Working in an intercultural environment is becoming increasingly common.

One of the results of such set-ups is an experience of more communication difficulties.

Are you new to working abroad? Travelling to a foreign country for the first time for business?

Getting it right when working overseas is critical; but what do you do if you have little or no international exposure?

How would you describe or define culture?

What imagery would you use?

The culturally homogenous team is a thing of the past in most international organisations and companies.

More and more teams are made up of people with different nationalities and therefore different cultures, languages, ideas, behaviours and ways of doing things.

For those that follow The Apprentice, you can’t have missed the recent outburst by contestant Dillon St Paul in Episode 6, entitled ‘Discount Buying’.

Sticking to the traditional programme format, contestants were required to spend the night identifying the whereabouts of 9 items in and around London and then negotiate the best possible price for their purchase.

In this article, we look at how a lack of cultural awareness can have big cost implications for a business.

Western businesses that believe their approach to business is 'the only way', are losing out on contracts and productivity when it comes to interfacing with foreign companies.

Working internationally comes with certain challenges - navigating cultural differences is just one.

Being able to work, communicate, sell to or buy from people in different countries, working in different times zones, with different ways of doing things is essential.

In our previous blogs we examined how cultural differences impact body language and the way we speak - we now turn our attention to a little-known skill we all have yet many forget to utilise!

Listening.

It’s nearly a year since the restrictive sanctions imposed on Iran were lifted.

These sanctions were not only applied by the UN, EU and US but also included sanctions from third party countries.

Carrying on from our blog about cultural differences in body language, we now look at one of the most important areas of cross-cultural understanding - that of communication.

Communication covers many areas such as verbal and non-verbal.

As a cross cultural training consultancy, we have a great insight into the countries which rate highly as expat destinations.

It seems that India is certainly viewed highly as a popular ‘go to’ country at the moment....especially with Americans.

Cultures differ in the way we use our bodies to communicate.

Sometimes it is very obvious, many times very subtle.

Having received great feedback on my blog about the place of "tarof" in Persian culture, a few people have requested a brief guide to doing business in Iran for companies making the journey over.

So here goes....

The British are big on manners and etiquette.

Did you know that there is such a thing as British umbrella etiquette?! 

Have you heard about the 'Budgie Nine'?

If not, then here comes another perfect example of foreigners acting cuturally inappropriately when abroad.

Despite continued political tensions with Iran, the demand for Iran cultural awareness training continues.

As a senior Iran cultural awareness trainer, I spend a lot of time helping businesses understand the nuances of Persian culture. 

Mention the ‘relocation industry’ as conversation fodder at a dinner party and your guests will probably panic that you’re planning to expose them really dry conversation pieces such as Cost of Living Allowances, Trailing Spouses, Expat Taxation, Bridging Allowances etc.

In actual fact, the relocation industry is an exciting one and not deserving of the stifled yawns that might otherwise be elicited when mentioned.

As a cultural awareness training consultant, I spend most of my time arranging cultural awareness training sessions for relocating expatriates, existing global companies and companies who plan to go global.

The training is delivered either face to face or remotely via professional trainers, with great feedback from our delegates.

Was Trump Jnr's Skittles meme a stupid, irrational argument based on nothing but fear, ignorance and racist politics?

So Trump Jnr, son of the man who plans to make America great again, has come out and likened Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles.

If UK loses out on Erasmus, we lose the next generation

One of the OMG moments I had during my post-Brexit bewilderment was what would happen to funding for the Erasmus programme; an EU initiative to support students to study abroad for one year.