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■ Who we are
CI-CD Centre for Inter-cultural Development
We provide customised workshops and training packages to
develop the core skills of cross-cultural
communication, as needed in all global operations, eg,
marketing, negotiating business relationships, or managing joint
projects/ventures.
If this training need is not already familiar to you,
see the first paragraph below for introductory briefing.
Each of our services can be provided separately or in combination
-customised to an organisation’s needs, and supplemented with modules on
specific countries/regions. We indicate a sample of past clients for each
service.
à
What
are cross-cultural communication skills?
à
Global
services and international management skills
à
Working
virtually across cultures
à
Preparing
executives for expatriate assignments
à Managing international teams and
joint ventures: recruiting, appraising and team-leading
à
Receiving
overseas delegations
à
Facilitating
international executive team meetings
à Customised training aids: DVDs
or E-Learning courses
à Preparing specifically for Doing Business in INDIA
à CI-CD
services for relating cross-culturally to China
à Preparing for Doing Business in CHINA: an
initial quiz
à Preparing for Doing Business in EUROPE -
We also provide communication skills training for offshore contact
centres and other front-line services, specifically for call-centres in
What are generic core skills of Cross-cultural
Communication?
In day-to-day practice, much work done internationally fails, or
produces lower-than-expected levels of productivity or efficiency, because of
misunderstandings of cross-cultural
communication. These occur all-too-often within project teams (both
face-to-face and virtually); in executive meetings; with visiting delegations;
in expatriate assignments for marketing, in negotiating trading relationships
or in change managing with suppliers/partners overseas.
Most senior managers who have made work trips abroad know how
bewildering and demoralising it is to find that things do not happen as
expected, or objectives are not achieved. Unfortunately, a leadership,
marketing or project/workforce management style that works well in
But
on top of that, much frustration and stress abroad comes
from underestimating how different cultural values produce culturally different communication styles. Even when English is
being spoken fluently by all parties, differing cultural assumptions, together
with influences of a person’s first language on their speaking style in English
as a learned language, lead to misunderstandings of meanings, and consequent
misperceptions of intentions. Such (often largely unwitting) communication
breakdowns cause irritation which in turn damages working (or customer)
relationships. All socio-linguistic research shows it is seriously misleading
for
Cross-cultural communication is not merely a matter of adapting to
differences of ‘business etiquette’ overseas, or of avoiding offence in body language or gestures
at the start of meetings. It is much more crucially a matter of understanding
the subtle ways different cultural values, and different first languages,
influence people’s ways of behaving,
thinking and communicating, over the whole of a meeting to negotiate
trade/investment or manage international teams or JV projects.
The difficulty is that the way we speak is largely an unconscious
process. That’s why training is needed: to equip managers to ‘read between the
lines’ and realise when things are going wrong in inter-cultural
exchanges abroad – to prise damaging
misunderstandings into conscious focus. But such awareness is only 50%:
executives need also to be competent in communication strategies and
skills – the tools
for the job for successfully identifying,
clarifying and repairing such breakdowns, or better of course, preventing them
arising in the first place.
For more detail on global executives’/managers’ needs for skills of
cross-cultural communication, see the Resource Article by CI-CD associate, Dr Margaret Byrne, Australia’s leading
expert, based in Sydney: ‘Adapting to New Cultures’ at www.ugmconsulting.com/UGMAdaptingtoNewCulturesResource.pdf
An intensive ‘mini-course’ for one-to-one study or for small groups (eg, international support teams, or leadership development
schemes), covering 15 areas of training need, including making presentations
abroad, handling meetings, intercultural trouble-shooting and problem-solving.
Core cross-cultural communication skills are needed between any cultures
globally, but workshops can be focussed on specific countries/regions as
required.
Clients include EDS HQ,
Strategies and skills for international virtual team-working and team
managing – emails, audio and video conferencing.
We directed the world’s only visual aid training materials that address
the skills needed for successfully working and communicating virtually across
cultures – made in co-operation with BP, Hewlett Packard, Telstra.
Workshop (involving partner/children, as appropriate), covering all
aspects of minimising ‘culture shock’, both socially and in work. A key focus
is strategies for successful intercultural working as project managers. Also
covers repatriation.
