Forum – Archive

Proficiency In language training proficiency is the skill or degree of mastery a person has achieved learning a language. English language proficiency is an individual skill. A Lingua Franca (common language) language policy necessitates individual language training if everybody working in any of the internal international constellations is supposed to master English to a degree…

The goal of language perfection: Corporate language management in international companies focusses to a large extent on skill building in the form of language training. The strategy is directed towards language mastery and perfection. The aim is to enable employees to speak English at such a level that colleagues collaborating in the different forms and…

Everyday working life in an international company is colourful, at least as far as the number of languages spoken is concerned. Companies that operate internationally must find internal answers to the question of who communicates with whom in which language. The need for a standardized corporate language is obvious, and the necessity is similarly obvious.…

Internal communication in internationally organized and operating companies is and remains a challenge due to the diversity of languages. The very obvious challenge is that a linguistic level of communication must be established between members of different language groups to make communication possible. The widespread use of English as common language in business is one…

For cross-cultural collaboration it is important to see and above all to accept that everybody is different – including ourselves. What does this mean for the issue of inclusion? Speaking from the point of view of organizational science companies are membership organizations. By a formal process selected people are admitted. Members have to adhere to…

Being culture As pointed out in one of our earlier posts in this series (“Cultural awareness: essential but not enough”, 26/1/2025) it is helpful but not enough to base a strategy for intercultural management of a company exclusively on knowledge building about other cultures and raising consciousness on our own cultural imprint. Not enough because…

👉 The cultural imprint of individuals Consider the following scenarios: ⭐️ Henrik, originally from Denmark, currently working for a German company is head of the sales department. In one of his weeklies with his Asian based cross-border team he had newly taken over he suggested a brainstorming session to encourage his team to more “out…

A German company with subsidiaries in several European countries as well as in China and India regularly sends managers on cross-border assignments. Well aware of how cultural differences can create misunderstandings, uncertainty and irritation the company adopted a policy of frequent intercultural trainings in all countries to raise cultural awareness and ease collaboration. So that…

Four years after the start of the pandemic remote collaboration and leadership have progressed well beyond the stages of experimentation and familiarization. Technological questions have moved into the background. But in how far have remote leadership, remote communication, collaboration, problem solving or conflict management evolved? Were the technological issues the only challenges to master? In…

Experience shows that tackling difficulties in remote teams seems to be even more difficult than in teams that share the same physical space. In remote teams interactions are often reduced to virtual meeting events or asynchronous communication. These reduced points of contact in a way encourage withdrawal from worrying interactions, ignoring one’s own and others’…

It is probably not exaggerated to say that all publications on team development state that teams need to build trust in order to work efficiently. Few go beyond stating the necessity, the discourse about trust in teams is often riddled with empty phrases. So, what is trust and what can leaders do to build up…

In remote leadership, fostering connectivity goes beyond technical connections, focusing on ensuring the quality and consistency of contact. This framework for fostering connectivity highlights four essential elements: Heartbeat, Richness, Paths, and Overlap. Here’s a refined breakdown for each, focusing on the unique challenges and approaches for remote leadership: HeartbeatHeartbeat in remote leadership represents the rhythm…

Remote collaboration in projects, permanent teams and working groups means meeting in a virtual surrounding. But of course, remote team collaboration is not exclusively that. Whether a team works efficiently and effectively is decided by ⭐️ALL⭐️ interactions taking place within the team – on- and offline, in a synchronous or asynchronous fashion. And it is…

There is one core issue in dealing with geographical or spatial distance which has undergone a perhaps revolutionary re-definition. This is our understanding of ⭐️“presence”⭐️. Seemingly physical distance precludes presence – if one does not share the same physical space with somebody else, one is not there, one is not present. But this former reality…

With 2020’s massive shift to remote work, remote leadership came in its wake and has become a widely spread phenomenon throughout all economic branches. And it has been digitalized: remote leadership and team collaboration are enacted mainly via virtual web-conferencing tools. But it is not the technology that is the characteristic feature of remote leadership.…