In house training: how to deal with a multicultural audience

“Facilitating in the same language and same culture is – already – quite a challenge!” would think my peers. But what about the trainer in front of a multicultural audience? Is it a nightmare ? Interestingly, it is not if you take in account these advices.

First thing, first: mastering English
English language is (sadly;) the Lingua Franca in the corporate world. Beyond this common affirmation, mastering English means having in your pocket more than one word or expression for one idea. Easy and automatic in your native language. Not so easy when you are not a native English speaker.
You’re a native English speaker? Focus then on speaking slowly: even if you think it is exaggerated, most of the times, it is not. International English is not your English: be also conscious that colloquial expressions don’t ring a bell for your trainees. You need to “clean” them from your sentences.

Taking in account the culture …without knowing it
Language is just the surface of something going deeper: the culture including values, beliefs, behavioral norms shared implicitly by a group of persons. Difficulties can happen from misunderstandings on words. But it goes often beyond when you present a concept that doesn’t exist in the reality – and therefore language – of your trainees. I was training Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin speakers) future trainers. I was exposing different active learning techniques (demos, feed-backs critical analysis, etc.). These techniques underlie a certain trainer’s posture: friendly, active listener, helpful, demanding, attentive, rigorous. I was assuming that the posture was shared with my audience and I had just to focus on these techniques. I was wrong. Chinese pedagogy was more grounded in a “no pain no gain” mindset. They just didn’t see the point of having so much time dedicated to something else than top-down information…

You will make cultural mistakes and it’s OK!
Cultural mistakes can occur: don’t panic, I remember asking a male Algerian trainee to mention someone of his family during an exercise. It was inappropriate as I saw the face of my client, in the back of the room, becoming quickly livid. I stopped, pondered and announced blankly that I’ve just made a mistake. Everybody acknowledged by laughing. Lesson to be drawn: trainees know that you don’t know all the nuances of their culture. As far as it is not intentional, they will help you to find the “right” way of telling something.

Training a multicultural audience is more then ever is a two ways street!
Start your training by telling them that the learning will go both ways: from you to them and from them to you. Use every opportunity to make them share how they do things in their own culture. Referring to one’s culture is a good way to understand that it is relative and it varies from one place to another. Talking about your own culture makes you aware of it: soon trainees become conscious of the implicit bias they have in their own practice. These differences will, then, enrich your own vision of the concept.

Helping them to help you
You start an explanation. You give an example. It doesn’t make it, as the polite but clueless looks of your trainees tell you. Then, you go on with a very common figure of speech for a trainer: the analogy. But you instinctively choose one analogy that talks to you in YOUR culture. It doesn’t help more than the first effort you made, because this analogy doesn’t make the connection you were waiting for. Don’t panic. Spot the one participant (there is always one) that got it right: ask him to give the group another illustration. He will then bridge the gap of incomprehension with another illustration of his own, quickly joined by another one. This will spark a chain of illustrations and the group will produce the meaning you were dying to find!

“Communicate on your communication”
Structure strongly your training scenario and always meta communicate. Each sequence must be started and concluded explicitly. No implicit meaning anywhere. When you start an explanation, tell trainees: “I start an explanation on topic XX… Here is the example I would like to take to illustrate topic XX…” Ponder a lot “In all I have said, this the most important thing …” Yes, it slows you down a bit but it is a fair price to pay if you want to be understood.
When explaining, even if you have Power Point slides, always write down one or two key words. And write them very clearly on the flip chart: it is a very handy guide for Chinese, Japanese or Korean people. By extension for all the people that don’t use Latin alphabet in their native language. They have 3 signals to decode your information : the global message on the slides, the key words added on the flip chart underlying your vocal message.

Don’t talk too much, make trainees work
Don’t try to guess faces to check understanding, be these faces jovial or stone like: it doesn’t give you a key unless you’re familiar with the culture. Assess, instead, quickly understanding by using active learning techniques and make people do something.

Prepare to work during breaks
Prepare to work during breaks... and evenings when your training lasts more the one day. During the training session, one of your trainees won’t get it: a concept (or at least the way you presented it) is totally new for her and doesn’t make sense. Don’t spend too much time during the session: you make her (particularly Asians) embarrassed in front of theirs peers. Tell them you will spend time with them during the break or at the end of the day: they will be eager to get the knowledge from you at this time! Bond with them during evenings: you will learn a lot of what they got from you during the day and you will be able to adjust the following morning.

Use humor
Yes. We all agree on that: humor can be very culturally oriented, that is right. Hence trainees can have it wrong on the meaning. But they will all have it right on the intention (providing the fact that you wear a happy face). And they will jump at it and take the opportunity to bond with you, creating a good atmosphere ideal to learn.