Virtual Training – Effective Intercultural Interactions between German Corporation and Australian Partners 

(2023 – 2025) Manufacturing and Infrastructure Industry

Challenge

The Client has a contract with the Australian government and operates through a local subsidary and in partnerships with a number of local Australian organsiations. Originally we were contracted to train the predominantly German executive team to work within a multicultural environment in Australia.

The request is to assist in developing a better understanding of the culturally different management styles and practices and to recognise behaviour that could have a negative impact on workplace motivation and inclusion. A number of cultural challenging experiences between German management and Australian multicultural staff have occurred and the Executive team wants to address the challenges from a management perspective.

After the initial Executive training workshop, we were contracted to train a diverse range of Subject Matter Experts (SME) teams within the subsidary using the same training format and materials, however targeting each training to the specific challenges each team experienced.

• (1) Executive training workshop focus on developing intercultural competence for managing professionals from culturally diverse backgrounds

• (8) SME Team training workshops focus on developing intercultural competence for working within a German managed organisation with culturally diverse management and staff.

Interventions for both target groups:

1. Participants complete Training Needs Analysis to identify challenges, experiences, and expectations of participants for each training.
2. Vitual training workshops (small groups to ensure interactions with facilitator and between participants. Both the Executive teams and SME Teams over 3 sessions of 2.5-hour workshops
3. Participants self-assess preferred way of working (Work practices profiler and Communication type profiler).
4. Completion of the Intercultural Readiness Check to measure current level of intercultural readiness; action planning to enahnce competence
5. Participants complete Training Feedback Analysis and reports are shared with the organisation and the contact persons.

Results and Learning outcomes:

Increased Cultural Awareness to recognise and understand the differences

• Building on cultural understanding through multiple perspective taking – dealing with cultural bias, stereotyping, and ethnocentrism
• Positioning the visible and invisible parts of culture
• Critical thinking exercises to recognise the impact of cultural behaviour at work
• Mapping culturally diverse practices into leading, deciding, communicating, trusting, disagreeing, and evaluating (training self-assessment) and practicing bridging skills to close the gaps
• Mapping current level of intercultural readiness for effective intercultural interactions (validated self-assessment) and exploring actions to develop intercultural competencies to be able to integrate cultural gaps.

After the Executive training workshop, the client decided to offer the training to all SME teams. The project ran over 2023 and 2024 and we facilitated 9 training workshops in total.

Feedback of participants

The feedback via online completed training feedback forms showed 100% positive result to the question
Your overall rating of the training workshop (“very good” 36.4%  and “excellent” 63.6%)

Some of the written comments: