Example Of My Intercultural Experience

I and most of my family are from Honduras and the United States. The religious beliefs in my family varies, some members of my family are Christian while others are Catholics. Some members of my family have been born outside the United States but most of them have become naturalized as United States citizens. Some members of my family speak both English and Spanish, while others only speak English or only Spanish. I was born and raised in Honduras and when I was 15 years old I moved to the United States, so I think it is fair to say that I grew up in both countries. While I was in the army I had the opportunity to work in many different states within the United States and also I had the opportunity to work abroad in Kuwait, Germany, and Afghanistan. …show more content…
When I was in the army I had a roommate for about three years, he was a white American and I am a Hispanic American. Even though we were from different cultures we both had the same definitions of friendship, with that being said there were not misunderstandings in that regard. (Oetzel 154). However, one of the big differences we had were our communication styles. (Oetzel 155) My communication style is more assertive and direct to the point while his communication style was mostly indirect or would always go along with what I said even if he didn’t agree with me or my choice about something. At first this was not a big deal to me, but with time it became annoying because sometimes I wanted to hear direct feedback from him which he never provided. At the same this experience has shown me that not all classifications of people are accurate. For example, the textbook has explained that most White Americans have a direct communication style, but my roommate was the opposite of that. Besides our cultural differences we never had any problems because we respected the cultures, behaviors, and belief of each …show more content…
I noticed that there was a problem of communication within the organization. Sometimes important messages that were coming from the top level would be a little different by the time they reach the low level, so it seemed that the managers who were of different cultures perceived and relied the messages differently to their workers (Campbell River). Another flaw that I noticed was the teamwork. I come from a collective culture so I can understand and appreciate the importance of team work, however at my old organization it seems that everybody was very individualistic and did not show any interest of working as a group to get some of the task accomplished more effectively (Campbell River). Everybody was only concerned about them while forgetting the common goal that we all had in