Even if twenty years ago we sensed that communicating across cultures was a high stakes endeavor, today we can perfectly measure this, particularly in our region of France where numerous companies live the richness and the challenges of working in an intercultural context.

In the past couple decades, numerous publications have appeared on the market as well as abundant training in the domain of intercultural business: “Understanding Americans—How to negotiate with the Chinese—The German Way”
Simple questions do not always have simple answers and in order to truly gain something from a cross-cultural awareness seminar, we must keep in mind that more than anything else, the most crucial question here is intercultural communication…. From that starting point, just as in the domain of interpersonal communication, we must address a series of questions: « Who are we? How do we think? What is our « world image »? How does current society help and hinder? What are our cultural credos and myths? »

Information that we can find about this or that culture and recipe-type books with detailed dos and don’ts are often of great interest because they give us the basic “music theory” of cross-cultural encounters; but knowing the notes does not suffice to make a musician, and knowing this or that specific characteristic about a given culture does not necessarily make us capable of communicating well across cultures.

Sometimes this “recipe” approach can even hinder communication, making us focus on the other person, making us forget that intercultural communication concerns at least two cultures and at least two individuals (subjects). If we disregard this aspect, we will be as prepared for multicultural work as 19th century explorers would have been if they had read “Aborigines for Dummies” before meeting native tribes—they would have been able to avoid a few errors but their “scientific eyes” (that looked at the others as if they were objects instead of subjects) would not have been modified. Any true discovery of the other might begin by first taking a glance at oneself.