and have an open mind. Consider the shared goal or purpose of the interaction. How can you foster connection and collaboration in different situations beyond this course? Whether you’re interacting with someone in your personal or professional life or in another online course at SNHU, connection and collaboration require communication.

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Cultural awareness helps you understand and connect with others better. appeared first on Excel Essay Helpers.