Presented By: Mercedes D’Angelo                           

Date: June 8, 2012

Time: 9am-1pm EST

Location: 121 River St. Hoboken, New Jersey

Session Description: The North Asian economies of China, Japan and Korea represent more than 20% of global GDP. Their focus on exports as a major engine of their economies, recycling dollar holdings into increasing foreign investment, and the very rapid growth of China mean that this region will have a significantly larger impact on global business. Yet, these countries’ economic and cultural foundations and models differ greatly from the West, and these changes must be understood and incorporated in order to achieve business objectives with these countries. Understanding the impact of historical experience, cultural values, and communication norms will all provide not only a different perspective, but also strategies to working effectively in these markets.

 This program is designed to

 … improve business skills by understanding fundamental cultural factors that shape current      business customs and practices in North Asia: China, Japan and Korea.

 … identify and explain how cultural differences between the USA and these countries can affect             business and business relationships and develop new insights and methods for working effectively.

 … illustrate differences in communication patterns between Asia and theUSA and provide effective communication methods.

 … develop culturally appropriate strategies and goals for working relationships and business projects in China, Japan and Korea.

2 CRP Credits available!                        

Who would benefit from attending?                                        

International human resource managers, multicultural team leaders, or managers who are working with global suppliers, expatriates, and/or partners.

Session Outcomes:

1. Gain insight on key communication differences that enhance effective communication.
2. Identify and explain how cultural differences can affect business relationships.
3. Improve business skills by understanding fundamental cultural values that  shape global business protocol and etiquette.

Date: August 8, 2012                                             
Time: 9am-11am CST                                                                                                            

Receive a discount when registering for more than one session. Contact training@culturalawareness.com to receive a discount coupon!!

Time: 9am-10am                                            

Location: Ashton Gardens, 2100 Ashton Gardens Lane, Corinth, TX 76210

Developing Global Competencies: HR Driving Global Success     

Presented By: Mercedes D’Angelo

In the global market place success is driven by the ability to navigate cultural differences successfully. This session will look at critical cultural factors that drive success, and HR’s role as advocates for developing these global competencies. This interactive session will touch upon the impact culture has on key functions such as sales, supply chain management and IT, and how HR is the custodian for ensuring that critical cross-cultural skills are developed across the organization.

Click the link below to read the article.

Entering the Global Martetplace? Priscila Montana Can Help.

Africa – Reprinted from Mobility magazine

So, I ask you: How can one communicate more effectively with non-native English speakers?  Here are a few strategies that may help:

1. Be sensitive and respectful to individuals who have invested the time to learn English. Learning a new language is a large undertaking. They have sacrificed many years to learn English. To help you with this, try learning and using several phrases of another language. It’s quite humbling.
2. Be aware of the factors that can enhance miscommunication. For example: Is the miscommunication a language misunderstanding? Is it based on differences in gender, age, national culture, or corporate culture? Is the miscommunication linked to technology malfunctions? Is it caused by more implicit variables, such as non-verbal components, context of message, or relationships based on hierarchy? By understanding the nature of the quandary, you can find more efficient solutions.
3. Pause. Native English speakers will often ask a question and not allow enough time for the listener to process the words, think about an answer, find the appropriate wording (based on their relationship to the speaker), and then execute a grammatically correct sentence. If it is information you are seeking, then pausing can work wonders!
4. When conducting meetings and conference calls, provide an outline or overview ahead of time. Give clear and simple statements of what is to be expected and define the length of discussion points.
5. Avoid slang, professional jargon, and acronyms at all costs. A statement like this can be confusing to non-native English speakers: Please send the RFP by COB on hump day. Are we all on board?Rephrasing can be advantageous: Please send the Request for Proposal by 5 pm on Wednesday. Is that agreeable?
6. Communicate with story. Often times bullet points and lists of information lack the ability to show the elusive. Example vignettes from your experiences or someone else’s (including personal stories, folktales, and historical tales) can provide clarity, and at the same time, keep respect and honor for all members by not pointing out the flaws in others.
7. Have listeners rephrase what they think they heard you say. This is much better than asking, Do you all understand? and eventually receiving unsatisfactory outcomes.
8. Speak clearly and enunciate properly. Pausing before and after significant words can help improve communication, too.

