You work in an international organization, are part of a global team or would like to integrate a foreign employee in your team in Germany? Maybe you have already experienced first misunderstandings in the collaboration with business partners and colleagues from different cultural backgrounds?
How you will benefit from this intercultural training in your international co-operation:
In my trainings, you will learn and work out how to meet the challenges of intercultural co-operation and communication on a practical level. It is also a matter of understanding how cultural context factors affect decision-making processes, communication, feedback rules and conflict resolutions. You will receive directly applicable tools and tips that enable you to face difficult situations in a more sensitive and confident way in future, whilst developing your own ‘global’ communication style.
Key aspects are:
- What is culture, and how does it shape our perception and our behaviour?
- Intercultural communication: avoiding misunderstandings and frustrations
- Decision-making processes, relationship building and feedback rules from different angles
- Dealing with different expectations and with conflicts
- What constitutes successful intercultural co-operation?
Practical examples and interactive exercises
In the intercultural training, you will learn through practical examples and engaging exercises how to sharpen your perception of culture-specific behaviour and react in a culturally competent way. In the workshop you will have many opportunities to test the techniques presented and to experience them directly.
My own intercultural experiences
In the 1990s, I worked as a sales manager for a German company and visited customers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Today I realize how much I would have benefited from an intercultural training for building up solid and successful customer relationships.
Looking back, I recognize the naivety of flying to Madrid in the morning to visit a key customer, assuming that I would have negotiated an order by the evening or at least have come close.
Instead, there was an extensive lunch with the entire management that dragged on almost until my departure time in the evening. I went back – from my point of view – empty-handed.
Over time I realized how important it was for this customer to first build up a personal relationship with me and establish a basis of trust before engaging in a business relationship.
Had I had more intercultural knowledge, I would have adopted a completely different strategy: at the beginning I would have invested in building up a trusting relationship in order to benefit from this personal trust in the subsequent business deals. Co-operation und profit on both sides could have been achieved instead of frustrations and tensions.
Listen to an interview with me about my intercultural experiences while working in international sales:
Participant testimonial
I particularly enjoyed the practical information, the interactive exercises, the whole dynamic of the group. Ms Brandes did an excellent job, it was very enriching.
