From the course: Social Interactions for Multinational Teams
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Misunderstandings caused by gestures
From the course: Social Interactions for Multinational Teams
Misunderstandings caused by gestures
- Imagine you're giving the most important presentation of the year. While you're talking, you notice some of your colleagues shake their heads and others are even giving you the middle finger. How would you feel? Well, a similar situation may happen to your foreign colleagues since nodding means no in some countries while in Asia, the thumbs up gesture means the same as the middle finger. Everybody to some degree uses hand gestures when talking. This is a fundamental feature of body language and in some cultures it's also a necessary means of communication which expresses feelings, reaffirms concepts and can dramatically affect the outcome of the conversation. Hand gestures are universally used but as we've seen, they do not have universally agreed on meanings. Let's talk about some other examples. When an Italian person hits the back of a hand against the palm of the other hand, the gesture means give me proof or I have proof but the same gesture in Brazil is very inappropriate and…
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