Are you planning to set up business in Russia? Or do you already have Russian colleagues, partners, customers, or suppliers?

Russian cultural training ensures that you get maximum benefit from your Russia-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 Russia for several decades, or you’re brand new to the Russian market.

What are the benefits of Russian cultural training?

Your organization will:

• Achieve greater efficiency and productivity in Russia-related projects
  If you face challenges when collaborating with Russian 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 Russia-related projects.
   
• Increase your cultural intelligence – and achieve greater job satisfaction
  Get an insight into Russian 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 Russia-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 Russian colleagues and partners. Establish and benefit from Best Practice. And acquire a common frame of reference so that you can handle Russia-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 Russian 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 Russian culture and your own culture, and learning how to deal with them constructively.
   
• Strengthen communication and collaboration with Russian colleagues and partners
  Learn how to communicate consciously and respectfully with your Russian colleagues and partners. And master the art of building strong relationships and trust, so that you can create better results together.
   
• Recognize the typical pitfalls when doing business in Russia – and learn how to avoid them
  Learn to recognize the typical pitfalls when working in Russia e.g. when making contracts and agreements, navigating the Russian bureaucracy 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!”
  Have you ever wondered why a new Russian business connection does not smile in return? Or why your Russian colleague focuses on details you find insignificant? The training gives you key insights to understanding your Russian business partners, so their actions make complete sense – allowing you to adjust your behavior accordingly.
   
• Acquire practical tips and tricks
  You’ll get a lot of practical tips and tricks that will contribute to greater success in your daily work e.g. how to write an effective email to your Russian business partner, and how to get input and feedback from Russian colleagues and employees.
   
• Discuss your specific projects and challenges
  Get advice on your Russia-related projects and challenges from trainers who have extensive hands-on experience of Russian 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 Russians, 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 Russian 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 Russian cultural training as open workshops at your company, so you can create cohesion in your Russia-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’ and the ‘Cultural Investigator’
• Key differences between Russian 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: Agreements and decision-making processes; business meetings; virtual communication; verbal communication versus written communication; the language barrier and using an interpreter
• Hierarchy and power structure in Russian business: How is responsibility distributed? How and by whom are decisions made? Who should you involve if you want to make things happen?
• Why strong relationships to Russian colleagues and business partners are important – and how to build them
• Handling misunderstandings, disagreements and conflicts in the collaboration
• Your specific cases and questions from your daily work – and informative examples of what went wrong and what went right for others

We can also work on:

• The Russian society: Politics, authorities and businesses; regional and social differences; generational differences; gender roles
• Understanding what drives your Russian colleagues: Russian history and national self-understanding; education and family; working conditions and social security
• The negotiating culture: Create good results when negotiating with e.g. customers and distributors
• Bureaucratic barriers – and how to handle corruption and other risks of the Russian market
• The best way of recruiting, retaining and managing your Russian employees
• Training Russian colleagues
• Typical stereotypes about Russians – and Russian stereotypes about foreigners
• Business etiquette e.g. dinner engagements and toasts, small talk topics, gifts, dress code, titles and greetings
• Russian lifestyle and consumer behavior

Want to know more?

• Contact us! – So we can have a chat about how we can address your Russian cultural training needs.
• Read about our cultural training project for Vestas spanning Russia, Spain, and Denmark.
• Do you want individual coaching on a Russia-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 Russian cultural training? Here are the top six reasons why you should choose us.
• See the answers here to 5 common questions on how to work with Russian colleagues and employees.