Problem of language in Training & Development..

Language comprises of both spoken and unspoken means of communication. Bestest of the best training program will fail if trainer is not well versed in communicating trainees’ language. Language is one of the most important ingredients of culture. Spoken Language– Trainees’ receiving training prefer to speak in their own language and trainer being able to speak the local language can help establishing rapport among trainees, which may be very important for the transfer of training. Language is one of the major barriers when it comes to giving training in cross-cultural environment. Chinese is the mother tongue of the largest number of people (shown below), followed buy English and Hindi. Unspoken Language– means non-verbal communication, a very important part of communication. It is a communication that uses body movements and gestures such as, raising eyebrows, smiling, hand movements, facial expressions, etc. A failure to understand unspoken language can lead to a failure of communication because body language is not the same in every culture. For instance, raising eyebrows is a sign of recognition in most cultures, but in some cultures, it’s not. Similarly, making a circle with the thumb and forefinger is a friendly gesture in the US, but it is obscene invitation in Turkey and Greece. Also, thumbs up gesture is used to indicate that “its fine” in the US and Europe, but it is vulgar gesture in Greece. Another case of unspoken language is the amount of distance between the persons talking to each other. In Latin America, the distance adopted by parties in a business discussion is 3 to 5 feet while in the US, it is 5 to 8 feet. In the training context, if the trainer gives training in Latin America and maintains a much larger distance than desired in their training culture, then in turn, it may result in a regrettable lack of rapport between the trainer and the trainee. Therefore, using the right body language is very important in cross-cultural training.