Here’s how Andree Intercultural Training, Inc. teaches cultural competence….

We have developed a deceptively simple, but very effective tool, the Culture-Code Framework™. It’s a set of six mostly-unconscious patterns (or issues) that occur in all cultures (in many, many variations, of course).

When you recognize basic cultural patterns, you’re much less likely to misunderstand the other person’s intentions or perspective, more likely to self-correct when you do make a mistake and more likely to quickly find a mutually workable solution.

And the real beauty of this tool is that it works for everybody…minority, majority, immigrants…people with lots of intercultural experience and people with little intercultural experience. Like we said…everybody.

And it works for same-nation cultural diversity and for global cultural diversity….

And for all sorts of settings—small businesses, large corporations, non-profits, professional practices, intercultural families, neighborhoods and communities, government and political settings, and just plain thoughtful global citizens. The list goes on and on.

Our training programs are all built on the Culture-Code Framework™:

Management/ Supervisory Skills for a Cross-Cultural Workforce™

Cross-cultural workforces vary a great deal in their composition, their challenges, and what additional skills good managers and supervisors need to be effective. Like all our training, coaching and consulting, this workshop is built on the Culture-Code Framework™. However, emphasis will vary from workshop to workshop, depending upon the skills most needed by workshop participants. For example…

Effective (but not well known) techniques to adapt your own English so you will be understood better by limited-English speakers.

Diagnostic skills to identify less conscious, less “visible” cultural differences that are more difficult to recognize than language differences. These skills are often needed with workgroups that are highly-educated, fluent English speakers, whose culture-based ways of solving problems, participating in meetings, organizing work flow, making decisions, and relating to colleagues and senior management differ substantially from the manager and/or from each other. U.S.-based or global.

Skills to manage/ supervise a workgroup with employees from only one culture, but that culture is different from your own. Skills to help you avoid the “them vs. me” syndrome.

Skills to manage/ supervise a workgroup with employees from many cultures, which may have among themselves conflicting culture-based work patterns.

How to Bridge Cultural Differences Successfully™

Our flagship overview program.

Our workshops are fast-paced, fun and engaging training. The emphasis may vary. But the quality doesn’t.

They use a wide range of learning experiences, including film clips and graphics to illustrate, story examples to make it personal, tools to recognize and analyze when cultural differences are actually occurring (they’re surprisingly hard to recognize!), case studies and exercises in-class to practice the concepts, and on-the-job (or back-in-the-neighborhood) assignments to prompt you to be more culturally competent back in real life.

After all, the main purpose of our training is not to just know about different cultures, but to actually be more effective in intercultural situations.

We offer in-house and open-enrollment instructor-led training, as well as individual coaching and organizational consulting.

Who should take this training?

We think everybody should, of course, but then that’s our bias.

More specifically, though,…front-line customer service employees; managers and supervisors; decision-makers and strategic planners; co-workers and teams; small business owners; retailers; health-care, financial services, social work and other professionals; hospitality and recreation businesses, realtors, politicians and other public servants, teachers, neighbors, families and thoughtful voters and global citizens…

As we said…everybody should have it. People who have had this training just “hear each other” better.

After all, interculturalism is the reality of the 21st Century. We live in an increasingly global world…with global communications, global economy, global technology, global environmental issues…you name it. We all need to think globally. And that’s not just a vague “be nice” to everybody. It takes cultural information, skills and willingness to actually think globally.

Cultural-competence training is different from most education precisely because learners come to it from such a wide range of cultural experiences. This is the reason we intertwine basic and advanced concepts. We have found that our learners self-select…each focusing on what she or he needs to learn. Nobody gets bored and nobody gets over-whelmed. You won’t all learn exactly the same thing. For those who are in the same organization, you will communicate far better because everybody gets onto the same page, using the same Culture-Code Framework™ concepts and terminology.

Some of our past participants say it best…

“For the first time in a long time, I have hope.”

“How to Bridge Cultural Differences Successfully™ is an eye-opening, thought-provoking workshop.”

“I knew that to succeed in America, I would have to learn English, but I never realized that I would have to learn a new pattern of logic, too.” Now I can see why we miscommunicate.

“I’ve learned that I’m not just a bad person.”

“Even in an intercultural marriage, people don’t just automatically recognize culture-based patterns. My ex-husband used to do exactly what you are describing, and I mistrusted him because of it. I wish I had had your training before we were divorced.”

“Now I understand why some of my colleagues get their ideas “heard” better than I do. Thank you.”

“Dr. Andree was able to work through language, ethnic, and cultural barriers with my co-workers and me to help us break down barriers in communication, understand each other in a new way, and create a stronger team.”

“I lead a diverse group of technical professionals (which) brings together many nationalities and cultures. Through How to Bridge Cultural Differences Successfully™, we were able to better open the channels of communication and become aware of differences that were fostered by culture rather than other issues, allowing us to achieve greater success as a group. I recommend her training for those groups who cross similar barriers.”

“Thanks to my new understanding of “culture-code” differences, I can now show our Hispanic immigrant families how to deal with more of the crucial, but invisible, cultural barriers they encounter.” (Social worker, originally from Mexico, now helping recent immigrants)

“THAT’S why my co-worker keeps talking over me. I thought she was just being domineering and rude. She must think I’M rude.”

“Your workshop helped me really improve my skills in bridging the two cultures I must constantly work in.”