At Ebony 2, The Hennessy Park Hotel, Ébène, Tuesday the 19th and Wednesday the 20th of May, the Founder and CEO of The Three Cs (Coaching, Culture and Collaborations) will be the international facilitator of a workshop titled ‘Succeeding across cultures and geographies - building cultural competence’, where delegates will be taught the ways of ‘The Culture Map’ by Erin Meyer, a framework for understanding and navigating cultural differences in business communication, leadership, and collaboration.

■ What is the purpose of this workshop about building cultural awareness ?

As we all work in a connected global working environment, understanding our own culture and the cultures of those we work with gives us an advantage of great value. It allows us to work together with local and global colleagues within our organisations more seamlessly, to build all important trust with greater awareness and to work more collaboratively. But these are not the only advantages. Building cultural awareness allows us to serve local and global clients / customers more effectively, to meet their needs more easily and to ensure that they feel well taken care of. Imagine knowing what would make an American client / customer feel seen and well-served and being able to adjust your style to ensure that your French client / customer feels equally well-served. This makes all the difference. And it applies equally to other key stakeholder groups – strategic partners, shareholders, your workforce…

■ How do you adapt the Culture Map framework to smaller, multicultural markets like Mauritius, where cultural overlaps are more fluid and less clearly defined?

The Culture Map research focuses on how people from different cultures are comfortable doing things at work. The research framework covers 8 dimensions–communicating, evaluating, leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing, scheduling, persuading – It also provides a funnel of information from broad groupings such as European, African and Asian to country specific maps to Individual personal profiles. In multicultural markets like Mauritius, the individual personal profiles help with clearer definitions.

■ Beyond awareness, what practical tools or behavioural shifts do participants typically implement immediately after the programme to improve cross-cultural team performance?

During Culture Map workshops participants are provided with best practice tips on each dimension based on the research and encouraged to create culturally sensitive rules of engagement.

■ Given the eight dimensions covered, which tend to create the most friction in real-world organisations, and why?

In our experience, working with teams globally, we would say communicating and trusting have the potential to create the most friction. Communicating because it is what we do most at work and Trusting, because building trust is essential to effective collaboration across geographies.

About Robyn de Villiers

Founder and CEO of The Three Cs, a Johannesburgbased consultancy firm specialised in executive coaching, building cultural competence and enabling collaborative outcomes, she brings over 30 years of experience in executive coaching, cross-cultural communication and collaboration. She has held positions such as non-Executive Chairman of BCW Africa, training chair of the African PR Association, co-Vice President and Advisory Board Member of the American Chamber of Commerce for South Africa and co-founder and current Chairperson of the UNICEF CEO Network, to mention only a few.