Cross Cultural and Inter-Cultural Competencies
Many of your clients, coworkers and colleagues come from backgrounds and cultures very different from your own. Notwithstanding your best intentions, culture-based differences in communications present challenges that, if not handled correctly, shut the door to new relationships and can corrode otherwise excellent existing relationships resulting in litigation, lost opportunities, employee dissension and turnover.
Do you know what you don't know?
Those who suffer from cross-cultural incompetence recognize only its symptoms. Because they tend to remain unaware of the extent of their own ignorance, these costly symptoms are usually misattributed to some other cause, resulting in further disruption to their organization.
Jonathan Kroner's expertise helping clients develop intercultural and cross-cultural competencies is based on his ability to help them change deep seated lifelong habits and perceptual filters.
Jonathan recognizes that participants are mostly "unlearning" long-established deeply habituated behaviors and eliminating perceptual filters that have been deeply ingrained, some for as long as since as early childhood. Jonathan views these as a form of "cultural trance" and, accordingly, sees his workshops as a form of awakening from non-conscious behaviors and perceptual filters. See the Workshops Overview.
I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
Abigail Adams
Keynotes & Presentations
- Why You Must Discriminate: Effective Cross-Cultural Communications
- What You Should Know about Authenticity and Integrity in Cross-Cultural Communications
- Enhancing Collegiality with your Colleagues in an Intercultural Environment
- Getting along with "Those People" You're one too!
- Why American Men think French Women are Sexy ...
- Cross Cultural Conundrums
- Do You Make These Intercultural Negotiation Mistakes?
- Who Learns about Intercultural Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, and Why?
Workshop
Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Communication covers such topics as: language and verbal communication across cultures (things you can and cannot say or that may be misinterpreted); nonverbal communication across cultures; expression and perception of emotions; identity and intergroup communication.
Participants will demonstrate skills and knowledge and will be able to recognize cross cultural communication challenges (and opportunities) in fields such as rapport building, negotiation, conflict resolution.
Workshop Sample Outcomes
Workshops are tailored to client needs. Sample outcomes may include, but are not limited to, one or more of the following:
Physical Distance (proxemics): For at least two contexts within at least two cultures, participants may discuss, demonstrate and practice what it means to be too distant and too close. Participants report surprising insight into their own own and others' perceptions of warmth, comfort and discomfort relating to physical distance.
Have you ever found yourself at a social event backed up to a wall, or, following someone until they are up against a wall? Accelerated learning techniques may be used to desensitize or otherwise deal with undesirable (to the participant) distance/closeness responses.
Touch: To touch or not to touch: who, why, where, when and how? For different contexts within at least two cultures, participants will discuss, demonstrate and practice their ability to recognize issues pertaining to touch both as “toucher” and as the “touched” person.
Enhanced learning techniques may be used to deal with responses to touch and/or lack of touch which are undesirable to the participant, and to changing behaviors concerning the participants’ cross-culturally inappropriate touching and/or failure to touch.
Eye contact: At one time or another, most of us have all found ourselves uncomfortable that someone stared too deeply, or that they kept looking away when you wanted them to look at you?
Frequency, intensity and duration of eye contact vary by context and culture. Participants will discuss, demonstrate and practice their ability to recognize their own reactions to variations from their own culturally conditioned standards for eye contact.
Enhanced learning techniques may be used to deal with responses to excessive, inadequate or inappropriate eye contact that are undesirable to the participant.
Tonality: For at least two contexts within at least two cultures participants will discuss, demonstrate and practice their ability to recognize cultural differences in vocal tonality with respect to one or more of the following: indicators of interest, excitement, approval and/or agreement, and disinterest, boredom, disapproval or disagreement.
Enhanced learning techniques may be used to deal with responses to tonalities that are undesirable to the participant.
Authenticity and Personal Integrity: For various contexts within at least two cultures participants will explore perceptions and misperceptions of authenticity, credibility and integrity through discussion and demonstration. Typical issues may include euphemism, social talk, puffing vs. lying as well as identifying levels of generalization and specification (for example, expressions concerning time “see you at six o'clock").
Influence and Decisions: For at least two contexts within at least two cultures participants will learn to better elicit, recognize and use words and behaviors related to influence and decision making. This topic is more fully developed in other workshops.
Time – Task: For various contexts within at least two cultures participants will explore task (sequential) versus process (synchronic) approaches to relationships and communications.
Time – Orientation: For various contexts within at least two cultures participants will explore cultural biases in past and present versus future orientations.
Status (Achievement versus Ascription): For various contexts within at least two cultures participants will explore status recognition and uses of status and how those cultures balance achievement versus ascription (age, education, experience, family background). Additionally, for various contexts participants will explore cultural variations in ascribed status within at least two cultures. For example, where does age trump education? What is the significance of who speaks first, or who gets last word?
Task/Relationship: For various contexts within at least two cultures participants will explore cultural differences in task orientation versus relationship/context orientation.
Acknowledgment (Similar to A vs. A and T/R above): How much identity level acknowledgment is required by different cultures. This requires awareness of differences in cultural concepts distinguishing behavior and identity. How much does something you do impact who you are? More significantly, how much does something you do make a statement to another about who you believe they are. Issues of respect (Mediterranean and Mideast), and "face" (Asia).
Affective (emotional/expressive) vs. Non-affective (non emotional): For at least two cultures and various contexts participants will explore the expression of emotion, and failure to express. They will pose questions such as when is showing emotions mandated and when it is not acceptable. Typical issues may include negotiation, greetings and departures, gender differences, and inoculation for alien affective environments.
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