• Culture is always relative.
• Layers of culture.
• Learning strategies to maximize competence in other cultures.
• Three levels of cross-cultural competence.

Improving Your Cross-Cultural Effectiveness

• Key skills for cross-cultural competence.
• The role of stereotypes.
• Circular vs. helical learning.
• Developing parallel channels.
• Knowing when and how far to adapt.

Communicating Across Cultures

• Language issues.
• Reading between the lines: Understanding meta-communication.
• High and Low context cultures.

The Cultures of Organizations

• Sources of organizational culture and values.
• Four archetypes of organizational culture.
• Understanding the culture of your organization.
• Organizational culture and the individual project manager.

How Organizational Culture Colors Day-to-Day Interactions

• Organizational culture as a source of alignment and guidance to those in the organization.
• Beliefs, norms and values: How organizational culture parallels national culture.
• Developing effective relationships across organizational and cultural boundaries.
• How differences in organizational culture can exaggerate or minimize national cultural differences.

Individual Differences in the Cross-Cultural Context

• Why different jobs attract different types of people.
• Escaping from the "us vs. them" mentality.
• Building effective cross-functional teams and working relationships.
• Doing business with individuals, not cultures.

Managing International Project Teams and Task Forces

• Common causes of friction and under performance.
• Potential strengths and weaknesses.
• Application: Case Study.
• Preparing the team to function effectively.