Introduction
Research is clear on the topic of cultural diversity in international organisations. If unmanaged, diversity can undermine the ability of professionals to cooperate. Different values and behaviours can easily lead to misunderstandings, and even conflict. If managed well, diversity can become an advantage for teams and organisations, with diverse mindsets and experience offering the chance to innovate. This seminar explores how to manage cultural diversity and ways to capture its opportunities.
Benefits
Participants will:
- increase their awareness of cultural differences, and better understand themselves and others in business-related contexts
- know key cultural dimensions significant in an international environment
- be able to draw on culture as ‘a window’ to better handle specific diversity challenges
- be able to profile preferences on core cultural dimensions as a starting point to build trusting relationships and supportive team collaboration
- develop a more flexible range of communication behaviours to work and communicate effectively with those from diverse cultural backgrounds
- understand the full range of competences which are critical success factors when working internationally, and have a clear plan to develop their own international competence profile and the skills of others
Topics
The core topics are:
- understanding culture
- profiling diverse business cultures
- the MBI Model – Martha Maznevksi
- effective intercultural communication
- a cast study of leading across cultures: Kai Bendix
- peer coaching: my own cross-border challenges
- building culture: leader as cultural architect