1. I M I S E R V I C E S O V E R V I E W
WhatWeDo
THE INTERCULTURAL MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE (IMI) AT AMERICAN
UNIVERSITY consults with organizations and trains personnel to recognize and
manage cultural differences and turn them to competitive advantage in the global
marketplace. IMI provides customized training for effective communication, negotiation and leadership across cultures.
YouWorkWith
 First-rate intercultural trainers and facilitators with up-to-date knowledge of the field
 Top-notch consultants who combine specialized expertise with real-life experience in business, nonprofit and
government sectors
 Prominent American University professors and researchers—authorities in their fields
 Business professionals with extensive experience in international work settings
 Country resource people—including host nationals and current and former expatriate residents—with a wealth of
useful firsthand information
WhyItCanWorkForYou
 Instills the skills and knowledge to help you plan for and successfully manage international growth for your
organization
 Develops global leaders who distinguish your company and set elevated standards for its conduct in the
international business world
 Increases the chances of high returns on your organization’s investments in international human capital
 Builds cross-cultural team players with the ability to apply creative solutions to the challenges of the global
workplace
 Prepares international assignees and their families to adapt smoothly and quickly to life overseas and to reentry
home
WhereWe’reLocated
IMI is housed at American University in Washington, D.C. Programs and services may be delivered in IMI’s own fully
equipped training and conference facilities or at the location of your choice.
ContactUs
Maria Pekala
Acting Director
(202) 885-2827
pekala@american.edu
Hayley Kanlyn
Assistant Director for Programs
(202) 885-6437
hkanlyn@american.edu

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I M I P H I L O S O P H Y O F T R A I N I N G
 IMI training programs are based on current intercultural theory and research. As a part of American
University, IMI works closely with top academics in the intercultural and international business fields whose
scholarship is grounded in real-life corporate experience. Drawing upon their expertise, we apply the best of the
academic world to creating programs that deliver concrete business solutions.
 IMI training programs employ a broad range of instructional approaches.
 Recognizing that different trainees learn best in different ways, we tailor programs to participants’ individual
profiles, interweaving such learning techniques as formal presentations, discussions, critical thinking exercises, role
plays, case studies, and simulations in order to most enhance skill and knowledge development.
 IMI training programs pertain to your current situation. We appreciate and respect the unique circumstances
that led you to seek out our services. Throughout the planning and design process, we work with you closely to
ensure that the relevance of training will be immediately apparent and the gains, immediately applicable. At IMI, we
tailor our programs to frame our expertise in terms of your business situation—not the other way around.
 IMI training programs are integrative. In designing programs, we arrange modules so that the main points
progressively build upon each other. Such an integrative design models for trainees how to apply to new situations
information and insights gained in previous ones—a skill that can be vital to functioning well in an unfamiliar
culture.
 IMI training programs promote on-going learning. We are committed to making learning how to learn a part of
every program, so that when trainees leave the training room for an actual multicultural workplace, they will do so
with the ability to assess unfamiliar situations and determine how best to utilize their newly acquired intercultural
skills.
P R I M A R Y A R E A S O F A C T I V I T Y
Negotiation Across Cultures. Recent research into the processes of negotiation has revealed key aspects of bargaining
in which cultures differ. When do you stop the chit-chat and get down to business? How do you know if negotiations
are breaking down? How do you know when negotiations are finished? When negotiators are from diverse cultures, they
often rely on quite different assumptions about social interactions, appropriate behavior, timing, money, and even what
constitutes an "agreement". IMI helps clients to understand the role of culture and cross-cultural communication in
negotiation, familiarizes them with culturally appropriate negotiation strategies, and provides opportunities for them to
practice negotiation tactics that can later be applied in actual cross-cultural settings.
Intercultural Orientation. Research studies indicate that systematic preparation of employees and their families going
to another culture can have a powerful, positive impact on skill development, adjustment capacity, and task
accomplishment--and by extension on the overall effectiveness of an organization’s operations. Re-entry preparation has
received much less attention but has proven to be crucial in assisting employees and their families to make a smooth
transition back home. IMI provides both pre-departure and re-entry orientation programs for employees and their
families. These programs are specifically designed to address the dynamics of culture shock and reverse culture shock,
and in the process increase the chances for organizational success.
Cross-Cultural Security Overseas. How can your organization more effectively prepare employees for handling
security overseas? This seminar explores various types of security concerns ranging from everyday safety overseas to
handling a crisis situation. Experts in international human resource services, cross-cultural communication, and crisis
negotiations will discuss these concerns to provide enhanced relocation pre-departure and in-country support to
employees and their families working overseas.
Short-term Assignments. A rapidly increasing proportion of intercultural assignments can be measured in weeks and
months, as opposed to the traditional measure of a year or more. Yet virtually no attention has been given to the
problems that short-term assignments pose for individual employees, their families, and the organization. Having

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recognized this growing need, IMI has developed an approach for assisting organizations to prepare, support, and
debrief individuals who face the unique challenges involved in working across cultures for shorter periods.
