5 good reasons why – if you are truly into sustainable organisational and hr development – you should build on “General Cultural Awareness” for your staff and leaders:
- You save time and money!
- You lower risks!
- You tap hidden potential!
- You foster empowerment and develop personalities!
- You trigger a cultural change that matches your organisations goals!
In a globalised business world professionals deal with people of various backgrounds on a daily basis. Simply ignoring this – assuming with clear-cut tasks and English as a common language things would run by themselves – is outdated and extremely risky.
So what to do? Sending your leaders, engineers, sales staff etc. to country trainings where they learn about the dos and don’ts? Well, that’s what you would have done in the 1980s. Not only is it a waste of time and money because if your, say, sales rep focuses on India this year and China the next, she/he would have to do it all over again. What weighs even heavier is the fact that country specific workshops have a tendency of stereotyping which doesn’t match the complexity of the modern business world. Real people won’t live up to these stereotypes and learners deserve better than being treated like pavlovian dogs!
So whats the alternative? Here is what you do: implement General Cultural Awareness workshops on a broad and regular basis, make your people work on their cross-cultural sensitivity, mindset and skillset. Even if you have a specific target culture (e.g. the US) ahead of you, you can go 95% the way by better getting to know yourself, by reflecting on your assumptions and behavioral preferences, by working on your perception and by learning how to change perspective.
Consequently this leads to an organizational culture that is grown-up and agile because people have learnt to avoid and tackle conflicts in a productive way. They have learnt to see things (hence tap hidden potential!) they wouldn’t have seen when stuck in their dear comfort zone (own culture). They have learnt to act instead of reacting and to assume responsibility. They have learnt to look out for commonalities instead of differences and to pull at one string.
Is that what you would like to see? Be in touch - we’ll tell you more!
Das Beratungs- und Trainingsangebot rund um Interkulturelle Kompetenz wird zielgenau auf Ihre Situation ausgerichtet. Nehmen Sie Kontakt zu Cultural Consultant auf für eine unverbindliche Analyse und ein maßgeschneidertes Angebot.