Good afternoon! My topic today is "Building Cross-Cultural Bridges to Create Happiness". As more and more emerging markets r

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问题     Good afternoon! My topic today is "Building Cross-Cultural Bridges to Create Happiness".
    As more and more emerging markets reach economic independence, millions of people are being pulled out of poverty. Prosperity tends to make people happy, at least to a certain level. In a compilation of 100 university studies on the topic of happiness, researchers from 50 different countries point to the fact that using the GDP of a nation or the net income of an individual to assess the level of happiness people experience is entirely misleading. Money does NOT guarantee happiness. This explains why there are so many depressed and unhappy people in rich countries.
    The factor that plays the biggest role when it comes to people’s happiness is the quality of one’s interpersonal relationships and the level of trust we are able to develop in each other. This being said, if building trust and establishing relationships are the foundation of our happiness, succeeding in doing so across cultures is quite tricky as people do not automatically anchor their trust in the same values. Richard Lewis, the leading cross-cultural expert, has identified that to build trust with someone from a "linear" culture, such as the United States or Germany, being direct, punctual, following through and being law-abiding will be necessary.
    Displaying those values when interacting with someone from Brazil will however not automatically lead towards trust building, as " multi-active" people crave other values, such as paying attention to their emotions and being family-oriented.   " Reactive"  cultures on the other hand, such as China or Vietnam build trust by displaying great courtesy towards one another, being mindful of the common obligations shared as a society, being indirect in communicating. Because each of us is the by-product of the culture that raised us, we are by default blind-sided by our own values, unconsciously and wrongly assuming that what rings true to one, what is self-evident and well-known within our tribe is also self-evident across cultures. And because culture conditions every aspect of our lives, it is very difficult to remain aware of its invisible impact when interacting with people who have not been culturally conditioned the way we have.
    Knowing that our happiness heavily relies on building trust and meaningful relationships, knowing that a considerable amount of our time is spent at work and in the case of a growing population interacting across cultures when at work, it is essential to develop the skills that will allow us to better understand one another. Imagine a world where instead of judging a person based on the differences he or she projects when interacting with us, we would question the validity of our own positioning, pausing to assess if those differences could be culturally rooted. I challenge you to give it a try: for the next three weeks, each time you feel disappointment creeping in when interacting with someone from a different culture, ask yourself: did that person receive the same rules of conduct that you have? Does that person share your values? By forcing your brain to slow down, to pause and not automatically rely on its pre-existing frames of references, you will start looking at situations, conversations, and interactions differently. You will give yourself an opportunity to build trust with people from different cultures and through that process you will find you become H-A-P-P-I-E-R!

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答案 下午好!我今天演讲的题目是“搭建跨文化桥梁,创造快乐生活”。 随着越来越多的新兴市场实现经济独立,数百万人正逐步摆脱贫困。繁荣往往令人快乐,至少在一定程度上如此。汇集100所大学针对“快乐”这一话题所做的研究,来自50个不同国家的研究人员指出,通过一个国家的国内生产总值或个人的净收入来评价人们的快乐程度完全是误导性的。金钱并不能确保快乐。这也解释了为什么富裕国家中有那么多情绪低落的不快乐的人。 决定着人们是否快乐的最重要因素即人际关系的质量如何及彼此之间能够建立的信任度如何。如果建立信任和建立关系是我们快乐的基础,那么在跨文化交流中做到这些就比较困难了,因为人们建立信任的价值观基础往往是不同的。著名的跨文化专家理查德-路易斯(Richard Lewis)指出,与来自“线性”文化,如美国、德国的人们建立信任是必要的,来自这种文化的人们往往直接、守时、做事有始有终,并遵守法律。 然而,在与巴西人交往过程中展现出这些价值准则的话,人们之间则无法自然而然地建立起信任,因为“多元活跃型”人群重视的是其他价值准则,如关注他们的情绪、以家庭为中心等。另一方面,“反应性”文化,如中国、越南,则通过对彼此谦恭有礼、关注整个社会的共同义务、不要直话直说等来建立信任。我们每一个人都是成长于所在文化的副产品,因而很自然地受到自己文化价值观的影响而产生偏见,在不知不觉中错误地认为,在我们自己文化中正确的、不言而喻的、众所周知的事物在其他文化中亦是如此。由于文化决定着我们生活的方方面面,我们在与来自不同文化的人们交流时很难意识到它的无形影响。 我们知道快乐在很大程度上取决于信任和有意义的人际关系的建立,我们知道我们有大量的时间花在工作上,在工作中要与越来越多的来自不同文化的人们进行交流,因此我们需要开发技能,以更好地了解彼此。想象一下这样一个场景:我们不是根据一个人在与我们沟通过程中表现出的差异来进行评判,而是自问一下我们自己的定位是否合理,停下来想想看这些差异是否有文化根源。来试试看吧:在接下来的三周里,每当你在与来自不同文化的人交流过程中感到失望时,问一问自己:那个人所接受的行为规范与你的相同吗?那个人的价值观与你的一样吗?迫使你的大脑慢下来,暂停一下,而不是习惯性地依赖自己已有的评价体系进行评判,这样你就会开始以不同的视角来看待情况、对话及沟通行为。你将会给自己一个与不同文化的人建立信任的机会,在这个过程中,你也会发现自己变得更快乐了!

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