[MUSIC] In this situation, we have Pierre a European, French boss, who has invited his colleague Hari from India to come to work in the office. Pierre addresses Hari on a particular assignment that's to be completed. And he asks him if he's complete or on his way to being complete and have any questions at all. Hari smiles at him, a lively smile. And says, yes, sir, I've got it under control. Pierre checks in a few days later wondering how the project's going, and he finds that Hari has made no progress. Hari, he finds, didn't understand the instructions. And so Pierre sat with him, explained the project to him in further detail, and helped Hari get through the areas where he was confused. So we wonder what could've Pierre done to understand the situation and moved to have a successful outcome. If you assume in this situation that Hari's absolutely capable of the work, then you're left with an intercultural conflict in communication. We first have to know that it's always the leaders job to be responsible for their own interaction in an intercultural situation and to understand the party that he or she is dealing with. So in this case, Pierre should have extended himself to understand further the Indian culture. And a particular dimension that we can highlight in this example is the low context and high context cultures. In a low context culture, we tend to have individualistic behavior that's very aggressive. In a high context culture, we have typically a more collectivist attitude. And we have more words that are passive, that are more towards describing a situation than giving the answer. In a low context culture, we have matter of fact words. In a high context culture, we have animated communication. In a low context culture, we have assertiveness. In a high context culture, we'll have reticence to communicate in silence. So, in this example, Hari coming from a more high context culture was animated in how he communicated with Pierre. Giving Pierre the feeling that he understood what the project scope and instructions were, he also was reticent to actually tell Pierre he didn't understand out of complete fear of disappointing a boss. So, in this case Pierre had a lot of responsibility to help understand the situation. And to help Hari have comfort in coming to him when really there was a lot of fear between Hari and Pierre that Pierre was not fully aware of. Which caused Hari to be reticent in communicating that he didn't fully understand the project. So hopefully we have given you some context to what Pierre could have done and the concept of high and low context cultures. [SOUND]