If the points above seem superfluous or unessential, then spend some time trying to make sense of the following:

Hvis du har noen spørsmål om dette emnet eller andre relaterte emner, ta kontakt med Cultural Awareness International. (Tip: You might want to use a Norwegian dictionary.)

In conclusion, the energy and time it takes to understand just one sentence may bring about feelings of frustration and confusion. However, by obtaining this point of view you will unearth the empathy needed to communicate effectively with all of your colleagues and clients worldwide.

Other helpful tips that will also enhance communication:

• Trust begins with openness and authenticity. Presenting an image of yourself with flaws and weaknesses can often times be beneficial to you.
• View the world from someone else’s eyes by shifting your paradigm. This can give you an advantageous viewpoint on a particular situation or problem.
• Don’t see the world by what is right or wrong. See what is beneficial or ineffectual. Go from there.
• See the good that every individual or situation brings to your world. It is often in this place that we find satisfaction with ourselves, with others, and the communication between.

Written by Gene Edgerton. Edited by Rebecca Garza and Kayla Kluempke

Some may criticize the modern revolution of a cultural item, stating that it is disrespectful to the items traditional essence, and hence, loses its historical and cultural significance.

But then again, US Americans are not the only ones guilty of this. All cultures adapt items to fit into their cultural  schema.  In comparison to the Americans take on green tea, Koreans put corn on pizza, Japanese eat shrimp burgers with buns made from rice, and Indians make some of their hamburgers out of mutton. A new trend in Asia is for girls to wear the Punjab tops with Euro-American jeans instead of with the Punjab bottoms. “New fashion,” they call it. And many countries now have their versions of American Idol. The list is long.

So, where do we draw the line? From the dawning of civilization, a vast amount of societies have shared, stolen, and incorporated new ideas from all over the world into their constantly changing culture. At the same time, groups of people love to do things their own way with the premise that, ours is a culture of our own ideas, grand ideas, correct ideas. No one else can do it better.

Maybe as the world continues to become more global, the beauty is in the discovery that everyone has something appetizing to bring to the smorgasbord of life.

Just dont expect everyone to eat it in the same way.

–Gene Edgerton and Emily Mahoney. Edited by Veronica Leal

Living and traveling in a country offer two completely different experiences. No doubt that’s why the French, who live in one of the most popular vacation destinations in the world, are more likely to thoroughly explore their own country before setting foot into another. This doesn’t mean that the French don’t appreciate other cultures. On the contrary, they love to learn about any culture, its food, climate, people, politics. But beautiful and romantic France has a lot to offer, and according to many who live there, why leave its borders when on holiday? For the most part, living in France is an extension of vacationing there: you have the pleasure of looking at the historical buildings, navigating the gray cobblestone streets, eating in nice restaurants, smelling fresh baked bread. The main difference lies within the workplace.

Photo by John Schindler

The French businessman is educated and typically the chief breadwinner. This sometimes calls for long hours and requires great dedication. However, balance between life and work is important to the French with a strong priority placed on the home and family. For example, French families take advantage of long weekends for a vacation get-away. Families share a meal together every evening. Husbands and wives often shop for groceries together on Saturdays.

L’art de vivre -the art of living- means to take part in the beauty of what life has to offer. It is precisely this extraordinary appreciation for the art of living that most of us find enviable about the French.

Gourmet foods, fine wines, splendid regions, breathtaking sights, beautiful people. France is an expert at fine living, and it can be a marvelous experience for anyone willing to understand and adapt to the culture. For instance, learning the language opens up opportunities to be a part of the people. Becoming a regular customer at the local boulangerie (bakery) or wine store makes you part of that community.

Of course, everything is not always bright. The weather can be gloomy and damp during the winter. The people often keep to themselves, although usually acknowledge you with a hello or good-bye. The notion of customer service sometimes seems nonexistent. Strikes are common and seem to paralyze the country. The latter calls for long lines at the grocery stores. In a panic, the French always stock up on kilos- and that means many, many kilos-of butter, flour, and sugar. They can’t bear the thought of living without these staples for the duration of a strike.

Like anywhere else, France has its good aspects, balanced by less desirable ones. To tell someone that life there is perfect would be untruthful. For anyone in search of beauty, elegance, and l’art de vivre, France is hard to beat.

