Intercultural communication teamwork and leadership/Communicating across difference/Learning challenge

Challenge summary

Summary:	In this Intercultural Communication Skills learning challenge, you are invited to self-assess your strengths and challenges in intercultural communication, and set goals to develop your abilities in negotiating cultural differences effectively.
	About 30-45 minutes

Purpose

This learning challenge will give you an opportunity to self-assess whether you have the knowledge and skills to apply communication strategies to address intercultural communication challenges.

Tasks

Use the following focus questions to help you complete this learning challenge:

• What do you see as 3-5 of your main strengths in intercultural communication? How do these strengths help you build communication bridges with diverse others?

• What are 3-5 intercultural communication differences you find challenging? How do these differences present barriers to communicating as effectively as you would like?

• Set 3-5 intercultural communication goals that are important to you and progress indicators for each goal. For example:

          I would like to...
          My learning strategies are...
          I will know I have made progress on this goal when…

Remember, as with all learning goals, it’s important to review your intercultural communication goals at regular intervals. Keeping an intercultural learning journal can help you stay on track and monitor your progress. In your journal, you might reflect on cultural similarities and differences in perceptions, values, and actions that you observe in daily interactions with people from other cultural groups. You could focus on ‘critical incidents’ – that is, situations involving cultural differences that required understanding how to respond appropriately by you and/or others. One way to structure your observations is to describe who was involved, what happened, your perception of the difference(s), how people responded, and the outcome.