communication skills Archivi - Pagina 3 di 3 - Dr. Daniele Trevisani

Clarify Keywords and Eliminate Misunderstanding

1 Febbraio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

Clarify the Underlying Meaning of the Primary Negotiating Terms

Each word deeply rooted in social life – let’s say the word “educate” – carries with it an enormous variety of possible meanings: educate how to “shape”, how to “bring behavior back to the rules”, make the subject become “as I want it” , educate how to “regiment or educate how to” bring out personal potential “, and others. Even the phrase “business growth” carries with it a whole, enormous, spectrum of possible meanings.

For one entrepreneur it can mean “increasing turnover”, for another still “having a better organization”, for another “being a leader in your sector as the ability to put new products on the market”. Each word carries with it completely subjective mental evocations (mental images). In the case of the negotiation of a training course on communication to be held in China by Italian trainers, explained below, we can see that one of the first fundamental activities is first and foremost the clarification of what is meant by “communication” among the many meanings – example: advertising, or interpersonal communication, or organizational communication, and other possible nuances – and what a “trainer” is.

In culture A (Italy) compared to culture B (China), the underlying semantics of the terms hides enormous differences, which can lead to the failure of any project. In China there is no word equivalent to the term “communication” as it is understood in the West.

The exit from uncertainty and the comparison on semantics is one of the primary steps of each project that starts from different bases. The rule of thumb requires to “put on the negotiating table” the strongest and most meaningful words underlying the negotiation itself, and to clarify them with respect to their many possible meanings.

In the case of a leadership training project carried out in China by Italian trainers, we should clarify for example the meaning of the primary terms “training” and “leadership“. Nothing will be possible without this initial clarification. In the case of a production project in China or India of spare parts for a mechanical industry, in which the European manufacturer takes care of the design and final inspection, delegating the production in outsourcing, we should clarify the concepts of “expected quality “,” Verification “and” inspection “. Each negotiation brings with it the need to clarify the basic terms on which it is based and to compare the respective “semantics” (the possible meanings).

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In Senza categoria

Communication, Negotiation and Seduction

31 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

Negotiating Requires the Ability to Seduce.

A seduction not at all sexual, but in fact comparable to courtship: the proposal must contain “appeal“, must respond to the impulses and needs of the interlocutor. A forced proposal is not negotiation in the strict sense but imposition. A poorly digested condition, moreover, lends itself much more to being refused a posteriori, disregarded, or not applied.

For thousands of years, theorists of each discipline have encouraged people to adapt their art to the different situations in which they will have to operate, recognizing the need to calibrate the strategy towards the interlocutor, creating a communication centered on the recipients. Aristotle, in Rhetoric, deals with public seduction and persuasion. He invites the politician to dynamically use ethos (credibility), logos (dialectical art) and pathos (ability to arouse emotions), centering the audience in being more intimate than him.

There is a seduction component in every negotiation In the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana – a classic Indian treatise on seduction – a sequence of different types of bite is listed, designed to cause pleasure: the hidden bite, the swollen bite, the point, the line of points, the coral and the jewel, the of jewels, the unbroken cloud, and finally the bite of the wild boar. The good seducer will have to adapt the type of bite to the situation. Western managers often use the “boar bite” (whatever action it is) a priori, perhaps receiving sound slaps in response, where perhaps the “hidden bite” would have given the desired effects. We are using a joking metaphor to express a message that is nevertheless strong: the communication strategy must take into account the cultural traits of the counterpart.

Let’s see an example of a micro-conversation between the Italian area manager and a possible Russian importer:

Area Manager: What guarantees can you give us?

Importer: What guarantees do you need?

Area Manager: Well, you need to learn how to sell our products, however don’t worry because we will give you courses, if you can’t pay them we discount them from commissions.

The Russian interlocutor perceives a latent message (“you are incapable”, “you are poor”, “you need”) linked to the course offer. The sentence touches the interlocutor’s entire cultic system, stirs a wounded “Russian pride” and the memories of suffering of an entire people. The Italian area manager has been able to destroy the corporate ethos in a few moves (giving the image of a company completely unprepared to negotiate with foreign interlocutors), using a dialectic based on “a priori” conflict (humiliate them), thus arousing emotions of revenge and revenge (at a minimum) in the interlocutor. A strategy of total ineffectiveness, based on wrong assumptions.

