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Howell’s Staircase. Steps towards fluidity

Copyright by Dr. Daniele Trevisani. Article extracted with author’s permission from the book “Ascolto attivo ed Empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace” (translated title: “Active Listening and Empathy: The Secretes of Effective Communication”. The book’s rights are on sale in any language. Please contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani for information at the website www.danieletrevisani.com

If you were born with wings, I don’t see why you should crawl

if you were born with wings, I don’t see why you shouldn’t try to use them

if you are not born with wings, but you really want them, they will grow

until you don’t even notice you’re using them.

and you will fly high in the sky, free.

As highlighted in “Il Coraggio delle Emozioni”[1], Howell’s studies[2] summarise the human being’s climb towards higher level skills and competences, well exposed in Howell’s Staircase model.

This climb also applies to emotional and empathic listening skills. The different statuses can be extended to the field of training, Coaching or counselling. Let’s see their nature:

Picture 3 – Schematic visualisation of the Staircase of Competences

Howell staircase of competences model

  1. unconscious incompetence: what I don’t know, elements or gaps that escape my consciousness, my self-awareness;
  2. conscious incompetence: skill gaps of which I have become aware; becoming aware of a previously unknown lack of skills can be emotionally painful but it’s a necessary stage for learning;
  3. conscious competences: what I know I know; execution is possible, but a conscious attention must still be paid to the mechanisms, to the process at hand;
  4. unconscious competences: what I do without having to think about it. The execution takes place without having to think consciously, it uses psycho-motor and/or linguistic patterns already acquired, and this is why it requires a small or limited effort. It is based on a strong mastery of the mechanisms in action. It highlights the presence of mastery in skills, an internalised, definitively acquired ability;
  5. super-competences: the level of maximum mastery combined with an extreme technique training and personal skills that are out of the ordinary, which differentiates a key-performer, a star performer, from others, although they are good. It also includes intuition, bodily intelligence, multiple intelligences that converge to form the world’s best pilots, the world’s best musicians, the world’s best surgeons, the world’s best dancers, and any other kind of person who excels beyond the norm in his or her field.

Howell’s model was originally designed to study a ranking of states of intercultural empathy. Howell intended to study the different levels of a person’s ability to adapt them to a different cultural context (overcoming the difficulties that come with settling in a non-native country): when can I move well and smoothly within a culture, having incorporated and understood it completely?

This question was the starting point, but the model was then taken up by many as a general scheme of learning degrees in every field, sport, management, education.

William Howell and Stella Ting-Toomey also subsequently introduced a fifth category, Unconscious Super-Competence, to highlight those who, in a process of adaptation, manage to develop skills that are clearly above average, exceptional, above the limit.

The validity of this scale is wide; it concerns all kinds of learning in life. It helps us to ask where we are, or where we have stopped, and, above all, invites us to reflect on the fact that there is room for improvement everywhere and at all times. Also in learning to manage our emotions and develop empathy.

[1] “Il coraggio delle emozioni. Energie per la vita, la comunicazione e la crescita personale“, di Daniele Trevisani, Franco Angeli editore, 2015

[2] Howell, William S. (1982). The empathic communicator. University of Minnesota: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

____

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

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  • Further reading on Howell’s Staircase of Competencies (modified from wikipedia)

Four stages of competence

In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the “conscious competence” learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.

History

Management trainer Martin M. Broadwell described the model as “the four levels of teaching” in February 1969.[1] Paul R. Curtiss and Phillip W. Warren mentioned the model in their 1973 book The Dynamics of Life Skills Coaching.[2] The model was used at Gordon Training International by its employee Noel Burch in the 1970s; there it was called the “four stages for learning any new skill”.[3] Later the model was frequently attributed to Abraham Maslow, incorrectly since the model does not appear in his major works.[4]

Overview

The four stages suggest that individuals are initially unaware of how little they know, or unconscious of their incompetence. As they recognize their incompetence, they consciously acquire a skill, then consciously use it. Eventually, the skill can be utilized without it being consciously thought through: the individual is said to have then acquired unconscious competence.[5]

Several elements, including helping someone “know what they don’t know” or recognize a blind spot, can be compared to some elements of a Johari window, although Johari deals with self-awareness, while the four stages of competence deals with learning stages.

Stages

howell competence hierarchy 4 levels

The four stages are:

  1. Unconscious incompetence
    The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.[5]
  2. Conscious incompetence
    Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
  3. Conscious competence
    The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.[5]
  4. Unconscious competence
    The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become “second nature” and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

See also

References

  1. ^ Broadwell, Martin M. (20 February 1969). “Teaching for learning (XVI)”. wordsfitlyspoken.org. The Gospel Guardian. Retrieved 11 May 2018.
  2. ^ Curtiss, Paul R.; Warren, Phillip W. (1973). The dynamics of life skills coaching. Life skills series. Prince Albert, Saskatchewan: Training Research and Development Station, Dept. of Manpower and Immigration. p. 89. OCLC 4489629.
  3. ^ Adams, Linda. “Learning a new skill is easier said than done”. gordontraining.com. Gordon Training International. Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  4. ^ Hansen, Alice (2012). “Trainees and teachers as reflective learners”. In Hansen, Alice; et al. (eds.). Reflective learning and teaching in primary schools. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: Learning Matters; Sage Publications. pp. 32–48 (34). doi:10.4135/9781526401977.n3. ISBN 9780857257697. OCLC 756592765.
  5. ^ Jump up to:a b c Flower, Joe (January 1999). “In the mush”. Physician Executive. 25 (1): 64–66. PMID 10387273.[dead link]

