Intercultural awareness training – your start into intercultural agility

Since the pandemic, more teams work remotely, which enables organisations to access staff from all over the world. Also locally, people have become more mobile. Especially in places like Berlin, New Zealand, and Australia, things become more and more multi-national, and yet (or because of that?), those situations increase. Are you also observing that situations come up across remote teams from different cultures you didn’t have when you were co-located all from the same country?

In a survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit, 90% of executives from 68 countries define cultural intelligence and agility as their top challenge when working virtually and across borders. Hence, even managers in domestic organisations are likely to work with employees from a variety of cultural backgrounds. 90% of the tasks and activities are communications between people who think and behave differently. On average, 79% of team performance is lost because of the clash of values and personalities combined with poor leadership. The skill to turn those differences into synergy, reducing stress and conflicts becomes THE competitive advantage.

In this training, we’ll give you tools to understand those situations, and tools to work with others to understand them. In intercultural terms, we look at patterns and values across cultures worldwide, and how they can be placed relative to other cultures. There is never an absolute perspective on one culture. All of us have gone through completely different walks of life, experienced diverse countries or regional cultures, organisational cultures, family cultures etc. The main outcome of any cultural awareness or culture-specific training is for participants to become aware of their own culture, how it relates to other cultures, and how they might relate to one another.

It gives participants the opportunity to reflect on their own behaviour/reaction/thinking in particular situations, and situations they have experienced at work or in their private life. You will receive tools to recognise when you might be facing an intercultural topic, and ask the right questions to understand the conversational partner accordingly. As a leader, you will also receive tools to help individuals and teams find their way of working together, given their cultural backgrounds.

The following topics will be discussed in detail during the training:

• Self-awareness and awareness about own prejudices and preconceptions

• Learn to adjust your own behaviour to maintain effective communication

• Leverage team performance by reducing clash of personalities

• Reduce stress and conflicts

• Learn to create synergy instead, when interacting and working cross-culturally

• Potentially discuss agile methods through an intercultural lens

Benefits

“You cannot not communicate” (Paul Watzlawick) simply means that EVERYTHING one does is “read” as communication by the culturally diverse people around them. The participants can therefore learn about becoming more confident and competent in communication in intercultural work settings to enable cultural agility.

Methods

• Interactive exercises

• Analysis of case studies

• Inclusion of real case studies from the participants

• Group work

• Participant-orientated reflections

About the trainer

Silke is a certified seminar facilitator, trainer and coach for intercultural competencies, communication and teambuilding as well as certified as a personal coach (NLP-Master). She has published the – so far – first two books about intercultural communication in New Zealand.

As an Accredited Kanban Trainer by Kanban University, Kanban Coaching Professional, Kanban Product Professional, Kanban Management Professional, Enterprise Agile Coach, certified Scrum Master (PSM) and Product Owner, Silke has a successful track record in corporate culture change and transformation, on management, team and personal level. This broadens her understanding of “culture” and has seen Silke training and coaching in Oceania and Europe, in small and large Foto Moderationorganisations, government and private organisations. She is passionate about people, learning, coaching and training, and about helping to inspire individuals, teams and organisations in all walks of life, giving them the knowledge and tools to make a difference.

Overall, Silke has 20+ years of professional experience in many IT- and finance-related projects, and also as a salesperson in investment and retail banking, management consultant, business analyst and test consultant.

Now, for the not-so-fun part: Cancellation Policy

• More than seven days before class: 100% refund

• Seven days or less: Sorry, no refund

• If we need to cancel or postpone the event, we'll let you know at least seven days in advance, and you'll get a full refund or rescheduling options.