Most managers make a mistake when it comes to cross-cultural training: they focus only on explaining what the cultural differences are. Understanding these differences is important, but you can’t stop there. Once people learn how behaviors and norms differ across cultures, the real challenge becomes learning to adapt and adjust their own behavior to work with others. So help your employees take the next step in their cross-cultural training. Assess what skills they need to develop to better work across cultures, and then integrate training into their actual work. Cross-cultural training doesn’t happen with a manual, website, or off-site. You have to give employees opportunities to practice and hone their skills in the actual contexts where they’ll need to use them. Bring people from different backgrounds together for long-term projects, encourage mentorships, and initiate group discussions for people to voice what they’re learning and what they’re struggling with.
Adapted from “
The Mistake Most Managers Make with Cross-Cultural Training” by Andy Molinsky.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment