INTRODUCTION TO INTERCULTURAL NEGOTIATION

To give an introduction into the intercultural negotiation, first is important to understand what it means, for intercultural we are referring to people from different countries which handle a dialogue or negotiation in order to reach a desire outcome. When negotiating with people from other countries, is important to have in mind and understand that they are not like you, they have different beliefs, traditions, religion, feelings, reactions, thinking’s, behaviors, and so on, and that you have to be willing to cooperate and to be respectful and open minded in order to be successful.  The values and assumptions play an important role when negotiating, because it can lead to misunderstandings or even uncomfortable or offensive situations. Each person has different ways to see the same problem, it depends on the values and assumptions, that the problem will be taken in a negative or positive way; the best example was the case state in class called “Abigail” as we were discussing with the other partners we got into the conclusion that final result depends on the level of values the person has, for example for some people the mother was the worst person in the story, because a mother should always help her children no matter what (this can be seen in a culture where the family ties are very important), but for some it was not that bad, because they assumed the girl had a prudential age to take her own decisions, so it was not the mothers fault.

As my research question, I wonder, even do we know that not all the people behave the same way, even do the culture identify us, the way we talk, the things we like or we don’t like to do, and so on, why do we always get into stereotyping others? I talk for myself when I say that I don’t feel like I behave like a regular Colombian person, I’m shy, I don’t like to party or to drink, I like to be with small groups, or just with my family, boyfriend and close friends, even do I know I don’t feel like the others and there are more people like me, I tend to stereotype people from other countries, why does it happens?

As I read, we tend to stereotype when we are unable to get the whole picture or to obtain all of the information needed to understand and get along with the person we are talking to. Stereotyping in some cases help us to identify the way the person behave in order not to offend or to disturb, but others stereotypes are just like unfair discriminations, for example saying that all the Latin people are unpunctual, when there are lots of them that like to be always on time, other example can be saying that all Germans are rude or talk like there are always mad or angry, when you can find lots of Germans that are very gentle and friendly, and their voice is soft and calm.

http://www.pestalozzi.ch/fileadmin/empower/why_do_we_stereotype.pdf