Multicultural Management. The multicultural workforce has become a world-wide reality. As a result, managers must
frequently work in multicultural teams of peers and to supervise culturally diverse employees. The cross-cultural
understanding and skills that enable managers to do so effectively require systematic approaches to managing cultural
diversity within organizations. How do multiple cultural perspectives affect teams? Problem-identification? Analytical
approaches? Task-orientation? Decision-making? Norms of delegation? Expectations for information flow?
Motivational techniques? Performance appraisal? Supervisory styles? IMI helps organizations to explore these issues
within their particular contexts and develop strategies to balance the promise of cultural diversity with the need for
organizational consistency.
Assessment and Evaluation in Intercultural Programs. Organizations that work across cultures are faced with the
constant challenge of having to select individuals who are best suited for assignment to another culture: What mix of
personality characteristics, experience, attitudes, knowledge, skills, cultural awareness, and technical expertise is required in a particular
setting? How can we assess these elements? Another constant challenge is the organization's need to understand the impact and
effectiveness of its efforts: What is the overall value of our project? What differences can we see as a result of our efforts? IMI is
prepared to assist organizations to operationalize these questions for practical inquiry, identify information sources,
collect and analyze data, and make effective use of the research results.
E X P E R I E N T I A L T R A I N I N G E X E R C I S E S
The Contrast-Culture Simulation: The contrast-culture simulation was developed in the mid-1960s as part of a
training project commissioned by the U.S. Army to improve the interpersonal communication skills of its overseas
military advisors. Usually referred to as the “Khan Exercise” the simulation has been used in cross-cultural training
programs for business executives at American University for over 30 years. The simulation is designed for cultural self-
awareness and developing interpersonal cross-cultural skills. It uses the role-play technique based on scenarios with
specific problems or tasks involving a participating American, often representing his or her particular organization and
job, and Mr. Khan as his or her counterpart in a country overseas. The scenario usually takes place in a generic non-
American and non-European culture, and Mr. Khan is always culture-general. He represents no particular culture, but
instead a contrast to the mainstream American culture. When used with international, non-American groups, the
simulation is changed to Mr. Smith, who instead embodies the typical American and the role-play is reversed. (See Mr.
Khan’s bio below).
Red/Blue: Red/Blue was developed by Gary Weaver at the Intercultural Management Institute as an experiential
exercise based off of the concept of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a 1950s experiment analyzing cooperation and negotiation
tactics in a non-zero-sum game. Two groups are given the objective of the game—to make as much money as
possible—and separated, each provided with a scoring chart. The score chart shows a series of possible combinations
(e.g. if Team 1 chooses Blue and Team 2 chooses Red, Team 1 looses five points and Team 2 gains five; if both teams
chose Blue, both teams gain three point, etc.). The game is played in six rounds with the possibility of negotiations
presented after round three and points doubled from round four on. After six rounds, the groups reunite to discuss and
debrief the exercise. The ambiguity of the directions drives each team to form their own perceptions of the games
objective, most seeing it as a win-lose scenario in which they attempt to make more money than the other team. The
exercise examines various concepts including enemy imagery, super ordinate goals, cultural perceptions, and leadership.
Encounter: Encounter was designed as preliminary exercise, slightly more in-depth than an icebreaker, but not as
intensive as a simulation or game. The object of this exercise is to learn to pick up cultural cues of a host culture.
Participants are broken up into groups of 12 and from that 12, two “experts” are selected (one male and one female).
The remaining 10 are considered the “host” or “client” culture. They are separated from the “experts” and given three
specific cultural rules. It is the “expert’s” job to come in and research this culture. At the end they will share their
findings and conclusions about the culture. The exercise deals with the concept of cultural perception/misperception
and frustration when dealing with new cultures.

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A B O U T T H E T R A I N E R S
Dr. Gary R. Weaver
Founder and Executive Director,
Intercultural Management Institute
School of Professional & Extended Studies (SPExS), American University
gweaver@american.edu
202.885.1637
For forty years Gary Weaver has been a member of the faculty of the School of International
Service at American University, international affairs in the country. He is a member of the University’s Board of Trustees
and from 2007-08 served as the Chair of the University Faculty Senate. He created and directed various academic
programs including the largest school of the Seminar on Managing a Multicultural Workforce, the Fulbright Pre-
Academic Program, and the Community Studies Program, an academic program intended to meet the needs of inner city
students attending American University. He has also taught courses on multicultural management in the National
Training Laboratory’s (NTL) American University graduate program.
In 1999, he founded and continues to serve as Executive Director of the University’s Intercultural Management Institute
(IMI), a program for training executives for international relocation and multicultural management and is publisher of
the Intercultural Management Quarterly. Each March he chairs the annual IMI conference for professionals in the fields
of international management, relocation and human resource development. He is a Fellow of the International Academy
for Intercultural Research.
