Why is it important to be culturally aware when communicating in a diverse world? Communicating in a diverse world is important in today’s age of...

The points made in post above regrading importance for conducting the business across the globe are very valid. However it is important to realize that globalization today means much more than selling and buying in multiple countries.

The importance of intercultural awareness and communication has also becomes very important for internal management of organizations. We find that frequently large organizations across the world tend to employ people from many different cultures. This is quite well known for companies having different business units across the globe, and transferring employees across the globe to different countries. But this problem has also become also very important to organizations operating within confines of a single country. Thus we find that now US population consists of many different ethnic groups such as earliest American settlers, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and so on.

To be able for people of different cultural background to communicate and work together effectively, it is essential for them to have some minimum understanding of cultures of each other. Without such understanding there are real possibility of poor communication. Even when people speak a common language like English, the same words may have different connotation to people from different cultures. For example "a lucky dog" may be an acceptable compliment to an Englishman who has won a lottery, but it may offend an Indian. In addition to verbal, communication sometimes our behavior is also can be misunderstood because of cultural differences - for example Britishers are considered to be rather formal while Americans are more out going. Unless differences like these are understood, people may fail to understand behavior of people from other cultures and respond appropriately. An extreme example of this is provides by people from Gujarat State of India. These people consider it very inauspicious to use phrases meaning things like "I am leaving" or "I am going". Instead they use a phrase like "I will return". Once a person knows these things, it is very easy to avoid mistakes. But, ignorance of these difference can lead to major misunderstanding between people.