Multiculturalismo a lavoro: processi interculturali e comunicazione in contesti lavorativi interculturali Lecce, 15 e 16 novembre 2013Sandro Mazzi

Laboratorio dal Basso: “LAVORARE IN GRUPPO? UN’IMPRESA!

CONFLITTI, COMUNICAZIONE E COOPERAZIONE PER L’IMPRESA SOSTENIBILE”

Argomenti venerdì

Presentazioni e introduzione concetti chiave

Comunicazione

Cultura

Comunicazione interculturale

La competenza per la comunicazione interculturale

L'importanza dell'interpretazione

Programma venerdì

15:00 Presentazioni e introduzione concetti chiave

16.30: Pausa

16.45: Slides concetti chiave:

Comunicazione

Cultura

Comunicazione interculturale

La competenza per la comunicazione interculturale

L'importanza dell'interpretazione

NB Tutte le slides di questa sezione - quelle in lingua inglese – sono elaborate dal volume: Myron W. Lustig, Jolene Koester, Intercultural Competence. Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures, Pearson Education (US) Upper Saddle River 2012.

Argomenti sabato

Modelli e politiche per l'integrazione

Stereotipi, pregiudizi e discriminazioni

Strumenti per accrescere la competenza per la comunicazione interculturale

I sei blocchi della comunicazione interculturale (Barna)

Lo strumento D.I.E.

La consapevolezza culturale

Il lavoro sui valori e l'identità

Dalla compassione all'empatia

AUM e mindfulness (Gudykunst)

Questioni etiche

Esempi/domande

Programma sabato

10.00 Recupero modelli e altri concetti chiave

10.30 Consapevolezza culturale e identità

10.45 Dalla compassione alla empatia

11.00 Esercizio “Guardare l'altro come se…”

11.30 Pausa

11.45 Neuroscienze e l’importanza di esercitarsi al cambiamento

12.00 I sei blocchi alla comunicazione interculturale e il loro superamento: AUM e mindfulness

12.15 Esercizio riflessivo in gruppo/coppie: esperienze precedenti e strumenti presentati

13.00 chiusura

§ In the post-millennium world:§ Communicating with people from many cultures is no longer a choice§ It is our choice to learn to do it well

§Worldwide there is a heightened emphasis on culture§ Some forces encourage accommodation and understanding with diverse people§ Some forces discourage it

§ Intercultural encounters are now ubiquitous

§Forces that bring other cultures in our life are dynamic, potent, ever present

§Competent intercultural communication has become essential

INTRODUCTION TO INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

1. The Demographic Imperative

2. The Technological Imperative

3. The Economic Imperative

4. The Peace Imperative

5. The Interpersonal Imperative

IMPERATIVES FOR INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

There are too many ways for defining communication. We will adopt a definition useful for our purpose:

“Communication is a

Symbolic

Interpretive

Transactional

Contextual

Process in which

People Create

Shared meanings”.

WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

§Symbols represent the shared meanings

§A symbol is a word/action/object that stands or represent the unit of meaning.

§Meaning is a perception, thought or feeling

§Meanings are shared through messages

§Messages are packages of symbols created to create shared meanings

COMMUNICATION IS SYMBOLIC

§When people communicate they have to:§Interpret the symbolic behaviors of others§Assign significance to some of them

§ Understanding and reaching agreement are two different outcomes.

COMMUNICATION IS INTERPRETIVE

§Actional view of communication: Bowling; Challenge in sending the message; I can win

§ Interactional views: Ping pong (feedback); Challenge in receiving; I can win or lose

§Transactional view: Sharade; Groupwork; Fun; No losers§All participants in the communication process work together to create and sustain the meanings that develop

§Communicators are simultaneously sending and receiving messages at every instant they are involved in conversations

COMMUNICATION IS TRANSACTIONAL

§ All communication take place in a context§ The context can be:§Physical: actual location§Social: widely shared expectations about the kind of interactions§Interpersonal: expectations people have about the behaviors of others as a result of differences in the relationships between them

COMMUNICATION IS CONTEXTUAL

§Communication is not static, fixed, unchanged

§A process is a sequence of many distinct but interrelated steps

§It can change over time

§Heraclit “You can’t stand in the same stream twice”

COMMUNICATION IS A PROCESS

§Meanings are not just “out there” to be discovered

§Meanings are created and shared by groups of people as they participate in the ordinary and everyday activities

COMMUNICATION INVOLVES SHARED MEANINGS

We take things for granted…When living within our own culture, we are never really reminded of it. When I am walking down the street, people just don’t stop to say, “Hey, it is an American”. In

other words, we don’t talk about our own culture too much, because we are living it. (A student from U.S.)

Also for culture, there are too many ways for defining it

We will adopt a definition useful for our purpose

WHAT IS CULTURE?