Further reading

A few examples among many peer-reviewed articles that mention the four stages:

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In Empathy and Active Listening

Listening, empathy, emotions, conversational leadership

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Copyright by Dr. Daniele Trevisani. Article extracted with author’s permission from the book “Ascolto attivo ed Empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace” (translated title: “Active Listening and Empathy: The Secretes of Effective Communication”. The book’s right is on sale in any language. Please contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani for information at the website www.danieletrevisani.com

_____________

People do not listen, they just wait for their turn to talk. (Chuck Palahniuk)

Effective listening essentially has two meanings:

1) when listening has been useful to gather information and better understand the state of things, facts, and people;

2) when listening has been a pleasant, welcoming moment of relationship, in which we were able to act as an emotional container for the person.

When these two situations occur, we are experiencing effective listening. It is a quite rare situation. During a lifetime, no gold is as rare and as precious as someone who understands you. Some questions can be useful: Have you ever had the feeling that a person is not listening to you? That they do not want to hear you, or that they cannot hear you at all? Or have you ever felt that while you are talking, the other one is saying things halfway, not saying everything, holding something back?

Out of willingness, sometimes, or out of incapacity, or out of fear, who knows? Have you ever felt that persons you are talking, give a false idea of themselves, practising some form of “Impressions Management” (creating an artificial image of themselves)?

Have you ever intended to talk to someone in order to deepen a certain theme or situation, while the person continues to escape, run away, avoid? Have you ever felt the presence of a ‘core‘ behind a person’s talk, of content – ideas, opinions, projects – which is only observed in transparency, but does not emerge, no matter how hard the person tries to explain himself?

If you have ever experienced even one of these situations, you had been practising ‘listening beyond words‘, ‘heightened perception‘ and approached or approached the topics of active listening and empathy. Moreover, if there were interests at stake, you have experienced the importance of Conversational Leadership and the ability to direct the course of a conversation. In your own life, you have also experienced, how rare active listening is, and that being listened to is quite rare, compared to normal life where everything is rushing, and there is no time for anything.

Rather than blaming others for what they do or do not do, for whoever wants to, the main goal of this book is offering tools to improve your listening, whether at work or in everyday life, and practice quality listening, active listening, and empathic listening. The spirit of Virgil’s words, his invitation to always seek to understand, is the foundation that runs throughout this book: the underlying value that inspires us to practice active listening. You can be tired of everything, but not of understanding. (Virgil)

Listening is perception, and perceiving for us is normal, physiological.

You did it hundreds and thousands of times, even just observing people in how they are dressed or how they walk – inevitably. You did it whether you wanted to or not. As perception has become very superficial, so has listening. This is what matters, dishonourable because acute perception is a privileged path to truth.

Conversational leadership is the ability to restore the power of listening, to direct the conversation on the issues that interest us, or on the formats that we want to strategically activate (and listening is one of them). Why is leadership important for listening skills? Because leadership is a voluntary act, and in this volume, listening is considered a voluntary act, decided by the listener, not a random act likely to happen without paying attention. Human beings are endowed with natural listening skills, they use their hearing ability to understand sounds and words, because this is vital for their survival.

If we did not know how to listen, neither to sounds nor to intentions (e.g., aggressive, hostile, or friendly), we would already be extinct. It is believed that it takes courage to stand up and speak out, to have one is said. Well, very often it also takes courage to put our mind there, where we are now, to listen and look inside the soul and mind of a person. There is also courage in listening. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. (Sir Winston Churchill)

Listen to emotions: emotions and communication

Emotions and communication are strongly related.

Emotions and communication

In addition to the verbal data (objects, subjects, verbs, adjectives, and other speech elements), we can always notice an emotional background in communication (the outer part of Plutchik’s wheel presented below). Sometimes this background becomes more intense, and we can almost ‘feel’ or ‘perceive’ better the emotional background than single words (area of intermediate emotions). When we enter the extreme emotions area, the intense ones are placed in the middle of the model, words become almost useless, because we are inundated by the emotion coming from the other, and this ends up overwhelming any content.

Plutchik’s Solid or Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions is one of the best representations of how emotions work. We must keep in mind that we are communicators too, so this system also applies when we are the ones talking.

Plutchick wheel of emotions

Inevitably, in a communicative exchange, we always have an underlying exchange of emotions.  Some people are particularly good and very quick at grasping their inner emotions, directing them, dominating them, making use of them as they wish. For example, speaking in public in front of thousands of people without feeling the slightest bit of anxiety.  On the other hand, other people fall victims of their emotions, may become victims of a love that is blind and deaf to all denials, and persevere in loving a person who does not love them, or who has never even shown any signs of love.

They may be afraid even thinking about the idea of speaking in public and fear it like the worst of poisons.  Each communicative situation (COMSIT) owns specific meanings and emotional undertones. COMSITs are specific frames or communicative moments that can be distinguished from each other, such as a dialogue between friends, or an argument, or giving explanations, and a thousand other possibilities in relationships.

In each COMSIT, different degrees of incommunicability and different types of emotions arise4.  What can we do then? The way, the only real way, is “to train oneself to emotions”. This way, it sounds like ‘training to live’, something intangible. And it is precisely this training in the intangible that makes ‘training in emotions’ an exercise in great emotional intelligence. Such as a refined gym of Experiential Coaching, for those who design active training exercises on emotions. 

