Page Updated on September 16, 2023
Our Intercultural Communication training course materials are designed to introduce participants to the fundamentals of cross-cultural communication and help them improve their own intercultural communication skills.
These intercultural communication training course materials are for corporate and freelance trainers to run workshops (either in person or remotely) on intercultural skills.
This off-the-shelf corporate training package provides content for a short (between 2 and 3 hours) but effective session and it is:
- Fully customizable and editable
- US English & British English compatible
- Downloadable immediately
- Can also be adapted to use for online teaching and training in virtual classrooms.
- and you will own the rights to edit and reuse it for as many of ‘your own courses’ as you wish.
Page Contents
Benefits of Intercultural Communication Training?
At a time of globalization and increasing cross-cultural contacts, intercultural competence is a very useful skill to have for people in businesses and organizations. Why?
The answer is that, because of the Internet and the ease of traveling these days, the world has become a lot more interconnected than it was in the past.
It is a very common occurrence for employees, managers, and entrepreneurs to come into contact with a diverse and international workforce.
Indeed, in business, you may come across people from a variety of cultures, some of which may be very different from your own.
These people you communicate with will not only be customers, clients, and business partners but also colleagues and managers you directly work with.
So, the importance of understanding cross-cultural communication cannot be underestimated as it can affect all areas of a business from HR to marketing, production, operations, customer service, purchasing, accounting and finance, business development, legal aspects, and information technology.
Samples from the training course materials
Click on the slides below to magnify
Why You Should Offer Cross-Cultural Communication Workshops for Employees as a Trainer?
If you are a corporate or a freelance trainer, you will want to be able to deliver the most relevant and up-to-date training courses in a business environment that is constantly changing.
Intercultural competence in the workplace is becoming an increasingly popular and in-demand training workshop and expect the demand to increase!
Also, teaching how to develop intercultural competence connects to more than one area, and you can market it as part of equality and diversity training or as part of interpersonal and communication skills.
Teaching intercultural communication is a good option to have in your portfolio as a corporate trainer.
Who Are the Training Course Materials Intended for?
These corporate training course materials on cross-cultural communication are for anybody who needs to interact with people from cultures different from their own.
For example, business people who attend meetings with international delegates or staff who work in an international environment.
The materials provide an introduction to intercultural communication, including some theories and some practical exercises that teach participants how to develop their intercultural competence.
Who Could Benefit from Attending an Intercultural Competence Training Course?
People who could benefit from attending a workshop on intercultural communication include:
- High-level managers who deal with clients and business partners from different countries.
- Line managers with direct reports from a variety of cultural backgrounds.
- Team members who work in multicultural teams to work better together.
- People who deal with customer service, if they deal with an international clientele.
- Salespeople who sell their products internationally.
- Marketing departments
- HR departments to have a better idea of how to communicate with staff from different cultures and backgrounds.
- Teachers and lecturers who deal with international students.
- Anyone who needs to communicate with people from various cultural backgrounds.
Course Duration
- 2-hour course
- In this training materials package, there is enough to teach a short course, to last about 2 hours.
- *You could easily adapt it to a 1-hour short course or combine with some of our other packages to run a half, 1, or 2-day set of workshops.
As a corporate or freelance trainer, you can run this session on the same day as other communication or equality and diversity sessions about topics such as active listening skills, unconscious bias, and dealing with difficult people.
Level
- These course materials are designed to teach learners who have little or no knowledge of intercultural communication theories and/or strategies.
- This training package for trainers is good for introducing intercultural communication to your participants, although it provides enough details to give them a solid foundation in cross-cultural communication skills.
Outline and Objectives
The aim of these intercultural communication training course materials is to introduce participants to the basic concepts of cultural difference and intercultural communication and help them improve their own intercultural communication skills.
By the end of the course, participants should be able to:
✔ Define intercultural communication and identify the benefits of intercultural communication skills.
✔ Identify what can hinder intercultural communication.
✔ Identify some cultural values and ways of communicating in different cultures.
✔ Plan and implement strategies to improve their intercultural communication skills.
Delivery Method for Our Corporate Training Materials
These corporate off-the-shelf training course materials are designed to be teacher-led and run by a trainer in a classroom environment. However, the format is such that participants are continuously involved through group discussions and activities.