“Culture is aLearned

Set of shared interpretations aboutBeliefsValues

Norms andSocial practices which

Affect the behaviors of aRelatively large group of people”

A DEFINITION OF CULTURE

• Your family racial/ethnic makeup, and their racial attitudes

• where and when you were born and grew up

• your friends and social acquitances

• where you went to school, and your level of education

• Previous diverse cultural experiences in everyday life, the workplace, social and or professional context

• Attitudes and impression from the media

WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF CULTURE?

• “Intercultural Communication is a symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process in which people from different cultures create shared meanings”

§ People are from different cultures whenever the degree of§ difference between them is sufficiently large and important

that it creates§ dissimilar interpretations and expectations about what are

regarded as§ competent communication behaviors”

A FIRST DEFINITION OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Therefore:

“Intercultural communication occurs when

large and important cultural differences create

dissimilar interpretations and expectations about how to

communicate competently”

ANOTHER DEFINITION OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

People in all cultures face common human problems for which they must find solutions

The range of alternative solutions to a culture’s problems is limited

Within a given culture, there will be preferred solutions, which most people within the culture will select, but there will also people who will choose other solutions.

Over time, the preferred solutions shape the culture’s basic assumptions about beliefs, values, norms and social practices – the cultural patterns

CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURAL PATTERNS

People from different cultures differ in:

Obvious ways/clearly visible differences: food, clothing etc. Subtle ways/less visible differences

Cultural patterns are related to subtle differences that are taken for granted in a culture

Cultural patterns are therefore shared interpretations

CULTURAL PATTERNS

Shared interpretations are very important and they result from:

the culture collective assumption about what the world is: believes

shared judgments about what it should be: values

widely held expectations about how people should behave: norms

predictable behavior patterns that are commonly shared: social practices

CULTURAL PATTERNS

Understanding differences in cultural patterns is a basic requirement to develop ICC

Cultural patterns are the basis for interpreting the symbols used in communication

That is how we can explain many misunderstandings in IC (and not only…)

They are stable over time

They lead to roughly similar behaviors across similar situation

CULTURAL PATTERNS

There is a strong relationship between the foundations of cultural patterns and intercultural competence

The patterns of a culture create the filter through which all verbal and nonverbal symbols are interpreted

Not all cultural members of a society necessarily match the profile of the typical cultural member

The patterns of a culture shape but do not determine the mental programming of its people

Other cultures’ ways of believing and their preferred values are not crazy or wrong, just different

CULTURAL PATTERNS AND INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

Understanding of ICC is based on studies on communication competence in intracultural contexts

A definition of communication competence:

“Competent communication is interaction that is perceived as effective in fulfilling certain rewarding objectives in a way that is also appropriate to the context in which the interaction occurs” (Brian Spitzberg)

NB we cannot write a prescription guaranteed to ensure competence in intercultural communication

We can try to understand the many ways that a person can behave in interculturally competent manner

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE

1. Context2. Appropriateness and Effectiveness3. Knowledge,

(culture-general information and culture-specific information),

Motivations and(feelings and intentions)

Skills(the actual performance)

THE 3 COMPONENTS OFINTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

Description

Interpretation

Evaluation

BASIC TOOLS FOR IMPROVING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE: D-I-E

•“Anxiety that results from losing all of our familiar signs and symbol of social intercourse”

Kalervo Oberg (anthropologist)

•“The emotional and physiological reaction of high activation that is brought about by sudden emersion in a new and different culture”

LaRay M. Barna (communication studies)

•“A set of intensive and evocative situations in which the individual experiences himself and other people in a new way distinct from previous situations and is consequently forced into new levels of consciousness and understanding”

Alfred Adler (psychologist)

CULTURE SHOCK – DEFINITIONS

Sei ostacoli alla comunicazione interculturale (Barna)

L'assunto di similarità

Differenze linguistiche

Fraintendimenti non verbali

Preconcetti e stereotipi

Tendenza a giudicare

Forte ansia

"Sulle dispense stava scritto un dettaglio che alla prima lettura mi

era sfuggito, e cioè che il così tenero e delicato zinco, così

arrendevole davanti agli acidi, che ne fanno un solo boccone, si

comporta invece in modo assai diverso quando è molto puro: allora

resiste ostinatamente all’attacco. Se ne potevano trarre due

conseguenze filosofiche tra loro contrastanti: l’elogio della purezza,

che protegge dal male come un usbergo; l’elogio dell’impurezza,

che dà adito ai mutamenti, cioè alla vita."

Primo Levi - Il sistema periodico

Esericizio in piccoli gruppi

Analisi situazioni personali:

Come posso usare gli strumenti presentati per

alcune delle situazioni "interculturali" nelle quali

mi sono trovato/mi trovo/so che mi troverò?

Condivisione e confronto

Un modello per gestire efficacemente le

relazioni/discussioni/conversazioni Topic

Goal

Reality

Options

Will

Due strumenti davvero importanti...

Consapevolezza (culturale, della nostra identità, delle nostre premesse e aspettative)

Mindfulnes/presenza qui ed ora