This involves dealing with emotions in an ’emotional laboratory’ where they can be experienced and then ‘debriefed’ with the support of a trainer, coach, counsellor, or psychologist, depending on the type of intervention.  Working on corporate groups and not on clinical pathology situations, requires the Trainer and the Counsellor as main figures and reference. These “emotion workshops” must be engineered by using videos, images, letters, themed dialogues, and any kind of exercise involving emotions.  As Howell said about our ‘unconscious emotional incompetence’, at first, we may find it all a bit silly or we may be ‘clumsy’, but then we will ‘climb’ this peak, step by step, until we reach a strong emotional competence. 

This competence is necessary, the higher the career position is. Think of the need for emotional balance in a judge, or a surgeon, or a police officer, or in specific situations such as taking a penalty shot, or in difficult and extreme sports where emotions are everything, or almost everything.  Emotions are often mixed, a cross between different emotional states, as we see in this picture showing the primary, secondary, and tertiary links between emotion dyads in Plutchik’s model. 

mixed emotions

Links between emotional state produce different emotions in different emotional state (Mixed Emotions), our everyday actual emotional truth.

ascolto attivo ed empatia

© Article translated from the book “Ascolto attivo ed empatia. I segreti di una comunicazione efficace“. copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in any language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact Dr. Daniele Trevisani.

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communication interference
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The Interference of Communication in the 2V Model

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale. Comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the Website on Intercultural Negotiation

Trend and Progression of Interpersonal and Corporate Relationships in the 2V Model

Interference in communication due to code and language occurs when communicators do not have an adequately shared code, and misunderstandings occur.Wrong decodings are possible especially on ambiguous words and statements, such as “collaborate”, “implement”, “relate”, “share a goal”.

A further outcome of the different code / language is evident in the lack of clarity and precision, where one or more of the participants in the conversation use bureaucratic repertoires and / or imprecise languages.

Recognition exercise of “crawling” objectives

Create a company meeting through role-playing, in which subject 1 (who plays the role of the personnel manager) asks the sales manager (subject 2) to better “relate” to their Eastern European area manager to evaluate his performance.Subject 1 will use linguistic nuances such as “collaborate”, “implement”, “relate”, “share a goal”. In reality 1 has a precise motivational core (firing the area manager), a creeping goal, which remains in the background.Evaluate the results of the meeting between subject 1 and subject 2.

Interferences of communication due to worldview and ideology take place when communicators have different worldviews and ideologies, but this diversity acts in a latent way and without the knowledge of communicators.

The 2v model can be used to view the progress of a relationship and its degree of incommunicability.Given a distance between subjects at time 1 (t1), we can evaluate how this distance increases or decreases in terms of vision of the mode and communication code (t2) and measure the situation again at other moments of time (t3), (t4) .

We can thus reconstruct the trajectories of relationships and visualize the trends in relationships.

Hypothesis of progress of an intercultural relationship

The case shown highlights a relationship distinguished by the following times:

  • T1: the relationship starts with an average sharing of code and vision of the world;
  • T2: after an initial confrontation, the two subjects begin to reduce the linguistic communication distances, the distance due to the misunderstanding of the terms and the poorly shared vocabulary decreases, several previously incomprehensible terms are explained. However, this generates a chance to understand worldviews better than before. It turns out, therefore, that the underlying ideologies and values ​​are more different than previously thought, and therefore the distance on the ideological-value variable increases;
  • T3: After a closer confrontation on the basic values, new areas of commonality and common interests are discovered, even the common language becomes richer and more articulated in shared terms and concepts.

This curve represents a simple hypothesis, one of the many possibilities that exist in the world of relationships. In fact, it is also possible that distances and distances will increase, and ever stronger conflicts arise.

Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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the improvement of communication
In intercultural negotiation

The improvement of communication

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale. Comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the Website on Intercultural Negotiation

Intercultural Levels and the Limits of Communication

The accuracy of the information exchange can be improved by reducing the distance along the “code” dimension, which is equivalent to reducing the linguistic distance. In some cases this means learning a foreign language, a dialect or subdialect within a nation, but also learning a professional language, a non-verbal code that characterizes other cultures, proxemic gestures and modalities, cadences and paralinguistic aspects of communication.

The agreement can be improved by decreasing the degree of difference between communicators in values, myths, beliefs, attitudes and ideologies – differences that can have negative consequences in the communication process. Furthermore, as the two are highly interrelated, an increase in code understanding will increase the ability of worldview understanding, and vice versa.

The 2V model can be a useful tool for analyzing hypothetical types of communications. However, the code and worldview dimensions should not always be considered completely different or completely the same, as they vary along a continuum of differences / similarities. Intercultural levels depend on the quantity and quality of difference in the world view and in the communicative code.

On this scale of communication differences, we believe that the ends of the two continuums (the COMSITS presented) represent only hypothetical points and that no real communication event can ever be located in one of the four “pure” COMSITS. In a visual way, this concept of “gradualness” in the differences can be represented by erasing the separations between the 4 quadrants and instead inserting a rating scale.

A further relevant reflection consists in evaluating whether all the points in the table could be realistically represented by a possible communication event.

Indeed, we believe that no real communication event can be located exactly on the edges (the perimeter of the table).

