WORKSHOP 4: RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Aims of workshop:

• Understand the importance of building and maintaining developmental network (DN) for personal and career success
• Understand your cultural intelligence, identify gaps and develop a plan of action. • Discuss Mock Assessment Centre presentation

Workshop 4 will focus on 3 activities:

• Complete DN online diagnostic and reflect on results and its relevance (40 mins)
• Complete Cultural intelligence and reflect on its results and its relevance profile (45 mins) • Briefing on Mock Assessment Centre presentations (20-30 mins)

ACTIVITY 4.1: DEVELOPMENTAL NETWORK DIAGNOSTIC FEEDBACK

Tutor input (10 mins)

Everybody needs someone in their life to help them achieve their potential. Having the right developers in your life and career is crucial to enhancing your career success. Indeed, the more developers you know the better success you will have in your career and professional life. Your developers therefore DRIVE you to success through the following:

Direction

Resources

Inspiration

Visibility

Employability = Career Success (_{Emmanuel, 2017)}

Direction – Developers can help to navigate your career by giving you a sense of direction. These people can help you explore and identify career opportunities that you may not have considered on your own. They may also help you to get out of your comfort zone, set challenging goals and remain focussed.

Resources – Your developers may have particular skills, education or experience that they have developed over many years. Your developers can be a valuable source of information and ideas that will give you further career or professional insights. They can also provide you with the emotional support and encouragement you need in difficult times.

Inspiration – Who inspires you? Like a mentor, your developers can be sources of inspiration. They can help to motivate you, enable you to make improvements and move forward in your life. Having someone that you can look up to, as a role model, will help to energise you, stimulate you and encourage you to become the person you want to be.

Visibility – Your developer may connect you to other people who have the right expertise, resources and influences to help with your career success and improve the quality of your life. These connections can help you to get a foot in the door of your chosen career, profession or business.

Employability – Increasing your employment prospects is even more essential in this current and uncertain economic climate. Your developers can help you develop the right skills to improve your career or business prospects. The role your developers play in helping you become more employable cannot be underestimated. They can also help you to get the job or career of you want.

Direction + Resources + Inspiration + Visibility + Employability = Career Success.

In sum, a network of developers helps DRIVE you to achieve a greater sense of purpose, locate the right resources and the right connections and develop the right skills and competences to enhance your employability.

Source: (Emmanuel, 2017 – Developmental network questionnaire and diagnostic tool)

Individual activity (20 mins)

On you own jot down your responses to the following 4 questions:

1. In your learning sets share your personal analysis report. Can you identify any trends across the group and any individual issues for further analysis?

2. Thinking about your future career goals, who in your current developmental network could help you get there and what help is missing?

3. What is your key take-away from assessing your developmental network?

4. What will you do differently following this session?

Group activity (10 mins)

In your learning sets discuss your response to the above four questions.

Further reading on developmental networks:

Murphy W. (2016) How Women (and Men) Can Find Role Models When None Are Obvious in Harvard Business Review June 1 2016 accessed online https://hbr.org/2016/06/how-women-andmen-can-find-role-models-when-none-are-obvious

Please read Telegraph (June 2016) article via this link: How to work a room: 10 tips to networking success

Also, read the British Council’s survey report: ‘Culture at work: The value of intercultural skills at work’ via this link.

ACTIVITY 4.2: DEVELOPING CULTURAL INTELIGENCE (CQ)

Tutor input (10 mins)

We have already discussed, in a previous lecture, the importance of cultural intelligence as a way of enhancing our multiple intelligences. CQ therefore builds on earlier concepts such as IQ and EQ and allows us to be open to new experiences, being more informed about what we might encounter in a cross-cultural setting and be more attune to dealing with culture shock – i.e. feeling a sense of disorientation when we encounter new or different situations (See Bucher, 2007).

You may have a higher IQ or EQ but this is not sufficient as employers need workers with CQ in order to adjust to changing nature of today’s work environment.

At times you may experience a culture shock as a result of being cut off from your familiar culture, environment and norms: For instance:

International student

How did you feel when you first arrived in this country to study at UoG?

or

Home student

How did you feel when you arrived during the first week of studies at UoG?

Because we can appreciate multiple perspectives and make appropriate adjustments we are able to quickly adjust and relate to others whose backgrounds are not the same as ours.

How culturally intelligent are you?

The way we relate to others affects how they relate to us. For example, we might be surprised by a negative reaction we get from people because our perceptions do not align with theirs. What is your interpretation of the two scenarios below?

Scenario one

Consider an everyday situation in which a customer pays in cash for a purchase. The cashier reaches out for the money but the customer places it on the counter. What do you think the cashier might read into this?

1. Absolutely nothing.
2. The customer showed a lack of respect by not placing the money in the cashier’s hand.
3. The customer did not place money in the cashier’s hand for religious or cultural reasons.
4. Any of the above.

Scenario two

Consider the following scenario

A human resource manager of a manufacturing company (from the UK) sits in her office. She is interviewing candidates for factory work, and the next candidate is due. Suddenly the door opens, and a young man of African heritage walks in without knocking. He does not look at the manager but walks to the nearest chair and, without waiting to be invited, sits down. He makes no eye contact with the manager but instead stares at the floor. The manager is appalled at such graceless behaviour. Can’t the man even say “Good morning”? The interview has not even started, and even though the jobs being filled do not require strong social skills, it is already unlikely that the young man will be appointed.

Successful managers in today’s workplace will be those with well-developed interpersonal skills such as the ability to manage their emotions and accept feedback from others. This is all part of developing EI and CQ and it is certainly high on the agenda of organisations in terms of skills (attributes) sought.

Intercultural failures

According to Thomas and Inkson (2009), we fail interculturally in various ways:

• Being unaware of the key features and biases of our own culture.
• Feeling threatened or uneasy when interacting with people who are culturally different.
• Being unable to understand or explain the behaviour of others who are culturally different.
• Being unable to transfer knowledge about one culture to another culture.
• Not recognizing when our own cultural orientation is influencing our behaviour.
• Being unable to adjust to living and working in another culture.
• Being unable to develop long-term interpersonal relationships with people from other cultures