AFS support volunteers work within four AFS relationships: the participant’s relationship with their new culture, their host family, their sending family and the participant’s understanding of themself. The most effective way that a support volunteer can assist these relationships is by fostering effective communication
Support volunteers (such as Liaisons and Support Coordinators) promote the use of e effective communication skills within these AFS circles which helps all parties involved to develop these specific set of communication skills. Listening and interviewing skills—both able to be learned—can be utilized in your family, your job, and your community. The more you use them, the keener and more developed they become. In order to improve your communication skills, it helps to understand your cultural influences and values, as cultural understanding goes hand in hand with effective communication
A person’s values:
- are influenced by personal and national cultures,
- shape one’s view of the world,
- determine how one communicates with others, and
- might conflict with the values of another culture.
When support volunteers are able to understand and recognize their own cultural norms/values, they are better equipped to navigate a cross-cultural experience and are able to effectively engage with AFS participants.
Important concepts:
- Each “culture” includes a closely-knit pattern of assumptions, behaviors, values, and practices that works for the people who share it. Every cultural system has an impact on its people in determining how the world is perceived, how the “self” is experienced, and how life is organized within that culture. The perceptions you carry are as specific and unique as your fingerprints.
- We communicate verbally and non-verbally. How we process our communication varies with our cultural heritage: Some cultures use an entirely different system of logic while others recognize experiences for which another’s language provides no equivalent. Our language organizes our thoughts.
- A third of all non-verbal communication is based on the tone of our voices; over half is based on our facial expressions. It is necessary for us to be aware of our own behaviors and of how others read us because our mannerisms function just as strongly as the spoken word and may convey meanings quite contrary to what we are saying.
- In order to effectively support AFS participants, support volunteers are expected to understand how their culture may influence the way in which they interact and conduct themselves on the program. How participants relate to support volunteers is colored by who they are. Since an AFS volunteer cannot expect the participant or host family to be completely aware of their own assumptions in communicating, the volunteer can offer assistance to both parties by promoting curiosity in how one may or may not communicate certain messages.
When helping a participant, support volunteers can consider whether the participant is from a society that is more “individualist” or “collectivist” and whether this is a factor in their communication style.
Individualist Cultures
The five most strongly individualist cultures are theUnited States, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and the Netherlands; other Northern European countries rank high on this scale as well. These cultures highly value the following characteristics:
- self-reliance
- equality
- freedom
- personal goals
- personal enjoyment
- free choice of whom one can be loyal to
Additionally, individualist cultures tend to view time as immediate and the future as something foreseeable.
Collectivist Cultures
More than two-thirds of the world’s population belong to collectivist cultures. The most strongly collectivist societies include those of Venezuela, Colombia, Pakistan, Peru, and Taiwan. Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Turkey, Greece, Portugal and most other cultures in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America are highly collectivist as well. These cultures emphasize and value:
- loyalty to a specific group and distrust of those in other groups
- self-discipline
- honoring parents and elders
- self-effacement
- accepting one’s position in life
- preserving one’s public image for the sake of the group
These cultures operate in a vastly different time frame than individualist cultures in that their time frame encompasses generations and even centuries. It can be said that culture and communication are two sides of the same coin: Both are systems that operate to enable human beings to establish and maintain relationships with one another.
Overview
- AFS support volunteers take this entire overview into account when attempting effective communication. In doing so, support volunteers work against their innate ethnocentrism. We are all ethnocentric in varying degrees, sharing the view that one’s own culture sets the standard by which all other cultures are measured.
- When left unrecognized, ethnocentrism prevents us from appreciating and understanding another culture on its own terms. Recognizing ethnocentrism makes it necessary for us to observe without evaluating, to suspend judgment in order to understand, and to be patient in our dealings with others.