Settling in to new cultures

24 May 2010

Tak­ing up from where my last post left off.  For most people, com­ing to terms with a new coun­try and the cul­ture shock asso­ci­ated with the move, after a few days, weeks or, in rarer cases, months, what ini­tially felt strange and pos­sibly threat­en­ing will start to feel more usual, yes, you most likely still […]

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Assimilation into a new culture

9 May 2010

Arriv­ing in a new coun­try or cul­ture is some­thing every trav­el­ler exper­i­ences dif­fer­ently, for some it is all excite­ment at the new exper­i­ences and oppor­tun­it­ies afforded by the change, for oth­ers it is largely fear at the changes they must under­take, learn­ing dif­fer­ent ways to func­tion in their new envir­on­ment, but for most it is a […]

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Can you have a work life balance in international communications?

3 May 2010

To pre­face this art­icle I need to put work/life into con­text. For some, a bal­anced life is one where they get to spend 15 hours or more, 7 days a week, involved in their work, only paus­ing to sleep, eat or do other essen­tial tasks, for oth­ers, the concept of work­ing more than 35 to […]

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Cultural filters

25 April 2010

We are all products of our per­sonal and cul­tural past, everything we have seen, read, heard and exper­i­enced changes the way we see our own pres­ence, our future and how we per­ceive oth­ers around us. Whether our view of the world is an inclus­ive and open one or we see the world as a number […]

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International project communications during times of disruption

23 April 2010

While hav­ing a robust crisis man­age­ment plan is a reg­u­lar busi­ness require­ment these days, many inter­na­tional pro­jects do not develop their own and dur­ing times of dis­turb­ance of com­mu­nic­a­tions the require­ment for a struc­tured plan become very apparent.

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The power of thank you as positive reinforcement in project teams

21 April 2010

Pos­it­ive rein­force­ment and recog­ni­tion through simple actions such as send­ing thank-you responses to emails is an incred­ibly effect­ive way to main­tain a team spirit and keep your staff feel­ing respected.

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So, do you need a communications coach?

17 April 2010

These days it seems you can get coaches for pretty much any aspect of you per­sonal or pro­fes­sional life, there are the obvi­ous ones such as sports coaches, then there are coaches who will come inand help you adapt to a new job, a pro­mo­tion, a life­style change etc. Have you ever stopped and considered […]

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International project video meetings

10 April 2010

The advent of the video con­fer­ence should have marked a quantum change in the way inter­na­tional pro­ject coördin­a­tion meet­ings are con­duc­ted, how­ever, a com­bin­a­tion of the tech­no­logy ini­tially being both extremely expens­ive and com­plex, along with the imma­ture tech­no­logy at its launch, made it dif­fi­cult to access for the major­ity of organ­isa­tions. This led to […]

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Communication toolkits

7 April 2010

For any­one work­ing in a team based pro­ject envir­on­ment, be it co-located or vir­tual, single or multi cul­tural, devel­op­ing a com­pre­hens­ive com­mu­nic­a­tions “toolkit” com­pris­ing dif­fer­ent com­mu­nic­a­tion styles and skills, is an abso­lute neces­sity. Many of us have a single style of com­mu­nic­a­tion that we have had since our early years, for some this single style […]

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Communicating across teams in international projects

2 April 2010

Con­tinu­ing on from my earlier posts on dir­ec­tions of com­mu­nic­a­tion, which began with com­mu­nic­at­ing down and com­mu­nic­a­tion up, the third and gen­er­ally most com­mon dir­ec­tion of com­mu­nic­a­tion in any pro­ject, inter­na­tional, local or domestic vir­tual team, is peer to peer, which I am refer­ring to here as com­mu­nic­at­ing across. This level of com­mu­nic­a­tion will be between […]

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