The underlying hypothesis depends on four axioms of communication that we formulate below:

  • COMCOND 1) impossibility of having a completely identical communication code between two individuals;
  • COMCOND 2) impossibility of having a completely equal worldview between two individuals;
  • COMCOND 3) impossibility of having a completely different communication code between two individuals;
  • COMCOND 4) impossibility of having a completely different world view between two individuals.

Some research perspectives on communication support these hypotheses.The genetic codes that govern the biological foundations of non-verbal and paralinguistic communication are similar for every human being.Human beings, like primates, always share a certain degree of similarity and are able to encode and decode signs and signals in some circumstances (eg: physical aggression) without differences between cultures.

In general, the ability to interpret human behavior increases in situations in which cultural codes are less relevant and biological codes take over, such as situations involving survival (aggression) and other more instinctive behaviors (such as eating or sex) .

Furthermore, the research results of Eckman and Friesen (1987) revealed a high level of agreement between cultures in their interpretation of facial expressions of emotions.Saral (1972) also highlighted the transversal and cross-cultural nature of facial communication and expressions.A decrease in the relevance of the cultural code and an increase in the relevance of the instinctive code can also be observed in human-animal communication and in general in communication between species, particularly in conditions of danger.

In other words, people of different cultures or creatures belonging to different species have the ability to perceive the aggressive or non-verbal friendly behavior of a member of another culture or species, while more cultural behaviors will be less interpretable. Biological constraints also have an influence on the impossibility of having a complete difference in the world view (COMCOND 4).

Every human being shares at a basic and instinctual level the tendency to reproduce the species, the attempt not to die of hunger or cold, the protection of children, and in general the behavior of biologically evolved living beings.The evolution towards self-realization is then one of the states that most characterizes every human being, as Carl Rogers points out, and cultures and religions only establish different modalities or “variations on the theme” of this underlying tendency towards self-realization.

The pursuit of self-destruction, the deliberate pursuit of hunger and suffering for oneself and one’s children, the pursuit of non-self-realization (whatever that means for a person) are extremely anomalous and deviant characteristics of the child’s behavior. ‘human being.

Statistically these cases represent outliers, that is cases extremely out of the norm.What we have in common biologically as human beings is vastly superior to what divides us culturally. Empathy techniques (learning to understand the world view of others) and greater attention to the optimization of communication codes can make an enormous contribution to the development of intercultural communication.

The improvement of intercultural communication, in turn, generates an enormous impulse to the realization of common development projects between states, cultures and countries – projects that do not have geographical barriers and borders, but unite people towards a common tendency to personal, social self-realization. and economical.

Human behavior is determined by two types of forces: from cultural conditioning (ontogenetic, learned during growth) and from hereditary biological conditioning (phylogenetic, received from DNA), and ontogenetic (cultural) learning is always grafted onto a phylogenetic basis, which constitutes our common heritage, and no culture will ever be able to scratch, but at the most it will be able to cover, to make people forget.

At the same time, the impossibility of a completely equal code derives from the great depth and semantic variety of signs (the semantic field is the extension and range of possible meanings of a sign).The meaning attributed to the signs is not a stable or “given” element, but is the result of a symbolic agreement between individuals, that is, it is the product of socializationand interpersonal and intergroup agreements, but socialization varies continuously over time, space, and between individual and individual, group and group, and therefore the meanings of the signs also continuously vary.

The signs, and the codes, are alive, and they change. Each dyad of individuals, each group, creates its own communication code over time, attributing particular meanings to the signs used.

This happens, and often unconsciously, within companies. The error determines how much it is taken for granted that the interlocutor of the counterparty company has a shared code. This problem requires a great work of metacommunication, that communicative activity that serves to explain the meaning attributed to the signs emitted and verify the accuracy of the meaning perceived in the signs received.

As with the code, no individual, no organized group, possesses exactly the same range of values, behaviors, attitudes, worldviews, beliefs, ideological positions, over the whole range of objects and situations that become objects of communication. Recognizing diversity is the first useful tool to be able to face it.

Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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Union Between the Two Variables for a Unified Picture of Communication Difficulties
In intercultural negotiation

Union Between the Two Variables for a Unified Picture of Communication Difficulties

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale. Comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the Website on Intercultural Negotiation

Characteristics of Communication Situations

By combining the two cultural variables (1) code and (2) worldview, in a matrix, we can identify four hypothetical communication situations (COMSITS). Fig. 15 – T2V matrix

Similar COMSIT B COMSIT A
Different COMSIT D COMSIT C
/////////// Different Similar

In this matrix we can trace a large part of the communicative interactions.

6.4.5. COMSIT A: characteristics

COMSIT A is defined as “same communication code – same worldview”. The communication process is easy and without problems, since we have precision in the exchange of information and agreement on the objectives. In COMSIT A, the lack of differences in the communication code generates a high degree of accuracy and efficiency in the exchange of information, without misinterpretations, misunderstandings, misunderstandings, semantic confusions and the need for translation. At the same time, the completely equal vision of the world among communicators – the concordance of underlying orientations and values, produces convergence of goals and vision. This circumstance is, however, only hypothetical, as the differences in communication code occur to varying degrees in every human process of communication.

