This document provides an agenda and overview for a two-day workshop on intercultural communication in the workplace. Day one will focus on introducing key concepts like culture, communication, and intercultural competence. Participants will learn models and definitions. Day two will cover topics like stereotypes, developing intercultural skills, and tools for improving intercultural awareness and empathy. The workshop aims to provide participants with knowledge and strategies for effectively communicating across cultural differences in professional settings.

1. Laboratorio dal Basso:
“LAVORARE IN GRUPPO? UN’IMPRESA!
CONFLITTI, COMUNICAZIONE E COOPERAZIONE PER L’IMPRESA
SOSTENIBILE”
Multiculturalismo a lavoro: processi interculturali e
comunicazione in contesti lavorativi interculturali
Lecce, 15 e 16 novembre 2013
Sandro Mazzi

2. Argomenti venerdì
Presentazioni e introduzione concetti chiave
Comunicazione
Cultura
Comunicazione interculturale
La competenza per la comunicazione interculturale
L'importanza dell'interpretazione

3. Programma venerdì
15:00 Presentazioni e introduzione concetti chiave
16.30: Pausa
16.45: Slides concetti chiave:
Comunicazione
Cultura
Comunicazione interculturale
La competenza per la comunicazione interculturale
L'importanza dell'interpretazione
NB Tutte le slides di questa sezione - quelle in lingua inglese – sono elaborate dal volume: Myron W. Lustig, Jolene
Koester, Intercultural Competence. Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures, Pearson Education
(US) Upper Saddle River 2012.

4. Argomenti sabato
Modelli e politiche per l'integrazione
Stereotipi, pregiudizi e discriminazioni
Strumenti per accrescere la competenza per la comunicazione interculturale
I sei blocchi della comunicazione interculturale (Barna)
Lo strumento D.I.E.
La consapevolezza culturale
Il lavoro sui valori e l'identità
Dalla compassione all'empatia
AUM e mindfulness (Gudykunst)
Questioni etiche
Esempi/domande

5. Programma sabato
10.00 Recupero modelli e altri concetti chiave
10.30 Consapevolezza culturale e identità
10.45 Dalla compassione alla empatia
11.00 Esercizio “Guardare l'altro come se…”
11.30 Pausa
11.45 Neuroscienze e l’importanza di esercitarsi al cambiamento
12.00 I sei blocchi alla comunicazione interculturale e il loro superamento: AUM e
mindfulness
12.15 Esercizio riflessivo in gruppo/coppie: esperienze precedenti e strumenti
presentati
13.00 chiusura

6. INTRODUCTION TO INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
§ In the post-millennium world:
§ Communicating with people from many cultures is no longer a choice
§ It is our choice to learn to do it well
§ Worldwide there is a heightened emphasis on culture
§ Some forces encourage accommodation and understanding with diverse people
§ Some forces discourage it
§ Intercultural encounters are now ubiquitous
§ Forces that bring other cultures in our life are dynamic, potent, ever present
§ Competent intercultural communication has become essential

7. IMPERATIVES FOR INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
1.
The Demographic Imperative
2.
The Technological Imperative
3.
The Economic Imperative
4.
The Peace Imperative
5.
The Interpersonal Imperative

8. WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?
There are too many ways for defining communication. We will adopt a
definition useful for our purpose:
“Communication is a
Symbolic
Interpretive
Transactional
Contextual
Process in which
People Create
Shared meanings”.

9. COMMUNICATION IS SYMBOLIC
§ Symbols represent the shared meanings
§ A symbol is a word/action/object that stands or represent the unit of
meaning.
§ Meaning is a perception, thought or feeling
§ Meanings are shared through messages
§ Messages are packages of symbols created to create shared meanings

10. COMMUNICATION IS INTERPRETIVE
§ When people communicate they have to:
§ Interpret the symbolic behaviors of others
§ Assign significance to some of them
§ Understanding and reaching agreement are two different
outcomes.

11. COMMUNICATION IS TRANSACTIONAL
§ Actional view of communication: Bowling; Challenge in sending the
message; I can win
§ Interactional views: Ping pong (feedback); Challenge in receiving; I
can win or lose
§ Transactional view: Sharade; Groupwork; Fun; No losers
§ All participants in the communication process work together to create and
sustain the meanings that develop
§ Communicators are simultaneously sending and receiving messages at every
instant they are involved in conversations

12. COMMUNICATION IS CONTEXTUAL
§ All communication take place in a context
§ The context can be:
§ Physical: actual location
§ Social: widely shared expectations about the kind of interactions
§ Interpersonal: expectations people have about the behaviors of
others as a result of differences in the relationships between them

13. COMMUNICATION IS A PROCESS
§ Communication is not static, fixed, unchanged
§ A process is a sequence of many distinct but interrelated steps
§ It can change over time
§ Heraclit “You can’t stand in the same stream twice”

14. COMMUNICATION INVOLVES SHARED MEANINGS
§ Meanings are not just “out there” to be discovered
§ Meanings are created and shared by groups of people as they
participate in the ordinary and everyday activities

15. WHAT IS CULTURE?
We take things for granted…When living within our own culture, we are never really
reminded of it.When I am walking down the street, people just don’t stop to say, “Hey, it is
an American”. In other words, we don’t talk about our own culture too much, because we
are living it. (A student from U.S.)
Also for culture, there are too many ways for defining it
We will adopt a definition useful for our purpose

