What kind of cross-cultural skills training really works?
You can only handle cross-cultural differences properly if you understand that you yourself are far from being a neutral observer, but are starting with many ingrained prejudices and preconceptions of your own. The fact that you start with these ingrained prejudices and preconceptions is nothing to be ashamed of. We are all bound to be influenced by the culture from which we’ve originated, and you are no exception. Incidentally, it’s risky to imagine, as some businesspeople do, that avoiding cross-cultural problems is just a matter of applying commonsense. Unfortunately, too many senior executives do indeed believe that they, their colleagues and subordinates will find it easy to navigate the choppy cross-cultural seas by intuition only. How do you ensure that you and colleagues have access to practical expertise in dealing with cross-cultural differences? At Canning, we believe there are four key stages necessary if you are to develop this expertise. Firstly, you do indeed need to kno
