communication that works – Dr. Daniele Trevisani – Formazione Aziendale, Ricerca, Coaching

Cognitive Economics of Communication in Groups and Prioritization Skills

trevisani@studiotrevisani.it — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 11:43:41 +0000

© 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

Deciding Priorities (What to Talk About) and Formats (How to Talk)

Cognitive economics deals with the efficient use of mental resources. An intercultural meeting poses high problems in the use of resources, since they must be divided and “absorbed” both by the debate on the contents and by the communication difficulties generated by linguistic and cultural differences.

The problems of cognitive economics therefore become even more pressing than intra-cultural meetings. We can therefore indicate that the use of time and resources becomes a meta-competence of the intercultural negotiator. Among his gifts are therefore the prioritization skills, the ability to set priorities, to be able to answer the fundamental question: what is good to talk about? How to manage scarce and limited time?

Each meeting has a high cost. Let’s simply try to calculate the hourly cost of many executives who spend a morning, arriving by plane from different countries, the cost of rooms and materials, the cost of preparation. Each group that comes together to achieve a goal may or may not give itself a strategy to optimize the resources deployed during the meeting. Intercultural prioritization skills require the negotiator to actively undertake to define which priorities to treat, thus also acting on the format of the negotiation, as well as to set the basic terms to be treated.

Defining which priorities to treat also means making very concrete choices: what to talk about first, what to talk about next. How to talk about it, with what approach, with what attitude. Other priorities concern the establishment of a positive conversational climate: without the right climate, any discussion on the contents becomes more difficult. For this, for example, it is necessary to understand that there is a precise relationship between climates and communication styles.

Some communication styles are deleterious to the achievement of a result, are diseconomic, dysfunctional, and must be grasped (in others), and avoided (for themselves). The subject of communication economics therefore requires:

1. Ability to recognize the (limited) attentional resources available for negotiation (resource awareness);

2. ability to understand the boundaries of time available (awareness of the times);

3. ability to move within these boundaries, deciding the most appropriate contents and recognizing the dispersive ones (awareness of strategic contents);

4. ability to manage the phases and times of the meetings (awareness of the interaction sequences)

5. ability to act on communication styles appropriate to the different phases, and on the attitudes underlying the styles of relationships (contextual awareness of communication styles).

The main themes of the economics of negotiation communication are highlighted in the following principle.

Principle 15 – Economics of communication and centering of negotiation

The quality of the negotiation depends on:

The ability to center the contents of the conversation;
The ability to manage one’s attention resources (attentional recharge and management of personal energies) and grasp the states of others;
Awareness of the time limits for negotiation;
The ability to segment negotiation times, distinguishing the negotiation phases and their specific objectives, in particular by mentally and de facto separating the listening time (empathy) and the proactive time;
The ability to modulate one’s own communication styles, breaking the communicative rigidity, knowing how to adapt the styles to the different phases, e.g. friend in the warming up and small talk phases (introductory chat), psychoanalytic in the empathic phases, assertive in the propositional phases, and other styles appropriate to the context.

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L'articolo Cognitive Economics of Communication in Groups and Prioritization Skills proviene da Dr. Daniele Trevisani - Formazione Aziendale, Ricerca, Coaching.

Areas of Application of Intercultural Negotiation

trevisani@studiotrevisani.it — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 10:06:52 +0000

The Effects of Globalization

Intercultural negotiation is an increasingly pervasive phenomenon due to globalization and the intensification of inter-ethnic, inter-religious, international, business, cultural or social relations. Remaining in the business field, the cases in which intercultural negotiation becomes more evident are:

1. Selling abroad in neighboring cultures and distant cultures.
2. Buying abroad or building supply management agreements, negotiating with foreign suppliers.
3. Business agreements for the distribution of goods or services abroad
4. Joint ventures (construction of companies managed by several partners of different nationalities) for production facilities abroad.
5. Mergers between companies and acquisitions of companies in which the organizational cultures of origin are substantially different (as occurs in almost all cases, both at an intra-national level and at the level of international acquisitions and mergers).
6. Manage the workforce in third countries.
7. Manage the foreign workforce operating in your company.
8. Do multinational training, training programs involving human resources operating in different countries.
9. Intercultural training: cultural diversity between the trainer and the participants, or cultural diversity within the group of students.
10. Coordinate international working groups.
11. Diplomatic negotiation and international agreements.
12. Peacekeeping, peacekeeping, conflict prevention and resolution.
13. International contracts, cross-cultural legal negotiation.

On the mediated communications front, we see the urgency of an intercultural approach whenever problems arise in:

14. Information communication campaigns in distant cultures.
15. Advertising communication spread in different cultures and on international markets.
16. Creation of persuasive and promotional messages on an international scale.
17. Development of product concepts of international significance, destined to operate on global and different markets.
18. Concept development of products aimed solely at a linguistic-cultural area, whose design takes place in a different starting culture.
19. Build distribution and sales structures in different countries.
20. Create personnel incentive and motivation systems appropriate to the local culture. On the social front, instead, we see an urgency of intercultural negotiation and communication skills when addressing the following issues:
21. Scholastic integration of foreign children.
22. Intercultural psychological therapy and intercultural counseling.
23. Dynamics of ethnic adaptation.
24. Interreligious dialogue.
25. International development projects.
26. Social communication campaigns (public health, disease prevention, nutrition education, drugs, and others) conducted in culturally diverse areas.

Over twenty areas of strong and urgent problematic characterize the field of intercultural communication. The vastness and severity of the underlying problems – in this incomplete list – highlights the urgency of a high level of attention to the dynamics of intercultural communication.

For further information see:

L'articolo Areas of Application of Intercultural Negotiation proviene da Dr. Daniele Trevisani - Formazione Aziendale, Ricerca, Coaching.

Clarify Keywords and Eliminate Misunderstanding

trevisani@studiotrevisani.it — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 11:38:06 +0000

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).

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L'articolo Clarify Keywords and Eliminate Misunderstanding proviene da Dr. Daniele Trevisani - Formazione Aziendale, Ricerca, Coaching.

Apparent Details and Systems of Signification

trevisani@studiotrevisani.it — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 21:51:37 +0000

© 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:

L'articolo Apparent Details and Systems of Signification proviene da Dr. Daniele Trevisani - Formazione Aziendale, Ricerca, Coaching.

Corporate Memetics

trevisani@studiotrevisani.it — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 13:16:15 +0000

© 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:

L'articolo Corporate Memetics proviene da Dr. Daniele Trevisani - Formazione Aziendale, Ricerca, Coaching.