Intercultural Competence - Sensibilization and Training

 

The format and schedule of training variables can be adapted to customer needs. We offer trainings from individual self-awareness, to sets of intensive days or week-ends / weeks en bloc.

 

Contact us for proposals and costs estimate

contact@mediatedomain.com    

 

Since 2005 we teach intercultural competences to teachers, parents and pupils of the German School of Lisbon, and in collaboration with ATEC to Volkswagen Autoeuropa, Bosch and other organizations. Furthermore we supervise scientifically the iMediar Project (see iMediar on Facebook)

 

Do we know our culture? Do Portuguese people immediately identify who is not Portuguese? If so, why? We know the world! Does that mean that we are multicultural? We live in a globalized world: will cultural differences intensify or disappear? How does our behaviour change in contact with other cultures? Will cultural differences diminish in the future? Will there be on the long run a one and only “standardized world culture"?

 

Quite a lot of questions ....

 

Surely values have only local validity. Cultural groups behave generally culturally homogeneous, and within a cultural group the values that define a culture are relatively constant, unconscious and acquired during childhood.

 

As a consequence, these values simply become "the criterion" to understand and judge the surrounding world.

 

Meetings with other cultural groups, however, lead to a variety of impressions, reactions and behaviours, and to intercultural (mis)understanding, especially when the differences are barely visible to the casual observer. However, the cultural diversity often leads always, even if the differences seem at first sight not to be significant, to a confusion of feelings and emotional reactions.

 

The exploitation - and clarification - of cultural differences fosters a proper intercultural communication, facilitating the experience in another country. Knowledge promotes intercultural acceptance of the "Other" and enables an adequate behaviour in critical situations. The acquisition of intercultural competence – especially for business environments - is essential to avoid conflicts and intra./inter-organizational and economic damage.

 

Our courses aim to contribute to this exploration and clarification of values and behaviours based on cultural aspects.

 

Contents

Intercultural Communication | Why is intercultural communication so important? | Criteria for definition(s) of 'culture' | People, groups, cultures and cultural dimensions (Hofstede + Trompenaars & Hamden-Turner) | Individualism/Collectivism | Masculinity/Femininity | Risk acceptance/Degrees of uncertainty | Respect for social distance | Universalism/Particularism | Monochronism/Polychronism | High Context/Low Context | Concepts of inter-, pluri- and multi-culturality | The "programming" of the individual's culture | Intercultural knowledge and skills to overcome difficult situations | How to promote better integration?


Focus countries to be chosen

(e. g. Portugal / Germany / Brasil / Russia / India / China / Japan / Asia (in General)