Conflict exercise based on the discovery of the different “view of things” Analyze in pairs at least two situations of conflict, divergence or misunderstanding with people from your family or business, from the present or from the past. In particular, analyze:

  • the theme of the conflict (what the conflict was about, what produced it);
  • our “world view” on the subject;
  • the vision of others on the subject;
  • when, how and where did a different vision of things appear;
  • what results were produced and in what times;
  • what is the status of the relationship today.

6.4.6. COMSIT B: characteristics

COMSIT B (completely different code – same world view) represents the case in which the obstacle to communication is the lack of a common communication code (common language). The problem is therefore solely linguistic, people are unable to dialogue because they lack a shared communication system. If a common code could be provided or learned, the situation would turn into ideal COMSIT A.

Exercise of alteration of communication codes

Two couples of friends / colleagues meet to decide on a holiday to be carried out in a group of four. Before the meeting, the two couples, separately, must invent five new words (to be chosen from nouns of thing, verbs, adjectives), for example, an offensive word, a word of appreciation, a word to express a discomfort, a verb to inquire, and other inventions of the group. Make the meeting happen and check how the new words interfere in understanding, and other ongoing communication dynamics.

6.4.7. COMSIT C: characteristics

COMSIT C (same code – completely different world view) represents the hypothetical case in which communication difficulties result from a lack of sharing in the world view. The elements of diversity may concern:

  • opinions;
  • attitudes;
  • beliefs;
  • values.

In COMSIT C, a common code allows the exchange of information, but the outcome of communication is initially negative, as completely different beliefs, different values, diversity in underlying attitudes, attitudes and goals, will result in a complete lack of agreement. . The outcome of the communication is therefore bankruptcy, unless one of the two parties, or both, are willing to review some positions.

Conflict exercise between different personal positions

Create a group of people, even a minimum (2 per group, but in the absence it can also be achieved by 2 individuals) who are looking for all the advantages of taking short holidays but several times a year. The group must produce a list of at least 10 (or more) arguments in favor. It will also have to produce a list of at least 10 or more arguments against taking longer vacations at one time. An opposing group will do the opposite work, looking for the arguments in favor of taking long vacations, once a year, and the arguments or disadvantages and risks of taking more broken holidays. The representatives of the 2 groups meet and have to support their positions.

Conflict exercise between different company positions on the conception of times

Create a group of people, even a minimum (2 per group, but in the absence it is also achievable by 2 individuals) who are looking for all the advantages of making fast, rapid business projects (the “rabbits”) The group must produce a list of at least 10 (or more) arguments in favor. It will also have to produce a list of at least 10 or more arguments against making projects that are too thoughtful and too long in scope. An opposite group (the “bears”) will do the opposite work by looking for the arguments in favor of long-term projects, very reasoned and thought out, and the arguments or disadvantages and risks of fast projects. The representatives of the 2 groups meet and have to support their positions.

Conflict exercise: “buy merchandise” versus “buy partnerships”

Create a group of people, even a minimum (2 per group, but failing that it can also be created by 2 individuals) who represent a manufacturing company (office furniture production) interested in buying training hours for its sellers (eg: 5 group hours, for a group of 8 people). The mini-course program is the one found on the internet, relating to a basic sales course. The intentions are to test the effectiveness of trainers and spend little (for now), distract their salespeople from their work a little, and perhaps evaluate other interventions in the future. An opposing group will play the role of the training company, extremely convinced that a training project previously requires a good diagnosis, individual interviews with future participants, and that the hours cannot be fixed if the diagnosis has not been carried out.

At the same time, the training company does not want to commit to the fact that it is already foreseeable that a course is the best solution (for example, it wants to be free to decide on solutions such as coaching in the field, and other methods of professional intervention it considers effective). The representatives of the 2 groups meet and have to support their positions.

COMSIT D: features

COMSIT D (completely different code – completely different world view) is the hypothetical situation in which communication is disturbed for two reasons: from a technical point of view, the lack of common code does not allow the exchange of information, and even if a common code could be provided, a completely different view of the world would lead to the situation previously identified as COMSIT C, characterized by a lack of agreement. COMSIT D therefore represents the most difficult circumstance when the communication aims at the exactness of the data exchange and the search for an agreement between different positions. Similar communication contexts were considered Barnett and Kincaid (1983), who considered the combination of two variables: mutual understanding and agreement. Summarizing, according to the T2V model, the result of communication, understood as communicative efficiency in the exchange of information, and effectiveness in reaching an agreement, is negatively correlated with the differences in the code used and the differences in the world view. On the other hand, as the similarity of communication codes and worldview increases, the probability of success increases.

Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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Other Dimensions of Cultural Difference
In intercultural negotiation

Other Dimensions of Cultural Difference

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

Other Important Dimensions to Consider in the World View for the ALM Method are:

• culture of personal times and temporal priorities: include the search for emotions (intangible goals) or tangible goals among the priorities; temporal experience and temporal dominances, awareness of the differences between personal culture (of the individual), organizational culture and national culture: how I live time, how my company lives it, how my national culture lives it – in haste either in relaxation, in planning or in chaos. In this context, one of the main objectives of the ALM method is the re-appropriation of the sense of pleasure of time, eliminating the forced conditioning produced by the cognitive prototypes of one’s own culture (self-determination of time);

  • religious beliefs, both in the difference between religions, but above all in the degree of overt or latent religiosity that the individual experiences and applies in daily and working life;
  • political ideologies;
  • the conception of the human being and the deep reason for existence;
  • the conception of interpersonal relationships (exploitation, utility, sharing, symbiosis, competition) and the versatility of interpersonal relationships (ability to live on multiple levels, characterized by different motivational systems);
  • the conception of the relationship between man and nature, the degree of spirituality vs. materialism;
  • internal orientation (self-exploration, exploration of the internal and psychological world, introspection) vs. orientation to the outside (exploration of the outside world);
  • the orientation to being vs. the orientation to having;
  • orientation towards positivity or negativity;
  • orientation to the past, present or future (and other specific quadrants identified in the proprietary T-chart model of the ALM method);
  • personal competitiveness and orientation towards competitiveness;
  • egocentrism, ethnocentrism, selfishness, centering on the self or on one’s own needs, vs. heterocentrism, altruism, also centering on the other and on the needs of others.

