Intercultural Collaboration
Understanding begins where what seems self-evident does not mean the same thing to everyone.
International collaboration has long been part of everyday life for many companies, universities and organisations. People work together, study together, lead teams across national borders or begin their professional path in a country whose language and cultural conventions initially feel unfamiliar.
Misunderstandings do not necessarily arise because someone is doing something wrong.
What is considered binding, how directly criticism is expressed, what hierarchy means, when initiative is expected or how decisions are made can be understood very differently. Even when everyone speaks the same language, that does not mean everyone means the same thing.
For us, intercultural collaboration therefore does not begin with the question: What are the others like? It begins with the question: What is happening between us?
Culture matters - but it does not explain everything.
Trying to explain people solely through their culture of origin falls short.
Personality, experience, values, social background, language, professional role, organisation and the specific situation all interact. Behaviour that we initially explain culturally may just as easily reflect different expectations, role understandings, communication habits or organisational structures.
That is why we look at intercultural collaboration from several perspectives.
We examine what people perceive and expect, how they communicate and act, which unspoken rules operate within a group and which structures make collaboration easier or harder.
In this way, cultural difference is not reduced to country knowledge and supposedly typical behaviour. Instead, we develop an understanding of what is actually at work in the specific situation.
When mutual understanding needs more than a shared language
Many difficulties only become visible once people actually work together.
Feedback is experienced as too direct. A politely phrased refusal is understood as agreement. Employees wait for a decision while their leader expects initiative. Questions are not asked because they might be seen as a sign of insufficient competence. The same agreement carries a different degree of commitment for two people.
In such situations, it helps little to declare one side the problem too quickly.
The key question is: Where exactly is understanding getting lost?
This is where our work begins.
We combine intercultural knowledge with communication, values and developmental logics, and a view of relationships, roles and organisational structures. This makes it easier to see whether an irritation is genuinely culturally shaped - or whether, for example, a role, leadership, communication or structural issue lies behind it.
Only when we understand what is at work can we decide where change can usefully begin.
International collaboration needs both sides
Anyone studying or working in another country has to learn how to navigate a linguistic and cultural environment that initially feels unfamiliar.
But intercultural collaboration is not a one-way street.
Companies, leaders, teams, universities and other institutions also need the ability to notice their own assumptions and make them understandable to others.
For us, integration therefore does not mean that one side should adapt as smoothly as possible to the other.
Sustainable collaboration develops where people can notice differences, expectations become visible and shared forms of communication and collaboration emerge that work for the people involved and for the specific context.
Language creates access
Language enables far more than the exchange of information. It also helps determine whether people can ask questions, participate, build relationships, address conflicts and show their professional competence at all.
For international students and professionals in particular, language acquisition and intercultural orientation therefore often belong together.
For this reason, the LeadershipAkademie complements its Intercultural Collaboration area with “German for Study & Work”. Language learning is connected with situations that are genuinely relevant to studying, working and living in Germany.
→ German for Study & Work
How we shape collaboration
The starting points for international collaboration differ. That is why our work does not begin with a fixed training programme that people or companies have to fit into.
Depending on the situation, intercultural workshops, support for international teams, preparation for international collaboration, communication and conflict work, or a combination of language acquisition and intercultural orientation may be useful.
For companies and organisations, we develop content from the specific situation, the people involved and the desired outcome.
The aim is not to remove cultural differences as quickly as possible. It is to understand them where they influence collaboration - and to develop forms of action together that create orientation and mutual understanding.
Because personality cannot be standardised. Collaboration cannot either.