Cross Cultural Training and Intercultural Communication

Effective cross-cultural management requires more than cultural awareness training. We are all aware of cultural diversity in the workplace, but what do we do about it?

The Global Integration approach to cross cultural training or intercultural training, gives participants practical tools for diagnosing cultural differences at work and strategies for dealing with these differences.

Do we need Intercultural Training?

• You manage or work with colleagues from different national, corporate or functional cultures;.
• You recognize that cross-cultural differences can lead to different behaviours and assumptions at work and that these can sometimes cause misunderstandings or delay;.
• You want to understand and respect intercultural differences but still need to perform done effectively;
• You don't have time for your team members to work out the secrets of cross cultural success through long trial and error.
• You want/need to do something practical to get the best from working with your colleagues in different cultures

Then you need this program for your International management training needs

Our experience shows that significant business time, energy and effort is wasted through misunderstandings and miscommunication caused by failure to understand and resolve the differences between national, corporate and functional cultures at work.

Tools for Cross-cultural Success is a workshop developed by Global Integration, where we share our expertise gained from working with many of the world's most successful international organizations. It is largely based around our unique "culture abacus" tool, enabling participants to accurately diagnose the cultures they are working with and design ways to enjoy, benefit from and reconcile the cultural differences we are working with.

The program moves beyond cross-cultural understanding into applications: How do we improve our cross cultural meetings? How do we motivate and manage people from a different cultural background?

Global Integration can tailor the key tools in the program to focus on the specific issues you face - participants learn to apply our cross-cultural analysis process to real business issues.

Benefits of Cross Cultural Training

The three major benefits from attending the workshop include:

• Improved cross-cultural meetings, decisions and implementation of actions;
• Increased ability to communicate and work effectively with colleagues from other national, functional and company cultures;
• Reduction in cross-cultural misunderstandings and subsequent costs and delay.

The workshop will be particularly beneficial for managers directly managing cross cultural teams or project groups, people who regularly travel to other countries on business, international team members or those with a boss or subordinate from another culture.

The workshop will answer the following questions:

• How can we build good working relationships across cultures?
• How can I avoid offending people from a different culture?
• When I travel abroad, should I adapt to 'their' culture? If so, how far?
• Why do different nationalities seem to behave differently in meetings?
• Is cultural stereotyping or cultural generalization harmful, or helpful?
• How can I get different cultures to work to a common deadline?
• Why do some cultures always seem to want to rush in to things?
• ]Why do some nationalities seem to take forever to agree anything?
• Would we be more effective, or less, if our team were all the same nationality?
• ]How can we ensure that the needs and views of each country are considered, without adding weeks to each project?
• Why do I sometimes get the answer "Yes", when they really mean "No"?
• How can I best influence someone from another culture?
• How can we improve the effectiveness of our business as we face increasing "global" challenges, which require international co-operation?
• When is it not "culture" and when is culture used as an excuse?

Case Studies

DePuy

DePuy, part of the Johnson & Johnson group of companies, provides diagnostics, medical devices and orthopaedic implant products to an extensive global client base. With more than 2,000 employees in eight countries, Elke and her team was consistently faced with culture and diversity issues that had an impact on productivity.

Find out more about how Global Integration supported DePuy.

Newell Rubbermaid

"We were faced with different systems, different cultures, different languages, and different work habits. We were building regions and didn't even have everyone speaking some English."

Find out more about how Global Integration supported Newell Rubbermaid.

Novartis

For this globally structured company with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, and its clinical team members spread around the world, cultural and language barriers were only the beginning of this challenge for Novartis.

Why "couldn't [they] be more pleased with the results we've had". Find out in our Novartis case study.

Take Action

If you are investigating cross-cultural training as part of merger and acquisition activity, find our more about our 'best of both' and 'cultural due diligence' services at the Mergers and Acquisitions planning and integration section of this website.

If you are looking for a cross cultural trainer or conference speaker on the subject of cultural diversity and inclusion at work please check out our conference speakers

To discuss your specific needs please, call us now