Cross-Cultural Competence
International projects and business partners, business abroad, worldwide mobility - all that has become daily business today. In times of globalisation the contact to people from other cultures seems to be easier than it was in the past. The differences seem to disappear.
However, persons who want to negotiate, act or generally "communicate" abroad need a certain cross-cultural intelligence and must be aware of the diversity and differences of the different cultures that goes beyond the simple do's and don'ts:
- How do I build trust?
- Which common values matter?
- What is taken for granted?
My training is culturally unspecific, i.e. it does not focus on a certain culture or nation. In this training the participants are sensitised to the complexity of culture. The own cultural identity is reflected and the participants get prepared to interact openly with people from other cultures.
Methodology
On the one hand, the training contains
- lectures on culture as part of your own identity,
- dimensions to describe and observe cultural differences, and
- cultural differences in regard to communication patterns.
With this background the own cultural experiences are discussed and can be classified and understood much better.
On the other hand, many different interactive methods are utilised such as
- questionnaires,
- team work, and
- simulations.
In this way the theory can be applied and understood and the importance and complexity of cultural influences gets obvious.
Target group
The training focusses on people who interact with different cultures:
- manager and sales people with many international business partners
- employees who get in touch with people from other cultures in a more virtual way, like in customer relations, customer support, help desk, and HR
- groups with unknown or heterogeneous destinations abroad, for whom joint culturally unspecific trainings make sense because of the group size like students preparing for a semester abroad or international project teams.