As more and more activities take place globally, strong intercultural competencies have gone from being ‘nice-to-have’ to ‘must-have’.

It doesn’t just apply to the sales manager who travels 85 days a year. It includes the engineer responsible for quality processes in global subsidiaries, the IT supporter who helps employees worldwide, and all the other middle managers, project managers and employees across departments and functions who communicate and collaborate with global colleagues, business partners and stakeholders.

C3's customized training strengthens cultural understanding and develops a global mindset in your organization – so you can optimize and create better results in your global activities.

How cultural awareness and global mindset training strengthens your global activities

Your organization will acquire:

• Common tools, a common language and a common approach to culture
  Acquire common tools and a common language to deal with situations that involve cultural differences – across markets, levels and organizational silos. This common approach will strengthen communication and collaboration, so you can perform better in your global organization.
   
• The ability to focus on the potential in diversity
  Learn to see differences in e.g. national culture, ethnicity, age, gender and professional background as an advantage – and use them to gain new knowledge, new ideas and new perspectives.
   
• Applied best practice from your global working day
  Share experiences and knowledge from your global working day and establish best practices. What challenges have your colleagues encountered – and how did they resolve them?
   
• A launch pad for a global mindset throughout the organization
  The training creates more positive talk in the corridors about cultural differences and becomes a launch pad for developing a global mindset throughout the organization. A global mindset that ultimately strengthens your brand and customer loyalty.

As a participant in the training, you will develop:

• A sharper cultural understanding and self-awareness
  Get a clear understanding of what culture is and how it affects the way we do business. And become aware of the important aspects of your own culture – so you can put these differences into words when you work globally.
   
• A strong ability to communicate, collaborate and build relationships globally
  Learn how to communicate more consciously and achieve effective collaboration with global stakeholders. And develop tools so you can build positive relationships with global colleagues and partners based on trust – so you can produce better results together.
   
• An awareness of typical pitfalls – and how to avoid them
  Recognize the typical pitfalls when you work together across borders and cultures – e.g. when you negotiate, hold meetings, enter into agreements or train colleagues. And learn how to avoid the pitfalls – so you can save time and achieve greater success from your day-to-day tasks.
   
• Tools for handling confusion and conflicts
  Develop tools for dealing with cultural misunderstandings and conflicts and learn how to recognize when conflicts in the global field are not about culture at all, but are related to something entirely different.

You may need to strengthen your intercultural skills in a variety of situations.

You might have a group of country managers of different nationalities who need to increase their cultural intelligence. You might want to integrate intercultural training into your existing training programmes – e.g. for global trainees. Or you might want to run continuous half-day open workshops, so you can spread a global mindset throughout the organization.

C3 has experience in all of these areas. We specialize in designing flexible training programmes to match your needs. We start by establishing what you want to achieve from the training – and we can help you clarify this if you’re unsure.

The result will be a training programme that is tailored to your organization and to each participant, so it is 100% applicable to you. That’s the first reason why you should choose us when you want to increase your cultural awareness and develop a global mindset.

You should also choose our training if you:

• Need simple and practical tools – so you can navigate your way through a global setting. Take a look at one of them here.
   
• Want visible and long-lasting results. For example, this is achieved when you work on your own day-to-day tasks, challenges and cases during the training. Read more about how we ensure the training achieves its objective.
   
• Want something that goes beyond the cultural stereotypes – and agree that cultural awareness begins with self-awareness. Read about our approach to culture here.
   
• Expect trainers who are really passionate about creating change with you – and have extensive global experience. Meet our trainers here.

We can customize a training programme to an individual group or to a large number of leaders and employees in your organization. The duration, learning objectives, specific content, and time and place for the training will be determined in close cooperation with you.

We can organize training (face-to-face or virtual) from a single half-day workshop to a longer programme of 2-3 one-day modules. It all depends on your needs and what you want to achieve from the training.

Typically, we cover the following:

• Cultural awareness and cultural self-understanding
• Practical cultural models, e.g. the ‘4R Model’ and the ‘Cultural Investigator’
• Seek out the potential in cultural differences
• How can you develop relationships with global stakeholders – virtually and face-to-face?
• How can you ensure effective communication and good collaboration with global employees, colleagues and business partners?
• How can you deal with misunderstandings, disagreements and conflicts in a global working environment?
• The importance of language differences
• Specific cases and questions from your global working day

We can also work on:

• Typical styles of communication in selected cultures, e.g. differences between high- and low-context cultures
• Key differences between your own culture and the cultures you work in, e.g. hierarchy, relationship building, power distance and decision making
• How to communicate effectively in a cross-cultural project team or a global team

Want to know more?

• Contact us! So we can have a chat about how we can address your cultural awareness and global mindset training needs.
• The general cultural training can be combined with training in one or more selected countries or cultures. Read about our country-specific cultural training here.
• See examples of cultural awareness and global mindset training we've delivered to various clients.
• We are certified in a wide range of development tools and profiling tools, which can be integrated into your training programme – e.g. cultural intelligence assessments (CQ Assessments), Jungian Type Index (JTI) and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. Read about these options here.