Comparison exercise of one’s own vision of the world on some personal elements (compare & contrast) Explain and compare (compare & contrast) your own world view with a colleague or exercise partner, search for differences and similarities, on the following topics:

  • meaning of love and difference from “loving”;
  • possible meanings of the term “betrayal” in a marriage;
  • debate between two different visions of life: “rejoice while you can, live for the day” or “sacrifice yourself for a better future, save, invest”;
  • the role of destiny on people’s success and career;
  • to what extent it is possible to predict behavior based on a person’s nationality, in which fields we can be more certain, in which less;
  • whether the people in the company perform better when you command or let them do it.
Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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Measure the differences
In intercultural negotiation

Measure the differences

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Consulting Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for qualified Publishers wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab. If you are interested in publishing or Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

Vision of Time, Long- vs. Short-Term Time Orientation

The measurement of cultural differences makes sense when it is done in comparative terms, and not in absolute terms. In the following table we show some comparisons between countries with respect to the four dimensions (some of the more extreme scores are highlighted in bold). To create the table, indicators (indices) were produced that measure certain behaviors and attitudes on the four variables:

  • power distance index (PDI).
  • individualism index (IDV)
  • masculinity index (MAS)
  • uncertainty avoidance index (UAI)

Tab. 9 – Scores of some countries with respect to the parameters of cultural difference (Hofstede), scale from 0 to 125

Country POWER DISTANCE (Low/High) INDIVIDUALISM COLLECTIVISM FEMININITY MASCULINITY UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE (Low/High)
Australia 36 90 61 51
Canada 39 80 52 48
Indonesia 78 14 46 48
Portugal 63 27 31 104
Norway 31 69 8 50
Jamaica 45 39 68 13
Greece 60 35 57 112
Japan 54 46 95 92
Sweden 31 71 5 29
USA 40 91 62 46
Venezuela 81 12 73 76

The scores allow us to confirm some common stereotypes, such as the fact that Latin American countries are predominantly male-dominated cultures, Norway is very little, that the US is individualistic, or that the Japanese are a very structured society. Without getting tired of repeating it, these classifications speak in probabilistic terms, and nothing prevents you from finding Venezuelan companies headed by female managers, or collectivistically managed US companies, or extremely competitive and aggressive Norwegian managers, and other major deviations from cultural stereotypes.

Vision of time, Long- vs. Short-Term Time Orientation

Time Orientation distinguishes cultures based on the propensity to reason and plan in the long run, vs. an orientation “to the day”, and is related to dimensions such as spiritualism vs materialism, the religious concept of life, knowing how to live in meditative phases or only in active phases. Hofstede’s studies also distinguish between monochronic and multi-chronic time. Monochronic time has the following characteristics

  • the tendency to do one thing at a time – one after the other, in a linear way, a long-term orientation, dependence on agendas and calendars;
  • in monochronic time, precision is generally rewarded;
  • time is often scarce, we are often late. On the other hand, multicronic time is a multi-tasking, non-linear time, a short-term orientation, a life lived without an agenda and calendar, precision is something suspicious or at most irrelevant, the sense of time is cyclical (as in Hinduism ).

In the ALM method there is a tendency to distinguish the culture of the times by using in a disjoint way the evaluation of single psychological times (monochronic) or the condition of living in multiple psychological times (multicronicity), concentration on the task (monotasking) or application on several tasks (multitasking).

Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or in Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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Masculinity vs Femininity
In intercultural negotiation

Masculinity vs Femininity

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

Uncertainty Avoidance

This dimension has given rise to much controversy, because it is considered sexist and discriminatory. Hofstede’s will, on the other hand, was simply to analyze a gendered behavior as a cultural category, such as “caring” (taking care of children), deriving from the biological history of the female human race, vs. the prototypical male role in archaic societies linked to defense, competition, hunting and fighting.

By identifying phenomena related to gender, we can see nations such as Japan where there are strong expectations of roles, men are expected to differ from the behavior of women, an “in-charge” role. countries like Norway, or Sweden, the dimension is more feminized, which means that the roles between men and women are much more fluid and interchangeable in social organizations.

Tab. 7 – Differences between high masculinity and high femininity cultures

Femininity Masculinity
The roles between genres are interchangeable The roles between the sexes are very distinct
Nutrition, care Assertiveness, aggression
Equality, solidarity, quality of life, quality of work Competition, performance, success, money
Managers use intuition and seek consensus Managers are authoritarian and assertive
Humility and modesty are important in both sexes The man must be tough, the woman tender
Conflict resolution occurs through compromise and negotiation Conflict resolution occurs through disputes, fights and fighting (also figuratively)

The vision of the role of women is certainly a still strong variable that differentiates some cultures (where, for example, women are prevented from appearing in public with their faces uncovered) from others where a woman is encouraged to assume roles of visibility and responsibility on the social scale. As social roles become less distinct, the masculinity-femininity scale is increasingly independent of genetic sexuality, and becomes above all a “way of being”, an existential condition, a way of living and being, which can be adopted or modified without changing one’s sexual identity.

