Working with countries in South-East Asia

Managers and staff working with South-East Asian countries (Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam).

• Create your Cultural Profile
• Access to 70 Country Packs
• Pragmatic, fun e-learning
• Interactive method
• Acquire operational tools

The aim of this seminar is to significantly improve the participants’ effectiveness in their professional relationships with the Asians, enabling them to be operational right from the start.
 

At the end of this training, participants will have acquired the necessary skills to:

• Be aware of their own cultural baggage
• Fully understand the Asian context and culture
• Analyze possible situations in which misunderstandings may arise and identify ways of communicating
• Reduce stress and misunderstandings
• Decipher and understand decision-making and negotiation processes

Module 1: understanding cultural differences

1. Cultural awareness: the key to success in the 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 South-Asian culture

• Between the Pacific Ocean, the China Sea and the Indian Ocean: a mountainous, maritime and tropical continent
• A huge diversity of ethnicity
• Civilizations interacting with each other, between India and China
• The marks left by colonization since the 16th Century
• Social and politic context (from royalty to the dictatorship of the proletariat)
• Educational system

3. The impact of South-Asian values on professional values

• Family values; the role of community, age and hierarchy
• The South-Asian woman; corporate world or ordination?
• The role of relation: cult of the ancestor, mo and badong, Buddhism
• Underlining the keys of understanding between Asia and the West

4. The corporate world in South-East Asia

• Paternalistic structures, reactivity of the family structures
• Fatalism
• Many influences for management; Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese…
• The role of the State, the king and the army

Module 2: Optimize one’s professional action: the keys for a harmonious management

1. Efficient communication with South-Asians

• Verbal communication, deciphering answers
• Non-verbal communication
• Warm heart/cold heart
• The use of the different languages and the role of the interpreter

2. Adapt one’s methods to work efficiently with South-Asians

• An efficient management: the notion of authority and duty
• The importance of working in groups
• Paternalism inside of the enterprise
• Absenteeism, motivation and staff turnover
• Delegating work and responsibilities

3. The keys for successful meetings and negotiations with South-Asians

• Giving relationships that personal touch
• The art of negotiation
• Manipulation?
• The meanings of a contract

4. Final handy tips

• Dos and don’ts
• Rituals and etiquette
• Sensitive subjects like sex and politics
• Humor: a double-edged sword