This is a request for assistance. I am involved in designing a technical
meeting which will be attended by people from the United States, France,
the Netherlands, Tiawan, and Korea. All attendees will have at least some
English, but in some cases not a lot. The meeting will be conducted in
English and there will be no translators. There will be breakout sessions
too. Needless to say, we would like to maximize productive communication
and minimize discomfort, incomprehension, and misunderstanding.
This organization has a sophisticated understanding of meeting process. We
are also trying to have the agenda and pre-reading finalized enough ahead
of time so that each group can come as prepared as possible, and arrange
that there are several good English speakers in each language group to
help the rest.
We have lots of input on communication issues between any two of these
groups but not on when they are all together. Can anyone point me to
expertise on inter-cultural communication issues with Asians, Europeans,
and Americans all in one room? Any experience you can share about meetings
of this type?
Judith Weiss
jsweiss@mail.utexas.edu
--jsweiss@mail.utexas.edu (Judith Weiss)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>