There’s a fundamental and nagging question about corporate intercultural training: What difference does a day make? What difference can a day make? Because that may well be the only time made available in a packed work diary.
Does such a constraint really allow much learning and development to take place? The capacity to understand, handle and, in the best of cases, leverage cultural diversity and complexity involves multifaceted competencies. By their very nature, these demand more than a day to develop. Mastering cultural diversity is different from mastering a new piece of tech.
What are these competencies? The shorthand answer of trainers and learning-and-development (L&D) specialists to this question is the intercultural ABC competencies: affective, behavioural and cognitive. But this masks the complexity of the matter.
Let’s start with the “C”. Cognitive competencies relate to knowledge and the understanding that results from acquiring new knowledge. This includes knowledge about the contexts and cultures of the participants and of those they are working with, and knowledge about the nature of intercultural interaction. Knowledge can, indeed, be passed on and understanding achieved in a relatively short period of time. It therefore features large in standard intercultural trainings. But is this the most sensible use of the time available when knowledge can be acquired through reading or asynchronous e-learning?
The development of “B” competencies — the behaviours and skills that contribute to overarching intercultural competence — requires not only understanding the why and how of such skills. It also requires the opportunity to acquire them through practice and to receive feedback on the success or otherwise of their use. This all takes time. Role plays in simulated or authentically diverse settings offer room for such practice but put pressure on time budgets.
The “A” (affective) competencies — or intercultural sensitivity — concern the capacity to understand and deal with the feelings, attitudes, evaluations and reactions that we and others may experience in intercultural interactions. Affect influences our view of a culturally diverse world. It has an impact on our interactions and behaviours, and it may influence cognitive processes such as decision-making as well as our tendency to be biased by our stereotypes.
Making people aware of the significance of intercultural sensitivity is quick and easy. Developing such a competence may take much longer. Indeed, it may be something that develops of its own accord as a result of long experience of interculturality and reflection. Schools and universities are thus, in principle, better equipped than companies to develop A and B competencies because of the longer time frames they can work with.
My long-held and increasingly practised conviction is that intercultural interventions should be spread over longer periods of time. A day is simply not enough to make a difference. Trainings should certainly involve a kick-off, an in-person workshop where possible. But they should be supported by virtual follow-up sessions — individual or group — for further development and reflection. Virtual methods and tools offer genuine value added that goes some way towards making up for the loss of the immediacy and other socio-emotional benefits of in-person interventions.