Cultural Training

The expatriate training program is explicitly designed to support the needs of global organisations that use strategic expatriate movement to achieve their goals.

The success of an organisation’s future relies on its ability to manage change in staff and culture. The complexities of a global organisation’s culture are often unspoken. Therefore, organisations that seek to understand the multi-layered, diverse leadership of their teams are changing the future.

Organisations today, are realizing the effect the emotional intelligence of their leaders has on team productivity. Cross-cultural communication dynamics between home and host countries are the focus of this short-term program targeted at expatriates and their leadership teams. Each day of customized training explores a different way of looking at how to leverage diversity and develop effective team dynamics.[expand title=”Read More…”]This two- or three-day program is targeted at expatriates and ideally includes the involvement of their teams.

An Insights Profile is the Jungian-based psychometric component used and can be translated into 40 languages. The Insights into Personal Effectiveness Program serves as the launch pad for an expatriate’s ability to improve their impact on organisational effectiveness. The Managing Ecoshock Program is designed to highlight the psycho-social challenges faced by an expatriate during an assignment. Although experience teaches that these programs naturally compliment one another, they can also stand alone.

Afterwards, expatriates in emerging and global organisations can begin to design and plan their self, team and organisational strategies to complement the political and cultural complexities they face. For both expatriate and organisation, the expatriate training program specifically addresses the needs of global leadership development. Equipping participants with communication strategies, managing diversity tools and awareness of their responsibility to lead communities, this program is supplemented by growth options depending on the needs and requirements of any one individual or team.

The strategic goals of these programs combined are:

  • To provide a thorough introduction to the communication strategies involved in optimising a culturally diverse environment.
  • To enable participants to, cognitively and effectively, increase their ability to recognise, understand and appreciate diversity in the workplace and leadership community.
  • To enhance expatriates’ and their teams’ cooperative conflict management skills.[/expand]

Insights into Personal Effectiveness Program (1 – 2 Day)

The Insights into Personal Effectiveness Program is a powerful interpersonal effectiveness training program. It introduces the Insights psychometric system that makes accessible the predictable difficulty in understanding the differences in personalities and the roadblocks these naturally create in working relationships.[expand title=”Read More…”]Using an experiential approach, accommodating all learning styles, participants learn a common language and framework to understand personality differences. With this awareness they are able to recognize and adapt to the needs of different kinds of people and therefore enhance their capacity to communicate and build relationships. Emphasis is placed on leading self, team and organisation with explicit instructing in conflict management skills.

At the end of the program participants will:

  • Have an understanding of self and their impact upon others.
  • Understand the behavioural style and communication needs of others, including internal and external customers.
  • Understand the reasons for conflict that are rooted in personality differences.
  • Develop skills in “adapting and connecting” to conflict response styles of self and others to better manage interpersonal interactions in different situations.
  • Communicate more effectively using appropriate interpersonal skills to foster teamwork and positive relations within the work environment.[/expand]

Managing Ecoshock Training Program (1 Day)

The Managing Ecoshock Program is a learning tool for expatriates in how to understand the dynamics of living abroad.[expand title=”Read More…”]It highlights the psychological realities of culture shock and the international assignment cycle, providing resources and recommendations for ensuring a successful assignment.

At the end of the program participants will:

  • Understand the different phases of the international assignment cycle.
  • Understand how to identify the causes and symptoms of culture shock during an expatriate assignment.
  • Have an opportunity to assess and reflect on their own level of culture shock susceptibility.
  • Have an understanding of how to successfully plan to combat culture shock.[/expand]

Principal Consultant

Dixie Freitas, BA(HONS) SocSci, MEd Curriculum Studies

Dixie is an experienced training and development consultant with a successful expatriate history. Her recent research explores and measures how vital connections between theory and practice are made through training people in self-awareness and cooperative conflict skills. She finds intrigue in the individual or group’s pursuit of best practice coupled with emotionally intelligent leadership.

She has twenty years of professional experience both overseas and in South Africa that spans the private, government, education and non-profit arenas. Her professional areas of expertise are leadership and expatriate development, program design for liaison management and enterprise, and workflow analysis for Total Quality Learning (TQL).[expand title=”Read More…”]

She is passionate about developing groups of professionals on interpersonal effectiveness. Dixie is a published writer on topics of international expatriate management, is an accredited Insights Learning & Development Practitioner, and a practitioner member of Coaches and Mentors of South Africa. She currently resides in Cape Town, South Africa with her husband and child.[/expand]