Since 1992, on behalf of Shepell/FGI, we
have prepared executives travelling for intercultural managing/negotiating
assignments in Australia, Belgium,
Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, China (Mainland/Hong Kong/Taiwan), France,
Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia,
Mexico, Norway, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, UK, USA, Vietnam.
Workshops on the intercultural approaches and communication skills
needed for achieving successful outcomes between any two or more cultures.
Training can focus on cultures of particular countries/regions (see list under
3 above).
Clients include Nortel Networks (for Japan); Lloyd’s
Marketing Association (for China); “Languages for Business” courses funded by
European Commission (for France, Germany, Japan and China); WWF; SATRA
(specifically China); BAE Systems (also for China); Merck; Polaris (Japan and
China); Honeywell (Eastern Europe); 3M (Middle East).
For United Kingdom Trade and Investment (UKTI): (a) training of
International Trade Advisers; (b) workshops for UKTI client companies preparing
for marketing and negotiating in Poland, France, Germany, China; (c) 5 books
written on ‘Cultural Sensitivity and Communication Skills for Trading Success’
in China, Poland, France, Germany, USA/UK.
à Preparing for Doing Business in INDIA (also
à Preparing for Doing Business in CHINA
(also
à Preparing for Doing Business across EUROPE – eg,
Our emphasis is on skills required for cross-cultural
§
recruiting, appraising, mentoring,
counselling, motivating
§
resolving
internal tensions to build more effective teams
§
conducting meetings to draw positively
on cultural diversity
§
inter-departmental problem-solving and
achieving more creative innovation
§
designing training or coaching schemes
and metrics of training impact
Clients include CSC; EDS; Nortel; Bank of America;
Merck; Honeywell; 3M; Avery Dennison; Polaris; Lucent; BT; Amnesty
International, WWF, VSO; British Council; Council of Europe.
Analysing common cultural mistakes made with visiting delegations, and
practising how to avoid these; how to prepare ‘user-friendly’ receptions; how
to identify and resolve critical incidents; and how to use English in ways
helpful to people for whom it is a second or third (learned) language.
Clients
include British Council; WWF; BAE Systems (Chinese
delegations); 22 Universities.
We attend meetings to help identify and analyse cross-cultural barriers
that are (largely unwittingly) affecting progress – and to suggest alternative
intercultural strategies for achieving better outcomes.
Clients include Amnesty
International; WWF; EDS; Avery
Dennison; Polaris; Hawksmere Ltd; British Council.
8. Training Trainers/Tutors: Taking account of
culturally different learning styles
Clients include British
Council; EDS;
We create in-house training DVDs at full broadcast standard.
Clients include BBC TV; The
Employment Service; Department of Health; SBS Channel, Australia; Telstra; Bank
of America; European Commission; British Council, Universities of Wales, Leeds,
Salford; British Telecom; Unison; Infosys BPO, Bangalore; HCL Technologies,
Delhi.
à see DVDs/Videos
Our DVD Resources
In training we deploy extracts from our unique DVD/video library of
intercultural exchanges. These show genuine
cross-cultural negotiations and project management team meetings, bringing the
full power and credibility of authentic
documentary case-studies to the training room - not over-simplified or
stereotypical dramatised scenes using actors.
From analysis
of these, executives and managers can identify communication breakdowns for
themselves, moving on to develop the practical skills needed for
effectively communicating across cultures in any international setting.
A few examples
from Asia: our videos show East/West project
team meetings in Vietnam; a British senior manager within Hewlett Packard video conferencing with project team members
of Indian and of Chinese background in Singapore; Western technical and
engineering staff in Telstra mentoring
and problem-solving with local technicians in Vietnam; multi-cultural project management meetings between
Western managers with Japanese and Indonesian colleagues, filmed in Indonesia;
managers of Chinese background in appraisal
interviews in Bank of America.
Practical
guidance on working inter-culturally is given by ambassadors and long
experienced global negotiators. In analysing cross-cultural misunderstandings, CI-CD works with world leading authorities Emeritus Professor John
J Gumperz,
For a list of CI-CD’s most frequently used visual
aids
à see DVDs/Videos