I was meeting this community for the first time in my life. The men came to greet us, and the first one held my shoulder as though he was about to hug me. I positioned myself for a hug but quickly realised he was up to something else. His plan was to hit and rub my head, just as bulls in Ikolomani do during bull-fighting festivals. I noted what my colleague was doing, and at that point discovered that the men in that community greeted each other with their heads. It was my first time being caught unawares by a new culture.
Every culture has patterns that shape how people speak, listen, interpret, question, agree, disagree, or even stay silent. Understanding those patterns is how we become bicultural—comfortable and truly at home in more than one cultural space.
Culture is a way of life for a group of people. It could be a family culture, workplace culture, church culture, or any other homogenous group.
How We Learn to Communicate Across Cultures
When you enter another culture, whether a new workplace or a village you have never been to, you start with the signals before you get into the language.
When we talk about cross-cultural communication, most people immediately think about language, vocabulary, grammar, and accent. But the real journey doesn’t begin there. It begins with something far more basic and far more powerful: signals.
Before you understand what people say, you learn how they live.
In every culture, daily survival, how people find food, water, safety, and shelter, creates a set of signals. These signals are simple on the surface but deeply meaningful. They show up in:
- How people greet one another
- When they eat and how they serve food
- What a “safe space” looks like
- Who speaks first and who waits
- How long a pause should last in conversation
And this is where many cross-cultural misunderstandings begin with small, misread signals.
The biggest challenge at this stage is timing.
A handshake held too long, a smile given too soon, an answer delivered too quickly, or a pause that feels too long… these tiny moments can communicate confidence, respect, impatience, or even disrespect, depending on the culture.
If we miss the signal, we miss the message.
This stage is not glamorous. It requires observation, humility, curiosity, and a willingness to pause long enough to understand “how things work here.” But mastering these basic signals is what makes the rest of the cultural journey possible. It’s what builds trust. And trust is the foundation of every message we ever hope to deliver.
Cross-cultural communication starts when we open our eyes before our mouths.