Culture Shock Consulting - Offering cross cultural training, cross cultural seminars, cross cultural profiling, cross cultural business briefings and a range of cross cultural publications

The CultureSmart!Consulting training approach

CultureSmart!Consulting seminars aim to:

* give you a deep sense of the culture or cultures you are involved with but with facts and information set in the context of your precise job function and social environment

* provide you with practical tools to enable you to gain the information you need from the most relevant source - the people and situations you encounter, which, in turn, will also create a co-operative pattern of relationships rather than one of resistance

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We achieve this in three stages:

1. Realization

Recognition of how a positive and open cultural attitude towards other cultures can lead to a co-operative relationship rather than one of animosity. When a problem or uncertainty arises, our natural tendency is to fall back on our own cultural ways of resolving the situation. To the culture you are dealing with your 'natural' strategy might be perceived to be unprofessional or even cause offence, leading to a spiral of negativity which could, in time, ruin the business relationship. CultureShock!Consulting achieves this realization by:

· Recognizing the culturally sensitive areas where problems can occur

· Recognizing your own cultural preferences and behaviours

· Recognizing the synergies and differences between your own cultural outlook and that of those with whom you are dealing

2 Strategies – the toolkit

When you have recognized how problems occur, what strategies and tactics can you use to achieve a productive and co-operative relationship? We provide you with a toolkit, which helps you:

· Build the culturally sensitive interpersonal skills you need

· Identify areas of synergy and how to build on them

· Identify areas of difficulty and anticipate or repair problems

· Create strategies for developing your inter-cultural skills to improve teamwork

3. Application

We help you apply this toolkit to both your work and social environment by giving you the opportunity to:

· Discuss the application of the lessons you have learned to your own business and social life

· Work on specially developed scenarios, which allow you to apply what you have learned to situations directly related to the company and your job

· Create a platform for future learning by helping you develop your own action plan to expand your cross-cultural competencies

Outcomes

·	Confidence in dealing with different cultures
·	Acquisition of a framework for understanding cultural experience
·	Improvement in communication skills in dealing with colleagues and contacts in other cultural environments.
·	Improvement in interpersonal skills in managing staff and colleagues' expectations across cultures.