Course Outline: Cultural Intelligence for Malaysians

Duration: One Day

By the end of the training, participants will be able to:

• Increase positive attitudes towards people of other countries and cultures.
• Increase awareness of challenges that arise in communicating with people of other cultures.
• Understand how cooperation and collaboration can be developed across cultural boundaries.
• Formulate strategies for meetings, leadership, negotiations and communication with multicultural teams.
• Adjust and adapt to a multicultural environment.

Course Outline

Module 1: What is Culture?

In this module, participants will examine how incredibly important culture is to our lives, and how cultural intelligence (CQ) can be a powerful tool in the modern business environment.

• Understanding what culture is and how it affects us
• Cultural values and how they affect your work
• Overcoming culture shock
• The role of CQ

Module 2: How and why are cultures different?

In this section, participants will understand the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions and how they apply to the Malaysian business environment. We will also look at Malaysia as a high context culture and its implications for business.

• Status and power
• Group dynamics and individuality
• Orientation towards success
• Dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity
• Long and short-term orientation
• Other ways of looking at culture

Module 3: Developing Cultural Understanding in the Workplace

Builing on the knowledge gained from Module 2, we will look at how these cultural dimensions affect a range of business scenarios.

• How to get timely and reliable information
• How to motivate staff from different cultures
• How to improve communication between cultures
• How to conduct effective meetings with other cultures
• To understand the expectations and behaviour in a subordinate/manager relationship and how this is impacted by cultural dimensions
• Negotiating with different cultures
• How other cultures view your culture

Module 4: Communicating with Other Cultures

We will look at tools that we can use to perform a 'cultural audit' and this can help us to communicate in a polite, sensitive but effective way with other cultures.

• Doing a cultural audit
• Do’s and Don’ts when communicating with other cultures
• Social etiquette strategies
• Culturally sensitive phone manners
• Emailing with cultural understanding
• Case study: Malaysians overseas

Module 5: When Two Cultures Meet (Diversity and Adaptability)

What are some common issues that prevent good communication within multicultural teams? We will answer this question and examine ways to move beyond biases and stereotypes to achieve multicultural harmony in our teams.

• Common blocks to cross-cultural communication
• Overcoming counterproductive stereotypes
• Moving past bias
• Religious and political sensitivities
• Social etiquette strategies