Combining Virtual preparation with Multi-Cultural Facilitation

We recently worked with a global corporate client to design and facilitate a 2 day global strategy workshop with 8 different multi-cultural regions, Russia, Ukraine, Europe, USA, South America, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Nearly all the pre-workshop contact, consultation, design and preparation was carried out remotely and virtually making good use of e-Mail, Word, PowerPoint and especially Skype! The workshop design went backwards and forwards several times and a ‘few’ Skype calls later we had our 2 days mapped out and the client was happy. Virtual working is definitely enabled and enhanced through the ability to see one another.

During the workshop, all geographic regions were represented; the challenges as we progressed through our agenda were not unexpected: language, communication styles (soft and hard, direct and subtle), misunderstanding meaning and perceived cultural hierarchy (in part influenced by the level of maturity of local markets) all had to be embraced.

To overcome these challenges some basic but critical techniques we employed were:

• collectively building meaningful workshop guidelines and actively using them;


• making sure we managed perceived and actual hierarchy in the room by making certain


• everyone was included, listened to and heard and NOT interrupted;


• giving opportunity for table discussion in native/first language;


• speaking clearly and slowly and asked others to do the same;


• asking others to help and support those who’s English was not as confident;


• summarising and paraphrasing more regularly


• 
  
  seeking to use lots of praise and thankyou’s!

It was a really rewarding engagement. We’ve definitely seen an increase in the need for cross-cultural work in the last 4-5 years and we’ve found these basic ‘top tips’ help the group make good progress.