Intercultural skills – more than just a catchphrase!

10 January 2012

With ever-increasing international business, the founding of foreign subsidiaries, fusions and cross-border joint ventures, the ability to work together with people from various cultures continues to grow in importance.

People from other cultures are characterised by different ways of thinking and behaving.  Interacting with cultural diversity can either be negative or a thoroughly positive experience, the goal being the avoidance of risks while putting the opportunities and synergy potential of such cooperation to good use to create a competitive advantage. In this context a new catchphrase – intercultural skills – is being circulated, touted as the answer to the challenges posed by the globalisation of the working world.

Overcoming cultural “hurdles” is becoming more and more important, as the human factor is increasingly in the forefront of business relations.  Here professional skills and methodologies are of less importance, the emphasis being more on acquiring the communication skills necessary for dealings with people from other cultures.  Mergers, acquisitions and the founding of new businesses in other countries often fail because “hard” factors such as the organisation and statistics are emphasised while “soft” communicative and intercultural factors are ignored.

Only employees with solid intercultural skills can recognise and successfully avoid cultural “pitfalls,” as those without such training either fail to recognise them or would never consider taking them seriously. This intercultural knowledge can be conveyed through preparatory intercultural training, the goal being the development of a “feel” for the other culture.  In this context, intensive and comprehensive intercultural training can produce a decisive competitive edge.

Careful with gestures:

In some countries, the “V for victory” sign can be an obscene gesture.

In some countries this means “everything’s OK”; in others it’s a sexual insult.