Cross Cultural Communication in The Workplace

Cross-cultural communication is essential to conducting a smoothly running and profitable business. In today’s workplace we come from different countries and regions with different cultural backgrounds and biases. For example, different cultures value and organize time differently. Does getting the job done come first or does establishing personal relationships and trust come first? What are considered good manners? How do we expressed agreement or disagreement? How do we indicate, verbally or non-verbally, that we’re paying attention? What is our preferred method of problem solving?

The more employees can understand and appreciate each other, the more conflict-free, smoothly and efficiently your business can function and grow. Please see below for headline topics addressed in this interactive and illuminating course. This course is geared to both workers and supervisors. There will be many exercises and activities for the students during “real time” in the classroom.

Topics to be covered;

• Defining Terms: Culture, American, Foreign
• Cross Cultural Misunderstandings and Strategies to Avoid or Solve Them
• Language Points
• Mono lingual Americans, slowing down, volume considerations, rephrasing and summarizing,
o making assumptions, checking for meaning, humor and sarcasm, slang, work related idioms, being supportive, asking for clarification.
• Manners, Titles, Terms of Address
• Conversation Tips-Acceptable/Unacceptable Topics
• Physicality, Body Language Across Cultures, Public Behaviors
• Individualistic Low Context Cultures compared to Communal High Context Cultures
• Understanding Americans and American Cultural Values
• International Cultural Differences: Relationship to Time
o interpersonal relations
o activity coordination
o task handling
o breaks, work and personal time
• American Business Practices and Protocols
• Meetings and Negotiations*
• Do’s and Don’ts of Cross Cultural Communication
• Dietary Considerations
• Stereotypes