The offer of a course, presented in this way, does not create added value and aims solely at the disqualification of the interlocutor. Both Aristotle and Vatsyayana would have rejected this area manager. In this micro-negotiation there have been several “judgment biases” or errors of judgment, and neither of them have achieved any results. As research on the accuracy of intercultural assessments shows, the error of judgment (misunderstanding who you are dealing with, or badly decoding a message) – an error already present at an intra-cultural level – is enhanced by cultural distances, and it is one of the most destructive factors in negotiation.

To overcome the judgment biases it is necessary to take action, to prepare. Intercultural communication requires commitment, at the level of:

understanding of the cultural system with which one interacts;

knowledge of the underlying values and beliefs of the interlocutor;

social identification: what status does the interlocutor have in his membership system;

methods of non-verbal communication;

analysis and resolution of conflicts. Every intercultural negotiator should have strong expertise on these matters in their curriculum.

Principle 9 – Training in intercultural communication

The success of negotiation communication depends on:

from the depth of communication training;

the ability to put into practice communicative skills of trans-cultural value;

the ability to identify communicative characteristics and specific cultural traits of the interlocutor to pay attention to.

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In intercultural negotiation

Apparent Details and Systems of Signification

30 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

Principle 8 – Details as Indicators of Worldviews

The company also negotiates on apparent details. The apparent details contain a different view of the world. When you have to decide which format to give to a training course – choosing to do eight hours in a full day or take the course in spare time – a culture of training and a culture of man is manifested.

We may have different opinions on whether a high-intensity training intervention in full-immersion is more productive (eg: five full days), or that it is better to do one day a month; we can discuss whether it is better to treat participants with gloves (“the customer is always right” cultural trait), or to act decisively to achieve profound change.

Of a possible project, we have exposed a small detail, but we can have different opinions on an innumerable amount of other details. These apparent details – it must be remembered – are not just details – but whole worldviews. Every detail is – from a semiotic point of view – a system of signification, an antenna that communicates the content of entire underlying worlds.

Principle 8 – Details as indicators of worldviews

The success of negotiation communication depends on:

from the recognition of the importance of details as indicators of world views (details as systems of extended signification);

the ability to manage details with strategic attention.

Returning to the example, the degree of “morbidity” of the training intervention is considered so much a detail that it is sometimes not even discussed in a course design, but behind the detail lies the more or less martial vision of education and life , people’s history and experiences, and their worldview. Behind the temporal concentration of an educational intervention, or its distribution in several phases, lies the philosophy of time, a philosophy of gradual change vs. a culture of immediate results.

The very way in which a course is communicated, prepared, ritualized – or trivialized – denotes a different vision of human resources and the entire culture of the human being who works. Each apparent detail contains a possible different view of the world. It is for this reason that negotiation – understood as “building something together” – requires commitment and science, starting from the basic issues down to the details.

There is also a different way of looking at trading. We can focus on the level of interpersonal negotiation or on an organizational level of negotiation (corporate, or between entities / institutions). In both cases, what matters is to grasp the different cultural and worldview dimension that the interlocutors possess.

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In intercultural negotiation

The Common Ground Research

30 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

The importance of working together

Two subjects who have identical visions and identical objectives, two mental clones, do not need to enter into a real negotiation and will not be able to build anything original and “more creative than the single“, working together, as their baggage is identical.

On the other hand, when different visions, different conceptions, different needs emerge, the negotiation comes into play, as well as the possibility of creatively building by drawing on different baggage. Negotiation means actively engaging in the search for a solution that satisfies two or more interlocutors who start from culturally different positions, bringing out (1) latent differences and (2) common foundations on which to rest.

We are negotiating while negotiating a price or a purchase – and this is evident – but also while discussing which movie to see (sentimental or action), or what to do on the weekend or on vacation (sea, mountains, rest, work, visits. family, sport) starting from different tastes and preferences.