The avoidance of uncertainty, the tolerance of ambiguity. Distinguishes the need for clear rules, procedures, well-identified work responsibilities (high degree of avoidance of uncertainty), from the ability / condition to act in conditions of uncertain or imprecise rules, without well-identified responsibilities or in climates of organizational chaos , or in poorly structured environments (low degree of uncertainty avoidance). This variable is related to the “need for structuring” and the “tolerance for ambiguity” which varies greatly in cultures, or between social classes, and even between families, and therefore also between negotiators of different cultures.

Tab. 8 – Differences between cultures with high and low uncertainty avoidance

Acceptance of uncertainty Avoidance of uncertainty
Uncertainty is a normal feature of life The uncertainty present in life is a constant threat that must be fought
Low consciousness of time, fluid time High awareness of time, programmed time
The day is accepted as it is The day must be structured
People appear calm, relaxed, calm, sometimes sluggish or lazy People appear active, busy, emotional, aggressive
Low stress, well-being High level of stress, subjective experience of anxiety
What is different is curious What is different is dangerous
Ambiguous situations are experienced without problems Fear of what is unknown
Risk acceptance Fear of risk
The rules must be kept to a minimum Strong emotional need for detailed rules
What is new is sought and deviations from the norm are accepted Innovation is resisted, new or deviant ideas encounter strong obstacles
If the rules are not followed, they must be changed If the rules are not respected, guilt arises
The rules are few and generic The rules are many and precise
Citizens can protest Protests must be suppressed
Tolerance and moderation Conservation, extremism, law and discipline
Nobody can be blamed for their ideologies and ideas. Tolerance Different ideas (religious, political, social) are pursued. Fundamentalism and intolerance
Students feel comfortable in open-ended learning situations Students feel comfortable in structured learning situations, they look for the “right answer”

As can also be seen from the last difference (high or low structuring of a training or school intervention), interculturality can also occur in the same country, between a trainer who uses experiential and active techniques, in the face of a traditionalist culture and structured mindset. Or again, in the didactic and training situations carried out between different countries and cultures. Interculturality also opens the way to the existence of other “ways of being”, of new ways of living life, and can be very therapeutic.

The real problem of cultural psychology is to recognize how much cultural absorption has affected one’s personality, and to regain possession of a different way of being, be it less “anxious” or “more dynamic”, with the awareness that it is not possible to “have everything ”, Be busy and relaxed at the same time. Intercultural communication, seen in the ALM method, poses the challenge of “internal multi-existentiality” – the new ability to live in different states of the personality by absorbing the best of different cultures – eg: knowing how to be lively and dynamic in certain moments, relaxed in others, and includes the ability to avoid existential and cultural drag, eg: living a vacation with anxiety and over-planning stress, or on the contrary not knowing how to live in a system that requires deadlines and planning, when necessary.

It can be said that the intercultural dimension opens the doors to new frontiers of the human being, who (at least in Western societies) for the first time in history can choose to adhere to a culture or not, can change their way of being and of to live.

Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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Second Component: the World View (World-View)
In intercultural negotiation

Second Component: the World View (World-View)

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

Classifying Cultural Differences (Hofstede Categories)

A second component of culture considered in the 2V model is “World-View” – the “world view” The worldview is considered in anthropological studies as a set of beliefs, values ​​and attitudes, used by social actors to interpret and categorize reality, giving meaning to events, establishing relationships between them and guiding behavior.

The worldview is such a personal concept that it is difficult to classify in rigid schemes, however the need (or attempts) to provide classifications have led some social scientists to produce categories through which to read cultures. Among these, we expose the Hofstede classification, one of the most used in the literature.

Among the classics of intercultural communication, Hofstede’s categories are often cited as parameters for differentiating and categorizing cultures. Hofstede’s categories can be an interesting starting point for starting a reflection on cultural differences. However, the risk of generalization is high, and it is undesirable to use them for automatic predictive purposes. It would be extremely wrong to conclude that – because a person has a certain passport or a certain nationality – his mere belonging to a country allows us to predict with certainty how he will behave.

It seems more useful to think about how these categories can help us understand who we are dealing with when we negotiate, based on the concrete behaviors we observe, and without letting ourselves be clouded by automatic judgment. We therefore suggest using categories above all as tools to analyze the organizational cultures with which one comes into contact.

Individualism-Collectivism

Individualistic cultures characterize systems in which the bonds between individuals are weak, vary over time, and each has to look after himself substantially, or at most his close family. Individual freedoms are high, and social security substantially low, the possibility of social ascent and career high, as well as the risk of failing and falling without nets and protections. Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, incorporate the individual into the group in a very cohesive way, offering him protection in exchange for loyalty and fidelity, giving security but at the same time limiting freedom of expression and deviations from the norm.

The individual is very controlled. This dimension is typically used to distinguish how some cultures manage work and social practices, distinguishing between individualistic cultures such as Canada, US, Australia, and Great Britain, from other cultures considered collectivistic, such as those of East Asia (Japan, Korea South, Hong Kong, and Singapore) and Latin America.

