Intercultural Communication

The same silence means agreement to one person and dissent to another. Seven decisions on reading the meaning, not your default reading of it.

Long. On a mixed floor the misunderstanding is rarely about language. It's that "yes," or silence, or looking away, carries different meaning to different people — and the fast read, the one that fills the gap with what you already assume about a group, is the one that's wrong.

Seven times the course hands you a signal that doesn't mean what your defaults say it means, and makes you choose between acting on the assumption and checking it. It holds you to reading the difference as difference, not as a fault.

You will practice:

• Looking under the behavior to the meaning it carries — the same words or silence can mean different things to different people
• Catching what blocks you — reading a difference as a fault, or filling the gap with what you assume about a group
• Reading how someone actually signals — silence, directness, eye contact, how "yes" is used — for what it means to them, not to you
• Checking by asking when you're not sure what someone means, rather than acting on the assumption