Principle 7 – Negotiation prerequisites

The success of negotiation communication depends on:

the degree of commitment / willingness of each subject to actively seek a mutually satisfying solution (win-win approach);

the ability to accurately recognize the factors that make the starting position or the interests of the parties different (recognition of differences);

from the use of past diversities to the conscious state, as a driving force and creative;

from research and construction of common ground on which to gradually build a solution. In a family, a negotiation on “which vacation to take” will be largely unproductive if it starts with the discussion of specific details such as the name of the hotel or the location, and does not go into – first of all – the search for the experiential common ground: which type holiday do we want to do together? What kind of experience does one want and what does the other want? In our mind, what are the aspirations related to vacation (relaxation, adventure, exploration, leisure, care, safety, risk, closeness, distance, exotic vacation, ethnic, cultural, and other background elements), and where are our differences of bottom? Even between companies, it is inopportune and risky to start a negotiation on the details (price, times, dates, places) without having defined what type of relationship you want (even if only “want”, not necessarily “impose”). For example, in every purchase / sale negotiation it will be necessary to understand if we are talking about a “one-off” sale, a “product test”, the search for a “continuity supplier”, the search for a “scientific partner research and development “, and other basic connotations.

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In intercultural negotiation

Corporate Memetics

30 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

Where our Ideas Come From, How They Enter the Company, and Our Attempts To Make Them Survive

A healthy life (personal but also corporate) requires awareness of what beliefs, values or teachings we are putting into practice, and above all recognizes the fact that they have been acquired by acculturation, have been assimilated by the surrounding environment – from family to school to religion – have “entered” and the subject himself is impregnated with it. Human beings are full of “memes“, of mental traces, ideas, beliefs, learned from other human beings (face-to-face) or from mediated sources. Even companies are full of “ideas” or “mental traces” often suffered rather than built.

Memetics – as a new discipline in the social sciences landscape – deals with how ideas or “memes” are transmitted from person to person, from group to group, as well as how genetics deals with the transmission of genes and hereditary heritages . The ideas that each of us carries have been learned by someone (in large part), and we ourselves have partly modified them, becoming bearers of memes. Who brought these ideas within us? Who brought them to the company? How did they spread? Who is a healthy carrier? Are they all good or are some of them harmful viruses?

As soon as two cultures meet, we discover that our memes are different from those of others, but in “reproductive” terms we try to replicate our own rather than accept those of others. At the center of intercultural negotiation there is not only the question of who “is right” about the details, but even the attempt to make their “memes” survive, to reproduce their own vision of things, sometimes to impose it. This behavior from the ethological point of view of the “human animal” is normal, it responds to the principles of conservation of the species. Like any animal being tries to reproduce its genes, the social being tries to reproduce its ideas (“memes”) and pass them on to others.

The concept of “memetics” (expressed by several scientists) lends itself well to studying how ideas are transmitted from person to person, from group to group, as does “genetics” with the transmission and replication of genes. Intercultural negotiation does not consist only in an encounter between different positions in detail, but in the clash between subjects carrying a different “memetic”, a different “cultural genetics” or personal heritage. There is therefore a first strong awareness that makes the intercultural negotiator more effective: the awareness of one’s own culture, of one’s active “memes”. This awareness does not mean rejection and must not automatically produce rejection of what has been learned culturally, but only and simply awareness of what has been learned (what), of the sources (from whom), and of the history of one’s learning (when).

The analysis is carried out on several levels. – On the general level of one’s own learning and acculturation. Ex:

What did they teach you in the family, as basic values, openly or by example? § And, in the company: what are the circulating ideas?
What are the dominant currents?
Who is its spokesperson?
Who entered them, since when?
Which are to be maintained, which are harmful?
Which are firm? Which do you apply occasionally?
Which ones do you adhere to unconditionally?
Which ones do you find deleterious and would you change?
In terms of specific behaviors and actions. Ex:
(for a commercial) who did you learn to sell from?
what did they teach you, what values did they transmit to you, how were you “set up”?
For any manager: Has anyone taught you to relax, to think from above? What orientation towards time have you absorbed? A long-term or a short-term thought? who gave you examples from which you assimilated something? How aware are you?

