Cross-culture

While being here in Finland you meet a lot of people, so that means a lot of new cultures. You meet Finnish people but also people from all over the world. People from Germany, Spain, U.S.A, Italy, Japan, North-korea, Ireland etc. I can make my list so much longer but I think you understand what I mean. All of those people have a different culture, what also means that they the communication is different. Especially in the beginning it was sometimes hard to understand eachother.

To prevent miscommunication it is good to know which culture someone belongs to. There is a model called the Lewis Model to help you find out the culture. Lewis says that people can be devided in 3 categories based on behaviour: Linear-active, Multi-active and reactive.

The linear group is the English speaking world: North America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand and Northern Europe, including Scandinavia and Germany

The Multiactive group are more scattered: Southern Europe, Mediterranean countries, South America, sub-Saharan Africa, Arab and other cultures in the Middle East, India and Pakistan and most of the Slavs. Even though all these cultures are wildly diverse, geographically nd in their religions, beliefs and values, they can be categorised as a group, as behaviourally they follow the same pattern with traits and have a lot in common

The reactive group is located in all major countries in Asia, except the Indian sub-continent, which is hybrid.

In this model you can see really good the distance between countries in cultural way. We as Dutch are linear-active and so are the Finnish people and I think while being here I haven't had much problems with communication with other Finnish (beside of the language barrier). But here in Turku also study a lot of Spanish people and I can notice a big difference. Spanish people talk a lot use a lot of body language. If I compare it to myself. I'm more quiet, I don't use body language that much, I'm a bit direct. I noticed that not everyone, especially people from the multi-active group can interpret being direct as rude. So I have to be a bit careful with that, and sometimes try to say things in a different way. 

To prefent miscommunication it is good to keep in mind that people have a different culture and different behaviour. This can be a bit hard in the beginning, but it is really nice to get to know different cultures and to learn from eachother.

Puhua myöhemmin
Emma