Rethink Your Employees Cross-Cultural Training

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.