MANAGING ACROSS CULTURES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
In an increasingly globalized world where boundaries no longer hold, leading across cultures can still be quite challenging for even the most seasoned leader. Due to the increasingly international and intercultural nature of businesses, leadership today, therefore, requires the ability to direct and inspire across cultural boundaries.
Executive roles are evolving in response to the needs of companies operating in or dealing on the international stage.
Globalization has brought with it complexities and international systems requiring executives to adopt to modern solutions for the very modern challenges.
The next generation executive must demonstrate business acumen with an outline of awareness to lead entrance into foreign markets, oversee selection, mentorship and guidance of the staff working with foreign partners, negotiate with clients and provide intuitions into potential areas of success or failures originating from intercultural differences.
Intercultural skills are more than ever critical to business performance in different ways. Executives need to communicate effectively with colleagues; build and nurture efficient transnational teams and display strategic and global thinking.
This Intercultural Agility summit focuses on assisting you to address these diversity dynamics in multicultural workplaces as well as cross-cultural interactions, and to demonstrate how to use both methods and approaches to foster a rich working environment and embrace diversity as an advantage as a 21st century Executive.
WHY EXECUTIVES NEED INTERCULTURAL AGILITY?
The world has transitioned and the majority of companies can no longer escape buying, selling or working with people from diverse cultures. Today’s global workforce makes it more important than ever for executives to understand and steer institutions that understand subtle cultural nuances.
The influence of cross-cultural differences on the success of negotiations, overseas assignments and mergers and acquisitions is becoming increasingly evident in international business. Ignoring the risks of cross-cultural differences is coming at a clear cost for many organizations, a cost that needs to be eliminated.
Success is no longer a question of the size of an organization, it is now more than ever about having the right people with the right skills. This is especially true in the case of leaders of businesses that transact beyond their borders. Managing international projects or multicultural teams requires the ability to manage and understand cultural differences between employees and team members, as well as the diverse business cultures that exist across the world.
- Be more culturally aware of the ways in which your culture has influenced your identity and worldview
- Acquire a culture-general framework of knowledge that helps you to understand other world views and see the world from other’s perspectives
- Become more flexible, adaptable and empathetic in your behavior through being able to see from other’s perspectives and respond to them appropriately
- Adapt your communication style and behavior in a wide range of intercultural and virtual team contexts