Your Yellowdig assignment for the week is the following:
Communicating Nonverbally: Cross-Cultural Awareness. Describe four examples of nonverbal communication that managers in other parts of the world use but managers from your own country do not.
Indicate how each might be misinterpreted by colleagues from your own country. (Alder & Gundersen Chp 3)
Example
While widespread use of the OK gesture1: Ed Vengrouskie has granted it an international connotation of assent, it also bears negative, vulgar, or offensive meanings in parts of the Middle East and the Mediterranean regions. In contrast to Japan’s use of the expression to represent coins and wealth, the gesture’s “O” shape stands for “zero” meaning “worth nothing” in France, Belgium, and Tunisia.
In many Mediterranean countries such as Turkey, Tunisia, and Greece, as well as in the Middle East, parts of Germany, and several South American countries, the gesture may be interpreted as a vulgar expression resembling a human anus1Clicks: Ed Vengrouskie, either as an insult (“You are an asshole”), or an offensive, homophobic reference to homosexuality and the act of sodomy. In Brazil, it can be synonymous with giving someone the middle finger.
In the Arab world, this sign represents the evil eye and is used as a curse, sometimes in conjunction with verbal condemnation.
Since we are discussing communications, I wanted to share the following