–Lorraine Gachelin

FRANCE: Suggested Reading

On Rue Tatin: A Culinary Account of Life in Small Town Europe

More than a few books have been written about the fine wines, the cuisine, travel,and history of France. Indeed, people from all over the world have chosen to live in France, and books recounting their experiences are not hard to come by.

A wonderful new book by Susan Hermann Loomis, On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town, focuses on the authors personal reminiscences as a newcomer to France some 20 years ago and her life since as a resident. Loomis’s positive attitude and willingness to make the most of what France has to offer makes her an inspirational example of how to best undertake a move to a new country.

Rue Tatin is unusual in its format in that every chapter ends with recipes that serve to accentuate the authors experiences with people she met along the way. Moreover, Loomis admits that she thinks about food all the time. With eating virtually a national sport in France, Rue Tatin provides you a rare opportunity to explore a very real part of the French culture.

Loomis succeeds in offering the reader far more than a culinary memoir. Her extraordinary talent at being a good neighbor in her adopted country gives us insight into the heartfelt generosity of the French people. After eight years in Louviers, Loomis and her family have woven themselves neatly into the way of life in a French provincial town. She makes you want to do the same!

–Lorraine Gachelin

“Bravo”, “ciao”, “arrivederci” you don’t have to be in Italy to understand what someone is saying to you. These are all words most of us not only understand but possibly even use in conversation. But how about vedemu ciu tardi (see you later) or bela tusa (pretty girl)? If you don’t understand, you’re not alone. In fact, most Italians would have no idea what these phrases mean since they are in Genovese, Piemontese and Milanese dialects.

A dialect, according to Webster’s, is a regional variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, esp. a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists. Throughout the years, dozens of dialects have developed on the Italian peninsula because of the historical and political forces that contributed to the country’s long-term fragmentation. Today, you still hear dialects spoken throughout Italy especially in certain regions such as Sicily, Sardenia and in the Aosta Valley. Modern Italian, however, predominates throughout the country.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, fifteen centuries passed before Italy became politically unified. Latin was the lingua franca during the years of Roman occupation. Local forms of spoken Latin (also know as Vulgar Latin) arose and from this oral tradition were born the regional dialects of the Italian peninsula. Since what we know today as Italy was ruled for so long by various potentates and princes, no specific national language was established and local dialects flourished.

The dialects, like any language, were influenced by the historic and geographic characteristics of their particular regions. For instance, in Genovese the word for “umbrella” is “paraegua” which is similar to the French word “parapluie.”  This is not surprising because Genova was indeed part of a kingdom that included parts of South-Eastern France.

Today, dialects are no longer the preferred or most common means of communication in Italy. The modern Italian language has come to dominate and three notable events have contributed to this evolution. The first was the publication of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”. The second was the political unification of Italy. The third was the explosion of media in the latter half of the 20th Century.

When Dante set out to write the “Divine Comedy,” he decided that he would use his native Florentine tongue as opposed to Latin, which was the language of the educated. Dante’s choice was revolutionary; he wanted his text to be accessible to a mass audience and he preferred the actual texture of Florentine to that of Latin. By and large, the language in his masterpiece is the blueprint of modern Italian.

The second important event in the development of the Italian language did not occur for several hundred years. This would confirm the belief that one cannot rush a good thing. For centuries, Italy was divided into several distinct states ruled by diverse political entities. In the 1800s, Italy underwent its political and geographic unification under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Count Camillo Benso di Cavour; during this period, the notion of an Italian national identity took root and along with it, the desire to establish a single national language.

The third pivotal factor that lead to the capitulation of dialects in favor of the diffusion of a national language was the rapid advancement of various forms of media beginning in the 1950s with national television networks. This trend continues today with the spread of the internet and the publication of a large number of regional daily newspapers in Italian. The use of dialect has become relegated to the pre-baby-boom generations. Before the media explosion, Italians were being taught Italian at school, but they still heard, used and often spoke their local dialects at home. However, young Italians were increasingly exposed to only the Italian of the media and, as the older members of their families died, the younger generations had nobody with whom to speak their dialects.

