Duration: 2 Days
Course Overview
Understanding how culture hugely impacts all areas of our personal and professional lives.
How to spot the most common intercultural pitfalls and obstacles in our interactions with people from different backgrounds and gain deep knowledge about the basic concepts, theories and tools in order to avoid communication breakdown and conflicts.
Furthermore the acknowledgement of different individual, cultural and organisational set of core values help to grow sensitivity and awareness to be able to work together collaboratively and effectively in multicultural environments: appreciate differences – don´t judge.
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Course Content
Looking into ways of understanding and dealing with cultural differences
Cross-cultural communication requires being aware of cultural differences because what may be considered perfectly acceptable and natural in one country, can be confusing or even offensive in another.
Hands-On Workshop Activities
•Real life examples, Discussions and Case Studies make the Workshop Interactive, relevant enabling attendees to be immediatley more effective.
•Case Studies where attendees work in groups to identify challenges and solutions
•Activities, role-plays and hands-on exercises embed the key learning points
•Personal Style assessment, simultations and team-activities.
Introducing 3 Ground-Breaking concepts
Introducing 3 ground-breaking concepts and their applicability for professional and personal intercultural challenges:
Edward T. Hall: The Father of Intercultural Communication. His Cultural Dimensions and their meaning for interpersonal relationships
• Time: monochronic bs polychronic time
• Space: personal space and proximity
• Context: high context vs. low context culture
Geert Hofstede’s fundamental Model on National Culture – the 4 basic dimensions
• Power Distance (PDI)
• Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV)
• Masculinity versus Femininit
• Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI)
Applying these dimensions to Decision Making, Communication and Relationship Building, Presentations, Reward and Recognition.
Dr. Milton Bennett: The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS)
From Denial to Integration:
Expat´s biggest challenges: From ethnocentrisim, the
experience of one’s own culture as “central to reality,”
to ethnorelativism, the experience of one’s own and other cultures as “relative to context.”
Dealing Constructively with Tough Situations
In business, it is commonly agreed that communication is one of the primary concerns.
All the levels in communication are affected by cultural dimensions: verbals (words and language itself), non-verbals (body language, gestures) and etiquette do’s and don’t’s (clothing, gift-giving, dining, customs and protocol)
• Communicating effectively by being aware of common pitfalls
• Matching words and non-verbal signals
• WHAT you say and HOW you say it!
• Personalising the message
• Demonstrating emotional intelligence
• Displaying empathy and showing neutral support
• Defusing anger and controlling the situation
• Remaining objective in challenging situations