Training

Globalization and the deeper layers of culture

Since 2003 Luz azul training, consulting and coaching has specialized in conducting tailor-made training courses in effective intercultural communication.

Performing well in one’s own familiar context or culture doesn’t automatically equal working effectively in an international context or in a multicultural team. Even though we live in an increasingly globalized world in which we seem to look and sound and think more and more alike, in our workplace we are faced with deep layers of cultural differences.

Navigating these differences requires well-developed intercultural competences: intercultural sensitivity, intercultural communication, building commitment and managing uncertainty. The good news is that intercultural effectiveness can be learned.

Effective intercultural communication

Luz azul’s courses and blended learning programs include all aspects of intercultural craftsmanship: awareness of one’s own cultural lenses; knowledge about the dimensions on which cultures differ; the role of assumptions and stereotypes in intercultural interaction, and the development of intercultural competences. Enhancing one’s personal intercultural effectiveness is the red thread in every trajectory.

Tailor-made programs

All of Luz azul’s courses are tailored to the specific needs of your organization or profession and adjusted to the prior knowledge and individual aims of the trainees. In some cases a half-day or one-day intervention suffices. Sometimes more is needed: a course of several days spread out over a couple of weeks.

Longer courses can involve work with bicultural training actors and the use of the online assessment tool the Intercultural Readiness Check© or the Feedback Profiler®. Participation in online learning communities, webinars, a SPOC, individual coaching, master classes and train-the-trainer courses are part of Luz azul’s repertoire.

 

What Luz azul’s clients say

“It definitely opened my eyes to the many layers of every person with whom we deal. Understanding this, I feel I am being better prepared to deal with future situations where I am faced with a culture I don’t know – or even to understand why certain people act in certain ways”. (international lawyer)