In an increasingly global and digital world, most of us need to communicate with people from other cultures in our work, even if it is only virtually. Within a global company, these opportunities are becoming even more frequent.
Recognizing and bridging cultural differences is an important skill. Cultivating it makes individuals and organizations more effective. Both expatriates going to work overseas and local staff interacting with those expatriates, parent-company staff, and customers of other cultures are often confronted with issues that have a cultural component. Today’s global organizations need to help employees develop the cross-cultural skills necessary to be effective in the global business environment, including working in multicultural teams, negotiating cross-culturally, and managing team members from different cultural backgrounds.
In Japan, we have been offering training on a wide variety of global cultures since the establishment of our Japan branch in 1999. Our Japan-based team includes specialists on numerous cultures who satisfy requests from our clients for in-depth sessions focusing on locations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, India, China, Asia and EMEA. Many of our clients’ teams are culturally diverse, or interface with customers or overseas operations in multiple countries. For those situations, we provide tools that foster a broader perspective, enabling comparison across a variety of cultures, and techniques for fine-tuning communication based on the characteristics of the group.
Outside of Japan, with our clients’ workplaces becoming increasingly multicultural, we have extended our focus beyond seminars on Japanese culture alone. We offer our popular Working Effectively Across Cultures course, in part through our sister brand Global Intercultural Consulting. And since 2019, our partnership with Charis Intercultural Training, a well-respected firm providing training globally since the 1980s, has enabled us to add a menu of proven course designs globally, covering many countries including but not limited to the cultures of China, Mexico, India, France, Germany, Israel, Thailand, and Italy.
