Intercultural Training: Indispensable in modern working life

The day-to-day work of the teams in companies and in administration is today strongly characterized by interculturality. Employees bring a variety of migration backgrounds with them, which gives rise to special challenges for everyday interaction. It is important to be understanding and considerate of each team member and their needs. Appropriate training courses convey the knowledge and skills required for this.

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• Strengthen intercultural communication
• Accompanying cultural adjustment processes
• The employee is the focus of the training
• What experiences do the employees bring with them?
• Today, training is very important
• Intercultural training in the USA and intercultural training in Germany equally in demand
• Learning by doing is not everything
• Various methods play a role in training

More information about intercultural training

• Definition of intercultural training
• Methods of intercultural training
  • Teaching / Learning context
  • Learning goal
  • Target group
  • Content

Strengthen intercultural communication

Source: 123rf

Today it is a decisive advantage in working life to communicate effectively with all employees, at eye level, and with the necessary cultural sensitivity. Many companies face the challenge of providing their employees with the best possible support and are increasingly relying on the important training for intercultural situations.

Those who want to be successful as a global player and do justice to all their employees rely on professional training offers. The trainers in this area know where problems arise in the communication between employees and which measures can help.

Accompanying cultural adaptation processes

Source: 123rf

Workers around the world are more mobile than ever before, different cultures meet in the workplace and sit down with their special skills and perspectives and approaches to team success. The integration into a new team with a different cultural background also requires adjustment processes. These may be associated with friction and stress.

An experienced trainer accompanies these processes and makes them more pleasant for everyone involved. It provides the participants with the necessary skills and knowledge, as well as the attitude that is required to work smoothly with people from different cultural backgrounds. The trainer contributes to the fact that those involved develop the confidence to act that is necessary for natural interaction with one another. The trainers are familiar with many cultures and work cultures and know their particularities. Where are the differences in values, where can misunderstandings arise in communication, and what are the prerequisites for a successful adaptation? The trainer is very sensitive to these questions and passes on his knowledge to the team.

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The focus of the training is on the employee

Source: 123rf

The employees are trained on the basis of concrete practical examples. How do I behave in a certain situation and how can I learn to better assess my counterpart? Whoever understands his counterpart automatically adapts his communication and general behavior. Understanding is the first step towards improved intercultural communication. The trainer creates authentic situations that can be used to practice this.

Certain topics crop up again and again in the training situations, such as punctuality. This has a high priority in certain countries and cultures, in others it is not so important. In countries like Germany or Switzerland, it is not only the employer who requires punctuality. And what teamwork means and how it works also differs between cultures.

What experiences do the employees bring with them?

Source: 123rf

Every employee has different requirements when it comes to intercultural interactions. How competent someone is in this regard depends, for example, on their international experience. Anyone who has lived and worked abroad for a long time has an advantage. How the trainer carries out the exercises therefore strongly depends on the composition of the group.

It is also important from which cultures the participants come. Is it a homogeneous or a heterogeneous group and which cultures are represented? The trainer flexibly adapts his approach to suit each team and their needs. The training methods and content to be used always depend on group composition. For this reason, every company can benefit from the training offers regardless of the requirements of the participating teams.

Training is very important today

Source: 123rf

Few companies today can do without sensitizing their employees to cultural peculiarities. The reason for this is that different cultures meet more and more often. Crossing cultural boundaries happen very quickly, for example in virtual collaboration.

Employees from different cultures no longer have to come together in an office to meet each other. Video conferences, chats, and messages sent over the Internet bring people from different backgrounds together. This can happen, for example, in companies that have locations in different countries and on different continents.

Interculturality and the skills required for it play an important role in many contexts. This can be on the Internet, when an employee travels to a foreign customer, in a shop on the sales floor, or in an open-plan office with many employees. For each of these challenges, specialized training is available to prepare for them.

In addition to simple employees, middle managers and top management are also part of the trainer’s target group. Each of these groups has completely different coaching requirements. In any case, the employee must be ready to reflect on their behavior, adapt it, and accept the trainer’s suggestions. It’s worth it because the intercultural skills to be acquired are of inestimable value for everyday work and your own professional advancement.

Intercultural training in the USA and intercultural training in Germany are equally in demand

Source: 123rf

If you look around, you will quickly see that intercultural skills are in demand everywhere. Intercultural training in the USA is just as popular as intercultural training in Germany. In many cities, companies and their employees find suitable offers such as intercultural training in Berlin. Companies conduct their business worldwide, migration offices integrate refugees into society and people travel to many countries privately. The training makes sense in all of these cases and whenever we come into contact with other cultural standards. Intercultural training in Berlin is no different from training in Leipzig, Munich or Würzburg. The participants usually come together in smaller groups and learn together. Intercultural training with exercises tailored to different target groups ensures that everyone develops their skills in the best possible way. For example, how do I conduct contract negotiations with people who come from a different culture and which rules of conduct are decisive here? The training shows what is important in practice. Those who take part in such a training course quickly reduce their insecurities about foreign cultures. The participant develops an understanding of unfamiliar behavior.

