Is"Cross Culture Training"Necessary in Cities Like Shanghai?- 大数跨境

Is"Cross Culture Training"Necessary in Cities Like Shanghai?

CONCHIUS

2016-09-30

导读：Interactive Cross Cultural Communication in China

Is “Cross Cultural Training” necessary in cities like Shanghai?

It is now over eight years and hundreds of Cross Cultural Business workshops since we started running CONCHIUS cross cultural program with corporate clients in China. Unsurprisingly things have changed a lot! Cities like Shanghai are increasingly cosmopolitan; excellent English is spoken everywhere and there seems to be a Starbucks on every street corner. We often hear comments that cross cultural awareness training is not needed nowadays.

This is why we now call our program “Working Effectively in International Teams” – because when we dig below the surface, being culturally fluent in business is more critical now than ever – and goes hand in hand with essential skills such as managing time effectively and delivering results.

It is not easy – and often we do or understand things slightly differently which over time can cause serious trust and collaboration issues. Luigi the Italian COO of a technology company in Suzhou, can’t motivate his factory employees. Mr Zhang, a Chinese technical specialist working with colleagues in the United States, struggles to give “American style” feedback. Seungwoo, the CEO of a Korean software firm with a new Shanghai office, has trouble retaining Chinese staff. All three of these executives should be successful in their respective cross-cultural contexts. They all have a “global mind-set”: they are seasoned managers and experts who appreciate diversity and have international work experience.

As part of CONCHIUS ongoing research we interview foreign and local managers in multinationals operating in China to find out what their biggest challenges are when working together. The results have been largely consistent over the years and give Chinese and Western managers useful insights into what it takes to avoid the most common misunderstandings. The research also highlights why it is so difficult to overcome these issues without proper training.

Cultural values and beliefs go very deep. They are formed early in life and we seldom stop to think about them, until the day we start working in an international work environment. All of a sudden we get information in a way we are not used to. People behave slightly differently but results delivered are very different. We may be challenged or questioned in situations where we before simply needed to listen and take notes. Adapting to a new work culture can be very challenging! Professor Andy Molinsky refers to this ability to adapt in his book “Global Dexterity” and other articles as “cultural code switching” – and notes that “to work well with foreign colleagues, you may have to risk feeling inauthentic and incompetent”.

Asians and Westerners all have the same basic values. How we prioritize these, however, can be very different and has a huge impact on our behaviors. How we seek and share information, report back, give instructions and build networks are all affected by these deep-rooted beliefs and values. No matter if we are a Chinese or Westerner, working in an international company we need to interpret and adapt to the people in the environment we are working in.

We believe that a workshop that delivers real change in cross cultural business communication needs certain elements:

1.The content should be engaging and structured in such a way that it stimulates participants to think deeply about and verbalize their own cultures.

2.It should provide a discussion framework and assessments to enable participants to explore at the personal, team, company and geographic levels.

3.The facilitator should have significant international corporate experience at senior levels so that he/she can adjust the content to the participants. Ideally the facilitator should be fluent in the main languages spoken by participants.

- Peter J. Karlsson and Tony Vaughan

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CONCHIUS mission is to be the best partner in creating world-class performance for international companies in Asia.

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CONCHIUS CONCHIUS mission is to be the best partner in creating world-class performance for international companies in Asia.

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