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Comment by 0des | Hacker News Reader

You know, this might not apply here but lemme contribute this:

Recently at my place of work we were required to take some diversity training. In this training we learned about high context and low context regional and familial cultures. High context individuals convey and respond to indirect details and nuance, while low context cultures are more direct with what they receive and convey.

Learning this helped me a lot and I notice these differences often, as I too come from a different cultural background than my team mates.

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This is interesting, thanks for mentioning. I wonder what the learning from that is though? Like, if you notice the difference, do you adapt to the other style? I feel like I can do that, but it also feels weird and "not me".

It's more about addressing ways out of social conflicts due to misunderstanding context. Both sides can mean well but a mismatch in speech patterns can cause undue conflict. Understanding these differences gives you an "out" from those negative feelings.

Just wanted to add that as a rule of thumb, Western cultures tend to be low-context, while Eastern cultures tend to be high-context.

This also ties in indirectly to punctuality of cultures I think. Lower context cultures tend to be punctual.

And I've felt the Eastern cultures are becoming lower context due to doing business with the West. This may or may not be a good thing.

PS: I'm from a high context culture, but I've lived in America for a while before returning back to my home country. Ever since, I've felt like something was off.

I've seen these skills described as CQ (Cultural Intelligence), distinct from EQ or IQ. IMHO, it's the 3rd leg of the stool for effective intelligence in any non-solo endeavor.

I hadn't heard those terms before, thanks. I'll check those out.

A couple things:

A) People have vastly different (even abusive) forms of communications. What works for one group does not work for another. "Sensitivity training" does not account for this, in fact it causes issues.

B) EQ and CQ are made up terms, but more importantly they aren't realistic. IQ, also is somewhat made up, its used as a sort of "general intelligence" marker and it is that in the context of broad studies, not so much on the individual level. IQ has been long used to browbeat certain ethnic groups, these new "made up" terms are similar, in that people are using them to browbeat various groups, in attempt to put themselves on a higher "moral ground". Its disgusting, and insensitive nonsense. They don't exist, and we don't have the bandwidth to all just "conform". And no, thanks I don't take kindly to being brainwashed.

I don't understand. Does the diversity training teach you to treat people differently based on where you think they came from?

It teaches you that if you are a high context individual receiving low context feedback to try and negate your frustration by understanding the possible factors influencing the response you received before letting it be a blocker in your interactions, also the inverse.

I think it's more similar to learning to speak somebody else's language and not get lost in translation.

Less this and more that one should be cognizant of their own inherent communication biases.

Part of learning to be an adult - growing thicker skin, a backbone, and ALSO understanding that everyone is different, learning to navigate that rather than just get frustrated or upset like you are two-year-old.

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