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Feedback-Culture with US-Teams

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Learning by doing isn’t everything

Employees in modern teams learn a lot through daily practice and dealing with people from foreign cultures. However, there are also pitfalls here. The contacts are often only brief, for example via social media, and do not convey a comprehensive picture of the other culture. That encourages misjudgments. The cultural training, however, is more systematic and conveys more knowledge.

Anyone who encounters a certain culture for the first time automatically assumes their own system of rules and based on this their evaluation of the strange behavior. This often leads to misunderstandings. These misjudgments are obvious because we do not know the different cultural background. So we don’t understand what actually motivates our counterpart to act. Intercultural training measures with exercises that aim to impart knowledge in a suitable manner provide information about this cultural background. The participants learn to look at behavior, for example at work, from the perspective of the other and no longer from their own. That alone is often enough to prevent problems with the interactions in the social context in the first place.

Questioning your own perception

Intercultural trainings make an important contribution by changing our habits. We should question our perception and try to imagine how other employees and customers as well as business partners from other cultures perceive us. This is associated with a lot of work, because well-established behaviors do not change so quickly. This makes regular training all the more important.

A wrong perception is a frequent cause of intercultural misunderstandings. An experienced trainer shows where our mistakes are and how we can remedy them. Such changes in perception do not come about by themselves, learning by doing does not automatically lead to the desired goal. If you want to do it better and orient your communication in a culturally sensitive way, you can join a group for the training. Today it is one of the most important further training measures for all employees who come into contact with foreign cultures in their working life.

Various methods play a role in training

A typical feature of intercultural training is the variety of methods that the participants encounter. These include role-playing games, for example, which are often particularly effective. The employees take on different roles and reproduce typical work situations such as contract negotiations.

But group work, case studies, and discussions as well as various communication exercises are also used. This makes it possible to hold the meetings very varied. It is also possible that the participants receive a handout for reworking.

Conclusion

Modern organizations have a diverse workforce, deal with customers and business partners all over the world, and encounter other cultures in many places. Intercultural training with exercises is the right way to prepare your own employees so that they can move confidently in all situations in everyday work.

The offers in this area are diverse and can be held flexibly at practically any desired location. With this, companies and organizations invest directly in the skills of their employees, the positive effects are immediately visible.

eBook for download

Feedback-Culture with US-Teams

Download this free ebook and find out interesting news about intercultural communication/training.  

More information on intercultural training

Intercultural training definition

Source: Wikipedia

Intercultural training is a further training opportunity in the area of “intercultural competence”. There are different approaches to such training. A distinction is made mainly between the teaching of practical knowledge and cultural knowledge. The most popular training courses are so-called “know-how” culture training courses. A guideline for intercultural understanding is conveyed using various models. This usually happens in direct form via a lecture or webinar. More and more online courses are enjoying additional popularity. In contrast, training courses for imparting pure cultural knowledge are usually only carried out in schools.

Methods of intercultural training

Source: Wikipedia

The various methods of intercultural training are based on the audience and their goals. A distinction can be made as follows:

• Teaching/learning context
• Learning objective
• Target group
• Content

Teaching context-oriented intercultural training

The highest priority is given to the personal touch of the training. The personality of the trainer enables an individual learning experience, as there is enough time for the dialogue and the specific questions of the individual participants.

Learning objective of an intercultural training

It is often possible for companies or their managers to narrow down the learning objective more precisely. The goal of intercultural training is to improve teamwork across cultures. It starts with soft skills or social skills and ends with a deeper understanding of the cultural background.

Target group

Intercultural training is particularly suitable for different target groups. For students, young professionals but also for experienced colleagues, refreshing the cultural background is a good change from everyday work.

Content

The content can also be used as a decision criterion for the methods of intercultural training. As a result, a distinction can be made here between practical knowledge and cultures:

• Cultural knowledge The more a person is informed about the history behind a culture, the easier it is to establish a relationship, a conversation with a person from another culture. The type of knowledge transfer can begin here with historical key dates and extend from historical developments to effects in the present. Cultural knowledge leads to correct practical knowledge!
• Practical knowledge Here the contents are a little more concrete. Here one speaks about the different behavior patterns and typical customs of the target culture. In these workshops, one works with practical models for a better understanding of the other culture. One case here is the intercultural training on German and American communication styles:

Source: The “sphere of influence model” used for training purposes, shown as “Peach and Coconut” (copyright J. Reeves)

Intercultural training is a further training opportunity in the area of “intercultural competence”. There are different approaches to such training. A distinction is made mainly between the teaching of practical knowledge and cultural knowledge. The most popular training courses are so-called “know-how” culture training courses. A guideline for intercultural understanding is conveyed using various models. This usually happens in direct form via a lecture or webinar. More and more online courses are enjoying additional popularity. In contrast, training courses for imparting pure cultural knowledge are usually only carried out in schools.

Interkulturelles Management Training

Source: Springer Gabler

Intercultural training is particularly suitable for management teams or executives. Although intercultural training is only one step towards intercultural management, the overview of the subject areas quickly shows that there are some interfaces to cross-cultural communication in intercultural management. The discussion between corporate culture and cultural origin is also an exciting task which is discussed under the heading of “Corporate Social Responsibility”.