Each year he gives keynote addresses, lectures, training seminars, and workshops to various universities, nonprofit
groups, government agencies, professional organizations and business groups in the U.S. and abroad. His topics range
from working in a multicultural workforce, law enforcement in a culturally diverse community, culture shock, and cross-
cultural negotiation to conflict resolution, American identity movements and multicultural childcare.
Weaver has designed and directed over a dozen Navy Intercultural Relations Training Seminars in the U.S. and overseas.
These week-long programs provide cross-cultural orientation training skills for international relocation and HRD
officers. In 1999, he developed a twenty-hour videotape series in Intercultural Relations Training for the Navy, and also
helped to create an Internet course and manuals to accompany the series. He co-teaches a weeklong graduate course
entitled "The Art of Negotiation" for military officers from around the western hemisphere at the Inter-American
Defense College and teaches a one-day component on Intercultural Negotiations for a course on Multi-Party
Negotiation/Conflict Management designed by the Air Force’s Negotiation Center of Excellence.
In 1970, he was an advisor and speechwriter for the Iranian Ambassador to the United States and in 1976 he served as
Director of Middle Eastern Program for American University in Teheran. In 1986 he taught international relations and
advised in the development of an international relations graduate degree at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. In
1997, under the auspices of the Carter Center of Emory University, he conducted a weeklong seminar in Pisa, Italy at the
Scuola Superiore De Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento on cross-cultural conflict, adaptation and management for
Italian civilian professionals involved in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations around the globe. In 1998, he was a
keynote speaker and facilitator for a weeklong seminar in Jerusalem for secondary school principals and teachers on
multicultural conflict and civic education. In 2002 he gave a series of presentations in Burma to university professors and
students and to Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and members of her staff in the National League for Democracy.
Professor Weaver received his Ph.D. in International Relations from American University with studies at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Mexico and post-doctoral studies at the

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Washington School of Psychiatry. He is a Fellow of the International Academy for Intercultural Research, on the board
of Directors of the Center for Asian Organized Crime, and he was the editor of a 2004 special edition of The Journal of
International Communication entitled "Intercultural Relations." Among his publications are "This Cutthroat College
Generation," "American Identity Movements," "The Melting Pot Myth vs. the Cultural Cookie Cutter," "Police and the
Enemy Image in Black Literature," "Law Enforcement in a Culturally Diverse Society," "Understanding and Coping with
Cross-Cultural Adjustment Stress," "The Process of Reentry," Readings in Cross-Cultural Communication, The
University and Revolution, and Culture, Communication and Conflict. He recently completed a book with Adam
Mendelson entitled America’s Midlife Crisis: The Future of a Troubled Superpower.
T H E C O N T R A S T - C U L T U R E S I M U L A T I O N
The contrast-culture simulation was developed in the mid-1960’s as a part of a
training project commissioned by the U.S. Army to improve the interpersonal
communications skills of its overseas military advisors. The project was
developed and carried out by the Human Resources Research Office
(HumRRO) of George Washington University. It is usually referred to as the
“Khan Exercise” because this was the name given to the original contrast
American. It is also one of the most common names in countries such as
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Khan Exercise has been used in cross-cultural training programs for
business executives at American University in Washington for over 35 years in the Intercultural Management Institute
(formerly known as the BCIU Institute). Various branches of the military, the State Department, the World Bank, and
others have also the Khan Exercise.
The simulation is designed for cultural self-awareness and developing interpersonal cross-cultural communication and
analytical skills. It uses the role-play technique based on scenarios with specific problems or tasks involving a
participating American, often representing his or her organization and job, and Mr. Khan as his or her counterpart in a
country overseas. The scenario usually takes place in a generic non-American and non-European culture, and Mr. Khan
is always culture-general. He represents no particular culture, but is instead a contrast to the mainstream American
culture.
M R . K H A N
Mr. Khan is an author, a former university professor and the original creator of the role-play for the Contrast American
Simulation Exercise, as conceptualized by HumRRO research scientists and especially developed by Edward C. Stewart.
Mr. Khan's specialty is contrasting cultures vis a vis American values, attitudes, assumptions and thinking patterns. He
was born in a foreign country where the cognitive and behavioral patterns are often in opposition to Western values and
cultural norms.
Mr. Khan specializes in contrasting cultures with different value orientations when interacting with Western attitudes,
assumptions and patterns of thinking. Through the technique of simulation exercises using work related scenarios, the
interaction with Westerners demonstrates, through experience, the intercultural communications process and the cultural
component in interpersonal relationships with foreign colleagues and counterparts.
This exercise is used at the Intercultural Management Institute at American University and with various governmental
agencies including the State Department, all branches of the military and various law enforcement agencies. Khan has
played this role for over 30 years with business executives who are relocating overseas and the exercise is featured in
multicultural management seminars with the National Training Laboratory at American University.