16. A DEFINITION OF CULTURE
“Culture is a
Learned
Set of shared interpretations about
Beliefs
Values
Norms and
Social practices which
Affect the behaviors of a
Relatively large group of people”

17. WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF CULTURE?
• Your family racial/ethnic makeup, and their racial attitudes
• where and when you were born and grew up
• your friends and social acquitances
• where you went to school, and your level of education
• Previous diverse cultural experiences in everyday life, the workplace, social and or
professional context
• Attitudes and impression from the media

18. A FIRST DEFINITION OF INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
• “Intercultural Communication is a symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process
in which people from different cultures create shared meanings”
§ People are from different cultures whenever the degree of
§ difference between them is sufficiently large and important that it creates
§ dissimilar interpretations and expectations about what are regarded as
§ competent communication behaviors”

19. ANOTHER DEFINITION OF INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
Therefore:
“Intercultural communication occurs when
large and important cultural differences create
dissimilar interpretations and expectations about how to
communicate competently”

20. CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURAL PATTERNS
 People in all cultures face common human problems for which they must find
solutions
 The range of alternative solutions to a culture’s problems is limited
 Within a given culture, there will be preferred solutions, which most people
within the culture will select, but there will also people who will choose other
solutions.
 Over time, the preferred solutions shape the culture’s basic assumptions about
beliefs, values, norms and social practices – the cultural patterns

21. CULTURAL PATTERNS
 People from different cultures differ in:

Obvious ways/clearly visible differences: food, clothing etc.

Subtle ways/less visible differences
 Cultural patterns are related to subtle differences that are taken for
granted in a culture
 Cultural patterns are therefore shared interpretations

22. CULTURAL PATTERNS
Shared interpretations are very important and they result from:

the culture collective assumption about what the world is: believes

shared judgments about what it should be: values

widely held expectations about how people should behave: norms

predictable behavior patterns that are commonly shared: social practices

23. CULTURAL PATTERNS
Understanding differences in cultural patterns is a basic requirement to develop
Cultural patterns are the basis for interpreting the symbols used in
That is how we can explain many misunderstandings in IC (and not only…)
They are stable over time
They lead to roughly similar behaviors across similar situation

24. CULTURAL PATTERNS AND INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

There is a strong relationship between the foundations of cultural patterns and intercultural
competence

The patterns of a culture create the filter through which all verbal and nonverbal symbols are
interpreted

Not all cultural members of a society necessarily match the profile of the typical cultural member

The patterns of a culture shape but do not determine the mental programming of its people

Other cultures’ ways of believing and their preferred values are not crazy or wrong, just different

25. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE
 Understanding of ICC is based on studies on communication competence in
intracultural contexts
 A definition of communication competence:
 “Competent communication is interaction that is perceived as effective in
fulfilling certain rewarding objectives in a way that is also appropriate to the
context in which the interaction occurs” (Brian Spitzberg)
 NB we cannot write a prescription guaranteed to ensure competence in
intercultural communication
 We can try to understand the many ways that a person can behave in
interculturally competent manner

26. THE 3 COMPONENTS OF
INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
1. Context
2. Appropriateness and Effectiveness
3. Knowledge,
(culture-general information and culture-specific information),
Motivations and
(feelings and intentions)
Skills
(the actual performance)

27. BASIC TOOLS FOR IMPROVING
INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE: D-I-E
 Description
 Interpretation
 Evaluation

28. CULTURE SHOCK – DEFINITIONS
•“Anxiety that results from losing all of our familiar signs and symbol of social
intercourse”
Kalervo Oberg (anthropologist)
•“The emotional and physiological reaction of high activation that is brought about
by sudden emersion in a new and different culture”
LaRay M. Barna (communication studies)
•“A set of intensive and evocative situations in which the individual experiences
himself and other people in a new way distinct from previous situations and is
consequently forced into new levels of consciousness and understanding”
Alfred Adler (psychologist)

29. Sei ostacoli alla comunicazione interculturale (Barna)
L'assunto di similarità
Differenze linguistiche
Fraintendimenti non verbali
Preconcetti e stereotipi
Tendenza a giudicare
Forte ansia

30. "Sulle dispense stava scritto un dettaglio che alla prima lettura mi era sfuggito, e cioè
che il così tenero e delicato zinco, così arrendevole davanti agli acidi, che ne fanno un
solo boccone, si comporta invece in modo assai diverso quando è molto puro: allora
resiste ostinatamente all’attacco. Se ne potevano trarre due conseguenze filosofiche
tra loro contrastanti: l’elogio della purezza, che protegge dal male come un usbergo;
l’elogio dell’impurezza, che dà adito ai mutamenti, cioè alla vita."
Primo Levi - Il sistema periodico

31. Esericizio in piccoli gruppi
Analisi situazioni personali:
Come posso usare gli strumenti presentati per alcune delle
situazioni "interculturali" nelle quali mi sono trovato/mi
trovo/so che mi troverò?
Condivisione e confronto

32. Un modello per gestire efficacemente le
relazioni/discussioni/conversazioni
Topic
Goal
Reality
Options
Will

33. Due strumenti davvero importanti...
Consapevolezza (culturale, della nostra
identità, delle nostre premesse e aspettative)
Mindfulnes/presenza qui ed ora