Further, as the media diffused the use of  “proper” Italian, speaking your local dialect became less socially acceptable, and young people shied away from speaking in a way that was considered less educated and less mainstream. This attitude is, however, slowly changing in some areas as young people begin to appreciate the cultural heritage and linguistic richness of their regional dialects.

Keep this in mind during your next visit to Italy when somebody in Naples might refer to you as guaglione, meaning young man, or scignu (sir) in Genova. You might not know how to answer, but you will be able to appreciate the fact that you have experienced a momentof authentic Italian culture.

–Paola Buckley

ITALY: Suggested Reading

“Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World” by Peter d’Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish

The art of effortless mastery, or Sprezzatura, is a term used by authors Peter D’Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish to describe some of the many ways Italians have contributed to modern society. Their book consists of 50 self-contained chapters, each filled with surprising information and anecdotes pertaining to different ways Italians have influenced western civilization. The first chapter explains the introduction of the Roman calendar. Subsequent chapters describe the creation of the earliest medical school, the birth of opera, and the development of a new era in childhood education. You will enjoy reading about notable Italians such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Leonardo da Vinci, Catherine de Medici, Roberto Rossellini, and Ferrari. The final chapter is dedicated to Italy’s well known fashion industry.

Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World is a wonderful insight into the Italian culture. It could be valuable reading for anyone moving to Italy or studying its history.

–Lorraine Gachelin

Norway is a small country of 4.5 million people in northern Europe. This stunning country has a lot to offer: Vikings, Leif Eirikson who first discovered America, the Nobel Peace Prize, Henrik Ibsen, and Edvard Munch among others. Nevertheless, what makes Norway so extraordinary is its beautiful and unique nature, which has shaped Norwegian life throughout the centuries.

Norway is one of the few countries in the world with four very distinct seasons. Exciting activities such as skiing, rafting, walking in the mountains, climbing, and fishing, are possible all year round. Western Norway has magnificent mountains, fjords and waterfalls. It is the place to go for complete freedom and relaxation. You may even go skiing in shorts or a bikini during the summer months. If you travel south, you will find the “Norwegian Riviera.”  The cities along this coast are called idyllic pearls as the houses are white with flowering gardens and sand beaches.

Another aspect of Norwegian nature is the midnight sun and the Nordic light in the northern region of the country. Throughout the summer the sun never sets, creating an extraordinary sight. During the winter, darkness prevails 24 hours a day, highlighted by the Nordic light shining across the heavens.

Although nature plays an important role in Norway’s identity, the country’s history is of great value to its people. Oslo, the capital of the nation, houses the most important museums of the country, such as the Viking museum, the Kon-Tiki museum, and the Munch museum. Visiting a “stave” church, built in the Middle Ages, offers a unique experience. These wooden churches are typically small and simple, however have beautifully carved interiors. Of the 750 churches originally built, only 30 remain.

Central Norway boasts the Nidaros Cathedra, also built in the Middle Ages. Hundreds of years ago, this beautiful cathedral was a pilgrimage site. Norway’s kings and queens have been crowned here for centuries.

Very proud of their modern-day society, Norwegian people are interested and proactive in their government and political issues. Norway is one of the first countries in the world to allow women to vote and elect a female prime minister. While a contemporary society, the culture has very strong and old traditions due to its long history. Children grow up listening to old folk tales that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Norwegians are understandingly proud of their beautiful country and heritage. With sound ethical values and respect for their environment, it is a wonderful place to experience life.

–Anita Larsen

NORWAY: Suggested Reading

“Living in Norway” by Elisabeth Holte is as much a pleasure for the eyes as for the mind. Flipping through the pages of this beautiful coffee table book will make you dream of the chance to experience life in Norway. The photographs are stunning and highlight the many contrasts of style and nature this country has to offer. Holte and photographer Salvi dos Santos chose to use Norway’s powerful nature theme by organizing this book according to the different seasons. Through their texts and photographs, they take you through the diverse landscapes and invite you into some of the country’s beautiful homes. The interior decor seen on the pages of the book reflects the character and history of the people of Norway.

“Living in Norway” is only available in hardback and is an investment in price. It is, however, of great value for anyone moving to this fascinating country. The visitor’s guide at the end of the book explains where to find the homes highlighted throughout the book and gives a list of restaurants, hotels, and other visitor information.

–Lorraine Gachelin