OUR SET OF INTERCULTURAL TOOLS AND ASSESSMENTS

Our tools and assessments assist participants in training and coaching in their ongoing intercultural learning and development efforts.

Cultural Competence Ladder (CCL)

Our Cultural Competence Development Ladder visualises the different levels in the intercultural development journey and helps identifying where our clients, our participants, and/or our coachees are at present.

We distinguish the level of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, intercultural skills, intercultural strategies and intercultural competencies.

Structuring for High Performance

To structure our intercultural learning and development training programs we apply the MBI Model: Mapping, Bridging and Integrating for High Performance.

Mapping practices to understand the culture differences, Bridging skills to communicate across the differences, and Integrating strategies and competence to close the cultural gaps.

Framework for Developing Cultural Intelligence© (CQ)

Our unique Framework for Developing CQ, incorporates key facets of CQ, a set of intercultural competencies, and the MBI model  (Map, Bridge and Integrate Model) to structure the learning journey and achieves better intercultural learning and development results.

We analyse the intensity, the frequency and the required cultural competence level for effective intercultural interactions. This analysis guides us in developing our client specific programs for their staff, the teams, the buisiness unit and/or the organisation.

Information Sourcing Suite©

We developed our Information Sourcing Suite©, which contains a Training Needs Analysis (TNA),  a Training Feedback Analysis (TFA) and a Training Progress Analysis (TPA) to source information from our participants .

Our range of online questionnaires help us to identify the specific training needs, track the feedback of the learning solution, and monitor the impact of learning & development outcomes.

Intercultural Readiness Check©

Intercultural effectiveness is crucial in today’s globalized business world. As a professional or manager, you want to support your clients and staff to develop the cultural competence they need to succeed. We recommend the Intercultural Readiness Check© (IRC), a validated self-assessment, to measure people’s present intercultural competence level.

Areas of analysis include:

• How actively are you interested in other people and their cultural backgrounds?
• How effectively do you adjust your communication style to meet needs of culturally diverse people?
• How much do you invest into developing relationships and building culturally diverse networks?
• How effectively do you use cultural diversity as a source of learning and innovation?

The Intercultural Readiness Check is validated by experts and used by more than 60,000 people worldwide. You can read more about the competences that are covered by the IRC, and about the validity of this assessment tool in Intercultural Readiness Assessment_Flyer 2023.

The tool allows us to create personal profiles for professional development via coaching or training, and we use team profiles for team development via team coaching and team training.

Cultural Value Models©

We use a variety of Cultural Value models to explore Cultural Value Dimensions across cultures: Hofstede’s Dimensional Value Model, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE), Trompenaars Seven Dimension of Culture model, Hall Cultural Dimesnions, Lewis Cross-cultural Communications Model to name a few.

Cultural Work Practices Model

Mapping Cultural Practices and Behaviour assists us in recognising and understanding common business challenges when working in culturally diverse workplaces,  multicultural teams, or in the global marketplace.

We use The Culture Map© by Meyer (2014) as a foundation: the mapping tool builds on available classic cultural value research and positions country differences with regard to work practices and behaviour (benchmarking over 70 countries).

It helps us to analyse possible clashes at different cultural levels: national culture, organisational culture, team culture, and the individual preferences. This knowledge allows us to re-align practices, to reconcile dilemmas and thus improve effective intercultural dealings between people from different cultures.

Our Personal Self-assessments©

Our range of self-assessments address a variety of concepts such as:
– cultural values orientation
– work practices preferences
– communication styles
– communication action types
– country comparison: e.g. Australia vs USA work behaviour

The focus of these self-assessments is to enhance cultural self-awareness and the opportunity to reflect on culturally diverse behaviour of people we work with e.g., managers, colleagues, partners, clients, community, etc. It provides the opportunity to practice multiple perspective taking and to compare how people prefer to work, communicate and prioritising actions.

Our online self-assessments are readily accessible in online training, face-to-face workshops or self-paced learning. They are all accompanied by (confidential) personal profiles.

Cultural Activities & Assessment Kit©

Our Cultural Activities & Assessment Kit© contains self-assessments, exercises, and activities to measure, explore and enhance cultural awareness, understanding and competence.

The Kit incorporates self-assessments which have been designed by us (our personal self-assessments) , and those that we are licensed to and/or accredited to use (Intercultural Readiness Check©).

Country Specific Briefings (Indepth know-how and on-line tools)

Country Specific Briefings provide support to professionals,  management, and expatriates by helping them to increase their knowledge about a country via in-depth country information. We offer additional resources such as e.g. country comparison tools and knowledge reference tools.

We facilitate our country specific briefings face-to-face or virtual, and for groups of people, or one-on-one session (in case of expatriates we offer to invite spouse as well).

Blog Culture@Work
Our blog contains our cultural columns© with our cultural cartoons® (by Peter Meldrum), dealing with cultural challenges and issues that we have come across in our intercultural learning & development practice.

We also keep you posted about our ‘Virtual Open Course Calendar’, ‘Industry Briefings’, and ‘In The News’ – insights based on articles sourced from academic libraries and professional media.