The training package contains PowerPoint slides to provide a visual reference and engage visual learners.
The package also contains suggestions for exercises and handouts, including an icebreaker, a cross-cultural communication quiz, and an intercultural communication checklist.
In addition, it is possible to adapt these materials for teaching through digital online teaching platforms. The PowerPoint slides can be used for teaching online and, as part of the training materials, we provide some guidance with suggestions on how you can adapt the activities for an online session.
Topics That Will Be Covered Include:
- Discussing what culture is and some definitions
- Elements and characteristics of culture
- The cultural iceberg
- The meaning of intercultural competence
- Benefits of improving cross-cultural communication in the workplace
- The obstacles to intercultural communication such as culture shock, culture clash, stereotypes, and prejudices
- Non-verbal behaviors
- Verbal behaviors
- Cultural value dimensions, based on the theories of Geert Hofstede, Edward T. Hall and Charles Hampden-Turner, and Fons Trompenaars
- How to improve intercultural competence both at an individual and organizational level (suggesting, strategies, actions, and attitudes)
- Intercultural communication checklist
What Cross-Cultural Training Can Help To Solve
When people from different cultural backgrounds come into contact with each other, effective communication can be hard to achieve. It is not possible to make assumptions when dealing with different cultures as every culture has different values, rules, norms, and ways of communicating, both verbally and non-verbally.
So, without proper intercultural communication awareness, it is easy to make mistakes and create misunderstandings that can be costly. Hence, developing intercultural competence is of crucial importance to overcome barriers to intercultural communication.
In addition, it is important to remember that culture does not only refer to where you come from geographically but also to your affiliation with other groups. Different groups such as social classes, age groups, genders, and more can have their own, well-defined cultural identity and different ways of behaving and communicating.
As a result, even if your business only deals with people from one country, you will still deal with people from different socio-cultural backgrounds and you might still face cross-cultural communication barriers.
Because of increasing cultural diversity in the workplace and in business relationships, training your staff on the principles of intercultural communication is more important than ever.
Benefits of intercultural competence in business include:
- Increase in productivity (as people avoid miscommunicating and also get on better together)
- More awareness of equality and diversity
- Better staff retention as staff from all cultural backgrounds feel valued
- Improved ability to avoid conflict and handle it when and if it takes place
- Better teamwork and cooperation between teams
- Ability to market your products and services effectively to different customers
- Better and more targeted customer service
- Being able to develop products/services that cater to different needs
- Ability to communicate with a large variety of business partners and to screen them
- Ability to negotiate with a wider range of people
- Being able to structure international business ventures more efficiently
Our intercultural communication training course materials are specifically designed to help your staff improve their intercultural communication skills, which can also be referred to as intercultural competence or cultural intelligence (CQ). This is the ability to communicate successfully with people from different cultural backgrounds.
With Our Cross-cultural Communication Training Course Materials, Instantly Download:
✔ 28 PowerPoint slide deck (includes tutor notes on each slide)
✔ 33-page Trainer’s handbook
✔ Participants’ workbook (which includes a list of suggested readings for future reference)
✔ Course documents (including sign-in sheet, course evaluation sheet, and course outline)
✔ Course certificate (printable to hand to participants)
✔ Six handouts for class exercises (including a cross-cultural communication quiz and an intercultural communication checklist)
✔ Pre-course preparation guide
✔ A PDF guide with suggestions on how to adapt the activities for teaching the course online, if you ever need to.
Documents are delivered using MS Word, PDF (in case you do not have MS Word), and PowerPoint (PPT).
The MS Word and PowerPoint files are fully editable, so you can adapt the material to your specific needs.
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American & British English Compatible
Suitable for both American English & British English styles.
- We have avoided any words that can cause confusion between American and British English styles such as soccer/football.
- We have used terms that are common in both and we have used the American style for a few words where a ‘z’ rather than ‘s’ is used i.e. materialize.
Happy Customers Include
Price
GBP £89 (approx. USD$109) for the full trainer’s package, ready to download instantly!
Buy This Course
- To purchase click the “Buy Now” button below.
- You can choose to pay via PayPal or by Credit card.
- Once you have paid, you will immediately receive a digital link to download the zip file straight away.
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