How to create crossborder collaboration

Cross-cultural/ cross border communication

You have in mind to collaborate with another country that is further away than your cultural knowledge goes. Good, that means that your curiosity has made you to discover a new adventure. It’s my aim to connect the dots and make you aware of the country you are going to work with. I provide my training in few steps to give you a handout of what you have to know about the specific country and how you can practice your cultural awareness and develop your intercultural skills. 

1. General info

I share with you general information about the prospected country and give you some handy notes to not forget if you are in contact with the company in that specific country. Call it a country-scan, with key numbers and notes about the population, the industry you are going to work with and some important dates and habits. 

2. Cultural awareness

My academic background helps me to give you insights about the theoretical part of intercultural communication. I will therefor use universal theories and models to translate them into cultural specific subjects. F.e. business cultures and contexts, values, norms, rituals and symbols and communication models. What is ‘normal’, what is absolutely not done?

Then we are going to confront the prospected country with for example Italy. What are similarities what are differences? We therefor use a model to create a sharp eye on what we have in common and how we can use those tools to create new relationships abroad. 

3. Confronting your intercultural development

With roleplays and business cases we are going to learn how to cope with intercultural communication topics. You are more or less aware of what can happen, so how would you solve miscommunication or other cultural differences if they happen? It's the aim to create even more awareness of your cultural skills. This functions even to hand out tools to avoid a lack of cultural behaviour and to be sure that you know how to treat the people in the prospected country in a right way. Often you see that when things go wrong people become angry or upset. To avoid those feelings I will give a short intermezzo about leadership and responsibility checks. Emotion is beautiful but does not always have a function. 

Results at the end of the two days

The team is

- Aware of cultural and general information about the prospected country (country-scan)

- Aware of cultural differences and similarities between Italy and the prospected country

- Able to understand intercultural behaviour patterns

- Able to translate problems into solutions and to be a leader in any situation where miscommunication can happen

- Ready to develop their first steps in contacting companies and people in the prospected country

Interested or remarks? You can write me in private!