Solid Foundations in Intercultural Communication

Name: Solid Foundations in Intercultural Communication
Rating: 4.5 (12264 reviews)

Core insights into what culture is, how it influences our worldview and what it means for successfully working globally.

Created byBastian Küntzel

Last updated 1/2024

English

What you'll learn

After the course, students will be able to better identify their own cultural set up and be able to see, address and constructively work with cultural diversity.

Course content

7 sections • 35 lectures • 2h 6m total length

Introduction3:20
The value and challenge of diversity7:50
Explore how diversity across cultural and professional backgrounds reduces groupthink and boosts accuracy, while highlighting awareness and voicing as keys to high-performing intercultural teams.

What is Culture?2:19
The river as a metaphor for culture3:19
Explore the river as a metaphor for culture, showing its dynamic change within a stable framework, and how events like 1945, 1989, 9/11, and the Arab Spring mark turning points.
Lenses as a metaphor for culture5:32
Lenses offer a metaphor for culture, showing how socialization and inculturalization filter what we notice and how our perspective shapes reality; language melodies shape perception and humility.
Software as a metaphor for culture2:39
Fabric as a metaphor for culture2:31
Use the fabric metaphor to understand culture as interwoven threads of heroes, collective trauma, myths, values, climate, and history, studied both as individual patterns and as a whole.
Traffic-Sign as a metaphor for culture3:37
Explore how traffic signs metaphorically reveal cultural norms and contextual rules for behavior. Culture communicates symbolically and implicitly, is human-made, and relies on shared meanings like colors and gestures.
The Iceberg as a metaphor for culture6:11

Dimensions of Cultural Diversity1:44
Explore the dimensions of cultural diversity and how culture influences how people approach problems, challenges, or situations. Learn to evaluate interactions in the moment and recognize different approaches without stereotyping.
Individualism and Collectivism5:32
Explore how individualism and collectivism shape self-identity, community responsibilities, and face and honor. The lecture contrasts a US–Japan experiment to show how feedback shifts effort and status norms.
High- and Low-Context Communication5:47
Universalism and Particularism4:23
Powerdistance3:14
Time2:59
Uncertainty Avoidance8:58

Beyond Culture and the Silent Language1:32
Building Cross-Cultural Competences1:28
Discover cross-cultural competence through universalism and particularism, individualism and communitarianism, status, inner versus outer direction, and sequential versus synchronous time, illustrated by case studies and practical examples.
Software of the Mind1:39
The Culture Map1:34
Handbook of Intercultural Communication and Cooperation1:34
Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication1:03
Thinking Fast and Slow1:21
Explore how biases shape perception through Kahneman's system 1 and system 2 thinking, and learn to manage bias in intercultural communication and leadership.
The intercultural mind0:58
Handbuch Interkulturelle Kommunikation und Kompetenz1:13
The Geography of Thought0:59
Explore the geography of thought through a neuroscience lens, examining how brain connections shape intercultural communication and East versus West cultural differences as a brain phenomenon.
Closeness at a Distance3:06

Requirements

Students should be able to understand English and will benefit best from this course if they have had some international experience.

Description

When you are working in a group, where there are people from different backgrounds it is common that conflict can occur, or that people don't input for fear of causing conflict. This course will teach you how to maximise the outputs of culturally diverse working environments and extract the full benefits of diversity.

We will explore the concept of culture and it's powerful impact on how humans perceive the world. We'll look at different dimensions of cultural diversity and how they impact our priorities, perceptions and how they can cause mis-understandings. After a short excursion to some of the brain science that further manifests the power of culture as a filter for reality, we'll look at different cases and what we can do to communicate more effectively in environments that are saturated with cultural diversity in order to create something remarkable. Finally, I'll teach you two simple methods to operationalise these insights practically in your work. In the end, I will highlights further reading materials that students who wish to go deeper can read and study.

Who this course is for:

This course is for everyone that wants to work more effectively in environments that are saturated with diversity.

Solid Foundations in Intercultural Communication

What you'll learn

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Course content

Introduction2 lectures • 11min

What is Culture?7 lectures • 26min

Dimensions of Cultural Diversity7 lectures • 33min

A short excursion into the brain4 lectures • 15min

Culture in Action2 lectures • 16min

Operationalising knowledge about culture's impact2 lectures • 10min

Book Club11 lectures • 16min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: