Do you have functions based in China such as production or R&D? Do you have Chinese colleagues, customers and suppliers? Or do you regularly deal with Chinese partners and stakeholders?

Chinese cultural training ensures that you get maximum benefit from your China-related activities.

The training is based on your specific issues and gives you practical solutions to the challenges you face – whether you’ve been active in China for several decades, or you’re brand new to the Chinese market.

What are the benefits of Chinese cultural training?

Your organization will:

• Achieve greater efficiency and productivity in China-related projects
  If you face challenges when collaborating with Chinese colleagues or partners, then you’ll learn how to tackle them, and you’ll discover how to benefit from the cultural differences – increasing the efficiency and productivity of your China-related projects.
   
• Increase your cultural intelligence – and achieve greater job satisfaction
  Get an insight into Chinese culture that extends far beyond the stereotypes. And become aware of your own culture and how you react when you encounter other cultures. This results in fewer frustrations and greater job satisfaction in China-related work. Read more about our approach to culture here.
   
• Utilize Best Practice and build a common frame of reference
  Share your experiences of collaborating with Chinese colleagues and partners. Establish and benefit from Best Practice. And acquire a common frame of reference so that you can handle China-related activities more effectively across the organization.
   
• Achieve visible and long-lasting results
  You’ll learn before, during and after the training, and work on your own real-life challenges and cases all the way through the programme. These are some of the reasons why Chinese cultural training creates visible and long-lasting results. Read more about how we ensure the training achieves its objectives.

As a participant you will:

• Increase your cultural self-awareness – learn about your own culture first!
  Become aware of your own cultural baggage and everything you take for granted. This is essential to finding the key differences between the Chinese culture and your own culture, and learning how to deal with them constructively.
   
• Strengthen communication and collaboration with Chinese colleagues and partners
  Recognize how to read between the lines and understand ‘unspoken’ language. Find out how to check that your message has been understood. Learn how to ensure the quality of Chinese suppliers. And master the art of building strong relationships and trust with Chinese colleagues and partners, so that you can create better results together.
   
• Recognize the typical pitfalls when doing business in China – and learn how to avoid them
  Learn to recognize the typical pitfalls when working in China e.g. when holding meetings, concluding agreements, distributing tasks or negotiating with customers, distributors and authorities. And learn how to avoid them, saving you time and money.
   
• Experience Aha! moments: “Now I get it!”
  Do you have difficulty getting Chinese colleagues to share knowledge? Or do you wonder why your Chinese supplier never meets deadlines? The training gives you key insights to understanding your Chinese business partners, so their actions make complete sense.
   
• Acquire practical tips and tricks
  You’ll get a lot of practical tips and tricks that will contribute to greater success e.g. how to write an effective email to your Chinese colleague, and how to prepare for your first business dinner with a Chinese partner.
   
• Discuss your specific projects and challenges
  Get advice on your China-related projects and challenges from trainers who have extensive hands-on experience of Chinese culture. Meet our trainers here.
   
• Acquire tools that will make you more effective in all types of global work
  The training will equip you with practical tools that are not only useful in your collaboration with the Chinese, but in all tasks where you work cross-culturally. They are simple and easy to use. Whether you’re online or offline, whether you have to prepare for one meeting or long-term collaboration – they will always be close at hand. See one of them here.

We start by identifying your Chinese cultural training needs and then design a programme within the framework that you have set out.

We define the training’s target audience, duration, learning objectives, content, and time and place in close cooperation with you. The training (face-to-face or virtual) can be anything from a single half-day workshop to a longer programme of 2-3 full-day modules – depending on the results you want to achieve.

We also offer Chinese cultural training as open workshops at your company, so you can create cohesion in your China-related activities across departments, functions and levels.

The training is always customized – not just for your organization, but for each and every participant. Below are some examples of what we can work on.

Typically, we cover the following:

• Cultural awareness starts with self-awareness
• Practical cultural models, e.g. the '4R Model', the 'Cultural Investigator' and the '3C Model'
• Key differences between Chinese culture and your own culture – and how these differences can present opportunities for innovation
• Similarities and shared values – what do we have in common across our national cultural differences?
• Communication: Differences between high- and low-context cultures; agreements and negotiations; business meetings; virtual communication; body language
• Hierarchy and power structure in Chinese business: How is responsibility distributed? Who should you involve if you want to make things happen?
• ‘Guanxi’ – meaning ’network’ in Chinese: How and why do you build relationships with Chinese colleagues and business partners?
• Handling misunderstandings, disagreements and conflicts with Chinese stakeholders
• Your specific projects, cases and questions relating to your activities in China – and informative examples of what went wrong and what went right for others

We can also work on:

• Understanding what drives your Chinese colleagues: Chinese history and self-awareness; education and family; community and social security; from white collar to blue collar
• The Chinese society – opportunities and paradoxes: Interaction between politics, local government and companies; regional differences; generational differences
• The negotiating culture: Create good results when negotiating with e.g. Chinese customers, suppliers and distributors
• The best way of recruiting, retaining and managing your Chinese employees
• Training and educating Chinese colleagues
• Business etiquette e.g. dinner engagements, small talk topics, gifts and dress code
• Chinese lifestyle and consumer behavior

Want to know more?

• Contact us! – So we can have a chat about how we can address your Chinese cultural training needs.
• See examples of Chinese cultural training programmes: Open courses in Chinese culture at Danfoss; Chinese cultural awareness workshops at Fiberline; Ongoing training and advice on China at the municipality partnership, The City Circle.
• Do you want individual coaching on a China-related challenge? Then intercultural coaching and advice are what you need. Read about how we can help.
• Still not sure whether C3 should deliver your Chinese cultural training? Here are the top six reasons why you should choose us.

• Answers to the Top 4 Questions about How to Best Communicate with your Chinese Business Partners
• Chinese Workplace Culture – According to Your Chinese Colleagues