Tab. 6 – Differences between cultures with high individualism and high collectivism

Individualism Collectivism
Identity is based on the individual Identity comes from belonging to social groups or families
We move in the first person, without waiting for help. The strategy is determined by the individual Help is expected from the community; greater passivity. The strategy is expected from others
High degree of autonomy. Autonomy is rewarded Little autonomy. Autonomy is punished
The value comes from the results produced by the individual himself The value is inherited or absorbed based on the group to which you belong
Employment relationships are seen as contracts based on mutual benefit Work relationships are seen as moral functions, like family relationships
The task or goal takes precedence over the relationship Relationships come before tasks or goals
The recruitment comes as a result of selections based on skills Hiring depends on recommendations, on connections
Career depends on the results produced Career depends on internal and external affiliations
Speaking openly and asking for an open confrontation indicates honesty Harmony must be maintained at any cost and confrontation and confrontation must be avoided
Communications are direct Communications are “veiled”
Failure to comply with the rules produces a sense of guilt and a loss of self-esteem Failure to comply with the rules produces public shame and loss of social face
Management is the management of individuals Management is group management

As we argue throughout the course of this publication, the advanced intercultural negotiator should never assume that a counterpart is individualistic or collectivist (or otherwise characterized) just because it is classified in terms of nationality and stereotypes. Even within Western countries and industrialized areas (mainly individualistic) we can find “bubbles” of collectivism, in rural areas but also in corporate areas (partly for example in industrial districts) where the facade is individualistic but the heart and habits are essentially collectivist.

The mental practice of collectivism as “living and doing together”, hit hard by the crisis of the former Soviet Union, becomes a sign to be hidden in public statements. Intrinsically, in many cultures, there remains a strong need for sociality and collectivity, typical of Latin and Mediterranean areas, but also of Asian cultures, which continues to express itself despite the educational “mainstream” (prevailing culture, dominant proposal) proposed by the model Anglo-Saxon culture.

Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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Hidden Interculturality in the Company
In Senza categoria

Hidden Interculturality in the Company: the Negotiation Between Different Professional Cultures

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© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

Example of Recognition and Modulation of Sub-Languages ​​in a Sales Negotiation.

Each administrative communication session can be destroyed by the use of dysfunctional styles and jargons, words, and inappropriate attitudes. In the case we present below, we can see how two corporate cultures can collide when one (or both) don’t care 1 – to take into account the comprehensibility of one’s own language, of the terms used, to explain the terms that allow understanding of the speech (terminological metacommunication capacity); 2 – of the precision of the language.

How communication style choices increase negotiation distances In a business meeting between an IT company and a mechanical company, the conductor (owner of the IT company) mainly uses two repertoires and related communication strategies:

  • the use of a dense repertoire of English-speaking terminologies even where it is not necessary (Anglophone managerialese);
  • the dressing of terminologies with phrases that obscure the meaning and create connotative penumbra (smoky meanings), with the function of “softening” the image and workload that the adoption of the program provides (diminutive style).

Tab. 3 – Elements of repertoire, managerialese-diminutive style (A)

Repertoire used for the “Anglophone managerialese” component Repertoire for the “diminutive style”
1 – Make a forecast
2 – He is a staff user
3 – I have seen the account
4 – Get the Function Description
5 – If you want to contact the trader
6 – We need to address the target setter
7 – You want to do a tracking
8 – If it overdues
9 – We have a visit
10 – We must give a reason
11 – We work on the field
12 – Make a pricing
13 – I take a sales call
14 – At the front end
15 – To the backend
16 – I do the query
17 – It is an activity report
18 – Take a survey
19 – A little more friendly
20 – The Repository
21 – To activate the click-stream analysis you need the BW		 1 – It seems to me that they are satisfied customers
2 – We need to think about it for a moment
3 – Let’s take a very quick tour
4 – The version for the handheld
5 – A little like on the internet
6 – A small graph
7 – We are seeing a little concrete application
8 – Let’s see if it’s possible for a moment
9 – Let’s do a little check then let’s see
10 – I think it can be done

In four hours of meeting, we can witness the Collision of conversational states, in which a team (sales team) uses repertoire A (“diminutive English-speaking computer managerial”), while the purchasing team uses a repertoire similar to the following:

Tab. 4 – Elements of the pragmatic-concrete style

Terminological repertory (words) Pragmatic questions
1 – The market
2- Customers
3 – Internal staff
4 – The workload
5 – Ease of learning
6 – Integration with existing programs
7 – Hours
8 – Days
9 – Cost of licenses
10 – Limitations of use
11 – Skills  		 1 – On this project, who does what in our company and who does what in your company?
2 – Can we use the program we are down using to produce the website or do we have to switch to another program?
3 – Do we have to change the program?
4 – Can we continue to use Macintoshes or should we switch to Windows?
5 – What are the internal skills of the company needed to make the system work day after day?
6 – Who needs to know what to do?
7 – How long can a training course last?
8 – Who should participate?
9 – If I want to change a data entry screen, can I do it from within or do we have to make a request to you?
10 – How many days will it take to start and set up the program?
11 – Can we personally visit a company that has already adopted this system?
12 – Do you need a license?

Meeting styles tutorial Reproduce through role-playing the progress of a possible meeting between team A (“managerialese-diminutive” sales team composed of owner and shoulder) and team B (“concrete-pragmatic” purchasing team composed of owner and shoulder

Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

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