Intercultural Training Crucial

Creates Synergy     High ROI

Cost-Effective Training Tool Overlooked Investment

While the European Union called 2008 the “Year of Intercultural Dialogue,” that designation remains to be seen. This designation will occur when global businesses implement cross-cultural trainings by licensed practitioners as part of their business model. Yet this cost effective measure remains overlooked. And while many foreign corporations understand that using intercultural trainers are critical to “going global” successfully, producing maximum ROI, it’s a highly specialized field that requires an expert to teach it. It can’t be done by memorizing a list of cultural “do’s and don’ts” scraped off the internet.

Cultural awareness training is a highly specialized field. It involves a complex learning model, a licensed trainer, years of living and working abroad, an advanced degree, an understanding of international social and political issues, and the facility to understand at least two to three languages.

America’s Financial Crisis is the World’s Financial Crisis and it's clear our conduct has the butterfly affect. What happens to us, happens to the world. Therefore, we must cultivate a higher level of intercultural understanding about what makes the other guy tick to affect that influence positively; what is the cognitive process of people from other cultures. To avoid character assignations and demonization of the “Other”.

According to a recent industry study:

• In addition to looking beyond national borders, intercultural consultations offer many advantages to those going global who want to reducing costs or finding new revenue streams and increasing market coverage.

•  88% of corporate HR respondents agree cultural awareness training is beneficial because local business must know the conditions and the complexities of setting up operations, and cultural awareness is critical for personnel working in foreign countries

• Intercultural training at a personal level is about helping people understand how their own values, assumptions, perceptions and ways of working can be challenged when working in another culture

International work experience is a crucial criterion for leadership in a global organization. Respondents to the survey were primarily from U.S. headquartered companies doing business globally. They represented a cross-section of international businesses ranging from multinationals in Fortune's Top 10 to smaller companies. Key results of the survey included:

Global corporations recognize that their senior leaders need cultural skills:

• 21.5% are born in countries outside their company's headquarters country
• 28.5% have international experience
• 28.6% have worked and lived in another country
• In the next five years, organizations project nearly 30% of corporate leaders will be recruited globally

Cultural skills are essential to business success in the global marketplace:

• 75% indicated cultural implications of business decisions are sometimes or always considered when making business plans
• 57% indicated that culture plays a very important role in the success of the organization's business mission