Cuba - Working and dealing with the Cubans
Objectives
The aim of this seminar is to significantly improve the participants’ effectiveness in their professional relationships with the Cubans, enabling them to be operational right from the start.
At the end of this training, participants will have acquired insights and techniques to:
- Be aware of their own cultural baggage
- Fully understand Cuban context and culture
- Analyse possible situations in which misunderstandings may arise and identify ways of communicating
- Reduce stress and misunderstandings
- Decipher and understand Cuban decision-making and negotiation processes
Programme Outline
Module 1 : Understanding cultural differences
1. Intercultural awareness : The key to success in international business
- Taking stock of one's own cultural baggage
- The basics of effective intercultural management
- Identifying and going beyond cultural stereotypes
2. Key aspects of Cuban culture
- The largest island in the West Indies
- A multiracial population with a history of international contact
- Slavery, colonisation and revolution: the scars of the past
3. The impact of values and behaviour patterns on professional dealings and relationships
- An open mind and a sense of hospitality
- The family unit: an intergenerational bond
- Interconnecting private and public lives
- Catholicism, santeria and sects: superstitions and spirituality
- Pride, a sense of honour and touchiness
- Exuberance and excitability
- A casual but carefully groomed appearance
- Collective living and community values
4. The Cuban corporate world
- The difficulties and hurdles of a communist management system
- A vertical organisational structure in which skills and responsibilities are not uniformly distributed
- The crushing weight of political control and bureaucracy
- Privilege, favouritism and corruption
Module 2: Succeeding in your work and dealings with the Cubans
1. Effective communication with the Cubans
- The importance of greetings and small-talk
- Intonation and gestures: understanding and using non-verbal communication
- A very direct communication style
- Cuban Spanish: the qualitative advantages to be gained from taking the time to learn the language
2. Adapting your working methods
- Effective management: leadership, experience and professionalism
- Hearing, listening and deciding
- Promoting cohesion and a solid team spirit
- Encouraging feedback: instilling dynamism and a friendly working atmosphere
- Project management, the team spirit, a sense of service
- Pitfalls to be avoided
3. Successful meetings and negotiations with the Cubans
- Identifying decision-makers and power chains/power conflicts
- Identifying negotiation styles
- Time, priority and deadline management
- Understanding written contracts, their interpretation and implications
- Organising the post-negotiation phase
4. Final handy tips
- Caution, patience and humility
- Protocol and etiquette
- Social standards, gifts, business cards, dress code
- Sensitive subjects: politics, history, religion
- Humour: a double-edged sword