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In intercultural negotiation

Awareness of One’s Own Culture and Sources

30 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

Principle 5 – Awareness of One’s Own Cultural Sources

Successful communication depends on awareness:

personal sources (individuals) who have made significant imprints on their own system of beliefs and behaviors;
mediated sources (media, books, readings, films) that have affected one’s personal culture;
the times of assimilation and its significant phases and milestones;
the depth of assimilation into the Self of the different cultural rules, norms, guides, laws and teachings that are adopted;
the ability to recognize the factors and people from which specific skills, attitudes and behaviors practiced today at work and at a professional level have been assimilated (e.g. where and from whom the styles and behaviors of negotiation and relationship used today have been learned) . You can accept to keep a cultural rule with you, or you can consciously decide to try to eliminate it from your way of being, but only after having become aware of its existence (cultural self-determination). In the ALM method, the individual is seen as a cell capable of applying positive osmosis (exchanging flows of knowledge and experiences with the environment). As in any cell, without exchange there is neither nourishment nor elimination of toxins. Thus, even in intercultural communication it is necessary to know how to eliminate the cultural toxins that prevent the proper functioning of the Self, and to know how to open up to the introduction of new elements.

Principle 6 – Cultural self-determination and internal cultural locus-of-control Successful communication depends on:

the subject’s ability to choose which cultural rules and cultural traits to keep in their personal baggage (cultural set);
the subject’s ability to choose which cultural rules and cultural traits to eliminate from one’s set;
the subject’s ability to choose which new cultural rules and new traits to acquire in his personal baggage;
from the basic awareness of the fact that it is possible to carry out an analysis of discovery and awareness of one’s own culture, to regain control of the cultural rules that apply.

This achievement depends on the revision of the sense of control over one’s destiny, events, and even one’s own culture, seen as something on which the subject can act (internal locus-of-control). The intercultural negotiator is alive – like a biological cell – when open to his own change and exchange with the environment.

He is dead and produces disastrous results when he refuses to accept that differences exist and must be understood and analyzed. The greater its capacity for exchange and osmosis with the environment, the greater the level of psycho-physiological fitness. The intercultural being is just as dead when it does not possess its own identity, unconditionally accepts the “memetics” of others and rejects its heritage, dispersing the good it has to offer to the rich relationship.

As in many human activities, a successful outcome requires the ability to find a balance between (1) a tendency towards unconditional acceptance of the culture of others (cultural hypocrisy) and (2) a tendency towards the unconditional imposition of one’s own culture on the other (imperialism cultural). States of consciousness feed cultural identities. Being Italian and having been raised in Italian culture produces a vision of the world that can be assimilated to a state of conscience, and some behaviors – for example, all sitting at the table in the family – enter the sphere of normality of that state of conscience.

It is normal to eat together in Italy, just as it is normal for an American university student to do homework and exercises in the canteen and carefully avoid talking to diners. It is very rare to see an Italian university student sitting at a table with other friends not talking, and closing on the book with paper and pen. It can happen, but it is not part of Italian culture. Just as it is strange for an Italian to think that the most popular place in an American university town on Sunday evening, around midnight, is the library.

Arriving at the table late and leaving earlier is not culturally correct in standard Italian culture, but it is normal in American culture, spending the night at the computer center is good for an American student, horrible for an Italian. For a certain “clever” Italian culture, spending a night studying is something you don’t want to let anyone know, so as not to be pointed out as “geeks“. For the American student, copying is reprehensible, for the Italian it is cunning. These are different “memes” that circulate: “if you copy you are smart” vs. “If you copy you are a failure”. Each intercultural negotiation brings with it different “memes”. The problem with cultures is that their unwritten norms come in “without knocking”, by osmosis, and these norms become tangible only when there is contact with a different culture.

For example, an Italian student who offers an American colleague to copy his homework, to make him a friend, instead of strengthening a bond will be pointed out, rejected and relegated. Companies also have different cultures, just as corporate areas (administration, sales, purchasing, production) have their own and distinct cultures. Due to the great variety of inputs to which one is exposed, there is no creature that reasons with the exact same mental patterns as another. In this context, people find themselves negotiating and communicating.

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In intercultural negotiation

Cultures as States of Consciousness

29 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

State of Sleep and State of Consciousness

Intercultural communication can be conceived as a contact between different states of consciousness, a bridge between distant mental universes. The state of sleep is a state of consciousness, as is wakefulness, or relaxation, agitation and anxiety, daydreaming or daydreaming. Italian culture is a state of consciousness, as is American or Chinese culture. Each culture enables the subject to pay more attention to certain aspects of the world and to neglect or ignore others.

