Plan: Cultural Differences in Body Language Understanding culture Body Language Hand gestures

If you are struggling to understand how to interpret body language of colleagues in different cultural contexts and how to respond, you may find yourself searching for a checklist of dos and don'ts. But this isn't necessarily the best approach. Generalisations might seem useful to prepare us for new intercultural situations, but they are often over-simplified, and can be stereotyped at times. If we take one-size-fits-all advice at face value, the results can be disastrous.

• If you are struggling to understand how to interpret body language of colleagues in different cultural contexts and how to respond, you may find yourself searching for a checklist of dos and don'ts. But this isn't necessarily the best approach. Generalisations might seem useful to prepare us for new intercultural situations, but they are often over-simplified, and can be stereotyped at times. If we take one-size-fits-all advice at face value, the results can be disastrous.