[LTC Remi Hajjar] Communicating across cultures, it's tricky business.

[Dr. Lauren MacKenzie] Relationships both begin and end, and succeed or fail, one conversation at a time.

[Charles C. Mink] An ability to, figuratively, as a metaphor of course, to put on someone else's glasses and view the world the same way they do is a, is a foundational aspect of becoming a good communicator.

[Dr. Tim Kirk] Understanding that cross-cultural communication and developing competence is by definition an uncomfortable practice. It's very uncomfortable when you visit another part of the country and you don't fully understand the customs and courtesies. It's even more uncomfortable when you go to a different country that speaks a different language that seems very foreign to you. But the truth is you don't get good at it unless you wade through that discomfort.

[Caption: First Impressions]

[Dr. Tim Kirk] People readily identify you based upon the way you look, the way you act, and how you sound when you talk.

[Dr. Lauren MacKenzie] If you can, in the first say 20 to 30 seconds of that interaction, perform the greeting appropriately, effectively, politely, that that emergent interaction, that conversation, will trump any previously held negative stereotypes about Americans in general.

[CW3 Joe Grano] Maybe there's a certain sort of handshake, maybe they need to hug, maybe that makes some folks uncomfortable.

[Dr. Lauren MacKenzie] And the one thing I would say that's, again, really important, is to get the greeting right. Even if you don't think you're going to have time to master Dari or Pashto before you go to Afghanistan, if you can at least memorize the greeting I think that would be really really important, it would go a long way to show respect to someone.

[Caption: Language and Non-Verbals]

[CW3 Joe Grano] The attempt to speak their language goes a long way. Even if you only know a few words, and you can butcher it. If you try to speak a little bit, of course, they receive you a little more.

[Dr. Lauren MacKenzie] Studies show anywhere between like 60 and 80 percent of our communication is nonverbal, especially what's perceived.

[Charles C. Mink] And you'd be amazed how much of communication you can actually accomplish through nonverbals.

[Dr. Lauren MacKenzie] And research over the past few decades has shown that often when it comes to the communication of respect, that again, it's often not what is said but how it's said that can be perceived as disrespectful. So that includes things like volume and intonation, pitch, silence, and things like that.

[Caption: Mistakes and Apologies]

[Dr. Lauren MacKenzie] I think one of the mistakes that I've made in the past, that a lot of people make, is that we assume that apologies are communicated and interpreted the same way across cultures. I think there are many different languages of, languages of apology, and different expectations that people have. But again, learning how people prioritize what needs to, what an apology needs to sound like, I think can go can go a long way. That's one of mistakes I've seen.

[Marc Robere Hill] I've seen service members, when I was in Iraq and in other places, that you know, you're going to do what I say and, and that doesn't matter if I'm in your country or not because I'm an American, because I'm a service member, that's, that's what you're going to do. So we found that was a huge blockade to successful communications.

[Dr. Lauren MacKenzie] One of the best things that you could probably do is acknowledge that you made a mistake to begin with and ask what you can can do to make it better.

[Charles C. Mink] But I think we can move much further past that. We move on from merely avoiding offense and we actually become peers.