Eskimos see over ten types of snow and have words for each of them. We see a single snow. For us snow is snow, that’s all. We struggle to even think that there are ten snows. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and psycholinguistics studies, the same language forms a structure of reality and shapes the reality we see. Every human being perceives reality in a different way, so (however difficult it is to accept) there is no “one reality” but more reality depending on the mental schemes used for perception (multiple reality theory). Ten different people, on a joint journey, will give ten different accounts of the same journey, despite having been exposed to the same external phenomena.

An external phenomenon (presumed objective reality) does not automatically produce the same subjective experience of the phenomenon (perceptual reality). This is unacceptable to some, the rejection of this concept produces human and managerial rigidity, conflicts, wars, economic disasters, and business failures. Incommunicability arises even within the individual himself, who is dissociated between his own conscious self (for example, professional identity) and his own unconscious (seat of dreams, aspirations, ancestral drives and instincts).

The individual who does not communicate with himself (for example, in the inner dialogue between the rational component, emotions and animal instinct) has difficulty in recognizing his own emotional states, does not understand some of his behaviors or does not know how to explain them, would like to be in one way – eg: extroverted, assertive, calm, integrated, comfortable, confident, flexible – and is in the opposite condition, unable to understand why. At the same time, the individual who “does not know” applies cultural rules and patterns without being aware of them, acts without awareness of what rules, principles, precepts, canons, directions, customs, guidelines or implicit theories he is using.

Principle 4 – Internal incommunicability of the individual himself Successful communication depends on:

the ability to put the intra-individual components in contact with each other, and unblock communication between the different components of the subject himself (conscious, subconscious and unconscious levels);

the degree of awareness acquired by the subject himself with respect to his own culture, in terms of values, beliefs, patterns, attitudes and other acquired cultural traits;

the ability to remove intrapsychic “background noise” (anxieties, worries, fixations, psychological noises) and to implement a strong mental presence during meetings and communicative exchanges.

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In intercultural negotiation

The Birth of Incommunicability as an Expressive and Empathic Block

29 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

Recognizing and Blocking Cognitive Stiffening

The problem of incommunicability has social origins. In the full development of their expressiveness, children and adolescents learn that to be honest, problems arise, and that dedicating time to others is a waste of resources. Stereotypes are born, pre-packaged rules, fluid mental schemes become rigid and are consolidated in the form of beliefs and dogmas. While formal educational systems support the importance of expressiveness and communication, real educational behaviors instead teach exactly the opposite: to close oneself, to defend oneself, not to let go, to be suspicious, not to make people understand how one feels “otherwise take advantage “.

Companies also teach this (basic rule of “do not trust”) handed down from the experience of the “elderly” of the company to young people. In fact, it happens that in the reality of the company, the honesty of others is absolutely not to be taken for granted, not even the intentions, and a permanent alert condition is created, a climate of suspicion that permeates every start of a relationship and every negotiation. This climate has solid foundations in reality and is not a mere construction.

However, this condition of “alert” must become a conscious tactical choice and not a constant state fixed a priori, an “immovable cast” or cognitive block that prevents a confrontation. Only from an open confrontation and from real behavioral tests it will be possible to understand if the other party has serious intentions or is reliable. Many managers, on the other hand, are in an irremovable plaster of a condition of closure and rigidity (cognitive stiffening) and this prevents them from negotiating effectively. Little by little, the blocking of external expressions becomes the inability to recognize what is happening inside. At the best of his listening and expression abilities, the child knows how to express himself with his whole body, he knows how to externalize, he understands moods even without the need for words.

Having become an adult and a manager, this child transforms – after years of corporate life – into a mummified monolith, selfish, closed, centered only on himself, now unable to understand relational dynamics, sometimes even elementary and banal. We note this in a purchase negotiation, when a buyer cannot understand the difference between buying a “piece of goods” or “finding a serious partner”, a supplier of professionalism even before “pieces”. The reality is full of people who cannot explain their need (if you buy) or their value (if you sell). In these conditions, the plastered monolith finds himself doing business, negotiating, having to communicate, express himself, sometimes he even has to understand others (difficult task) and listen (almost impossible task), and he can’t. As we can easily imagine, he will have problems, and the companies he works for will have problems too.

