Intercultural Communication Institute

SIIC 2009 Description

15 \| Managing and Leading Small Groups in Challenging
	Multicultural Environments

This workshop features a variety of learning experiences that will help participants develop practical tools and strategies that can be used immediately for achieving positive results with real-life groups in their workplaces. By means of hands-on experience and evaluative discussion, participants will develop a sense of confidence in their ability to intervene safely and positively.

Designed for
Leaders, managers, trainers, teachers, coaches, consultants, facilitators, and others involved with “difficult” groups or who are interested in acquiring tools to help them understand the dynamics of leading, coaching, and creating opportunities for improving performance for multicultural groups.

Objectives
Participants will have the opportunity to:

Consider a new approach to achieving reliability and predictability in organizations by understanding the interface among the worker, culture, and the workplace
Experience a range of intervention approaches and strategies, including appreciative inquiry, wisdom of crowds, positive language for change, creative café, multiple intelligences, equilibrium theory, and others leading to shared awareness and consensus
Learn and practice several quick and easy methods for creating “a-ha!” moments in groups
Understand the theoretical underpinnings of different interventions
Discuss how a changing world economy adds to the challenges faced by work-team leaders
Use the Thomas-Killman instrument to understand their own and others’ attitudes toward potential conflict situations
Practice facilitating interventions in a safe, supportive environment
Discuss the intercultural implications of different intervention approaches
Devise and discuss specific approaches for participants’ individual situations and concerns

Learning Activities
The workshop will be highly interactive, and include:

Hands-on experience in facilitating interventions
Mini-lectures on intervention approaches
Frequent small- and large-group discussions
Use of different media to illustrate relevant concepts
Case studies based on participants’ experiences
Design and testing of interventions tailored to participants’ specific needs

Faculty: Todd Conklin and Richard Harris

Dr. Todd Conklin is a deputy group leader with nuclear material information management at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is interested in organizational culture, especially the cultures that seem to arise around workplace power and communication. Todd lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and works extensively in his home state with community groups, schools, civic clubs, and nonprofit groups with special social impact.

Dr. Richard Harris, born in London, U.K., is a tenured professor in the faculty of management at Chukyo University, Japan, where he has lived for over 25 years. He teaches intercultural communication in Japanese at undergraduate and graduate levels and travels extensively out of personal and professional curiosity. Richard’s eclectic research interests range from the influence of physical and psychological space on intercultural encounters to the representation of ourselves and the other in media, museums, tourism, and interpersonal interaction. He has written several papers on the cultural impact of space, on the representation of cultures in Southeast Asian museums, and is the author of Paradise: A Cultural Guide, a study of cross-cultural concepts of the ideal.