Have you ever encountered someone who just stood that little bit too close to you during a conversation? You may try to subtly retreat, but they keep up with you. The hairs on the back...

Hofstede, the infamous grandfather of cross-cultural studies, said, "Studying culture without experiencing culture shock is like practising swimming without water." I think this guy tried to swim without water....Image Source: Gratisography Usually we think of culture...

When thinking about cross-cultural communication, I bet you don't think "how clean are they?" or "how clean am I?"...and if you do, that's....unusual 😉 BUT concepts of cleanliness can have an impact on communication in...

One of the interesting factors you can explore in cross-cultural interactions is how easily a particular culture will trust others. As this map shows, there are some cultures which are high-trust (ie think most people...

The rules of conversation in any culture are not explicit: they are assumed knowledge and no one thinks of questioning them...unless, you're new to a culture and can't work out why everyone is being so...

I recently had my work Christmas/End of Year party - great times! But I was chatting to some colleagues who weren't able to attend. Their reason was they needed to be at home with the...

Have you ever looked up a list of cultural rules for going overseas and thought, "isn't this just stereotpying?"  I personally think it's about time these typical "Dos and Don'ts" lists had an update. The...

I was recently chatting with a friend about the challenges of affluent countries sending volunteers to not-so-affluent countries. Out of that I heard one of the best lines I've come across in a while... Would...

Today I just wanted to share an awesome Ted Talk I came across. Ann Morgan thought she was "well read." But she looked at her bookshelf one day to realise she had only read US...

In our globalised world, there are many partnerships that are formed between companies and organisations from different cultures. This comes with many benefits, but also some challenges. One of those is that of partnership. Partnership...