And if he is also a mother or a father, he will also bring these difficulties within the family, handing down a trans-generational psychic discomfort towards his children. There is therefore a meta-goal for each person and group: the unblocking of cognitive rigidity. It is essential to work to recognize one’s own stereotypes and beliefs (or, as we will address in the volume on advanced techniques, one’s “cognitive prototypes”), to act actively to understand them, to identify one’s own states of incommunicability, to commit oneself to eliminate or reduce it, not to wait until communication improves passively or “by a miracle”, but commit yourself personally, as an absolute priority.

Principle 3 – Breaking of incommunicability as a meta-objective Successful communication depends on:

from the awareness of the intercultural dimension of communication;
the degree of commitment and awareness of both members of communication to reduce the negative effects of incommunicability.

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

In intercultural negotiation

Compatibility and training of human resources for negotiation

28 Gennaio 2021 Nessun commento

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

The ALM method

In every team there is a problem of selection (how to enter, what characteristics have those who enter) and training (how to grow team members). When the first phase is wrong, when people are poorly selected, mistakes have a chain effect. Training generally aims to increase existing performance and knowledge (incremental training), and is rarely used with the aim of acting in depth on the personality to change it (transformational training).

In the ALM method, we aim to draw on both models, but it is necessary to be aware that even the most incisive of transformational techniques does not change the genetic parameters, for example, and the selection of subjects remains important. In extreme environments, the American Institute of Medicine has begun to seriously study the “Crew performance breakdown” between astronauts forced to live together in a limited space for a long time. Many air and space accidents were caused by the dynamics of incommunicability between the crew (intragroup incommunicability) or between crew and other crews (crew: working groups, crews) – such as ground controllers – (intergroup incommunicability).

For these reasons, NASA’s Human Factors Research and Technology Division has included additional selection criteria to minimize the risks of intra-group incommunicability starting from the selection of human resources, thus evaluating not only scientific skills but also interpersonal and communication skills. This selection and adequate intercultural training are also considered indispensable for the space missions of the future characterized by intercultural crews. Furthermore, among the selection criteria, no longer only individual skills are evaluated, but an analysis of “compatibility” is carried out (compatibility with the group and the ability to live in the group).

In other words, it has been discovered that some astronauts can be excellent “astronauts” from a technical and scientific point of view, but unsuitable for dealing with diversity, sustaining a relationship with other cultures, and therefore cannot be part of multicultural space crews. A little annoying behavior, repeated for days on end, is enough to generate nervousness and irritation. For companies, there is an implication: (1) not everyone is fit to negotiate, and (2) even less so interculturally. Any intercultural communication mistake made by a salesperson operating abroad (eg: an area manager) or by an entrepreneur, can mean one less contract. Companies and organizations must be aware of this when choosing their commercial or institutional representatives.

Too often, product preparation is confused with an alleged ability to negotiate and communicate. The two are absolutely different. Intercultural negotiators must be properly selected based on their capacity for openness to different cultures, mental flexibility and communication skills, and not only on the basis of their business experience or product preparation.

Principle 2 – Selection of intercultural negotiators The success of intercultural negotiation depends on the organization’s ability to select, with respect to the parameters of:

openness to dialogue;

open-mindedness and ability to deal with diversity;

preparation on general negotiation techniques and openness to one’s own negotiation training as a development lever;

specific preparation on intercultural negotiation techniques and openness to one’s own intercultural training;

ability to draw on flexible and adaptive communicative repertoires, knowing how to adapt to the different cultures with which it has to interact.

So it doesn’t matter to be in a team of American, Chinese and Russian astronauts – in space – to deal with incommunicability and intercultural difficulties. Studies on intercultural communication affect everyone – schools, education, the family, the company. They explore, for example, new tools of intercultural mentorship (support for intercultural adaptation) and the strategies used by mentors to improve intercultural skills, or the problems of World Business and economic globalization, its implications on negotiation between people belonging to different cultures .

These studies analyze the problems of stereotypes, of changes in mutual perception caused by the experiences of direct interaction, of the frustration or confusion experienced in cross-cultural business interactions.

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com

For further information see:

· Website of Studio Trevisani Academy For Business Training, Coaching e Mentoring, in Italian

· Website Dr. Daniele Trevisani in Italian

· Dr. Daniele Trevisani – Website in English

· Comunicazioneaziendale.it Italian website on Business Communication

· Medialab Research Cultural Association for Communication Research

· Dr. Daniele Trevisani Linkedin Profile in English

· Facebook Channel

· YouTube Channel