367 — Mastering multicultural facilitation

The Mind Tools L&D Podcast

In our globalised world, we work and learn with people from diverse cultures. How can we facilitate multicultural training, for instance, so that the sessions are not only inclusive, but get the best from everyone.

This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma is joined by Gaëlle Watson, director of SyncSkills and our very own Nahdia Khan. We explored:

• The benefits and challenges of multicultural representation in facilitated sessions
• How to best adapt your design and delivery approaches as a facilitator
• How to avoid pitfalls such as stereotyping.

Gaëlle refers to a number of resources that are well worth exploring.

Geert Hofstede's book Cultures and organisations: Software of the mind.

This ‘Country Comparison Tool’ from The Cultural Factor Group is based on Professor Geerte Hofstede’s research: https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison-tool?countries=france%2Cpakistan%2Csouth+africa%2Cunited+kingdom

Mind Tools explores the characteristics of countries exhibiting each dimension and what these mean for how you can most effectively work together in the article “Hoftstede’s Cultural Dimensions”: https://www.mindtools.com/a1ecvyx/hofstedes-cultural-dimensions

Gaëlle contributed to CIPD’s 2021 “Effective virtual classrooms: An evidence review”: https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/evidence-reviews/effective-virtual-classrooms-practice-summary_tcm18-102661.pdf

In What I Learned This Week, Nahdia recommended a series of videos from the School of Systems Change. Here’s a link to the first video “What are systems and what is systems change?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_02X3O2kIUU&t=5s

Gemma encouraged budding language learners to check out Radio Lingua’s ‘Coffee break’ podcast series: https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work. 

Connect with our speakers 

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers.

• Nahdia Khan
• Gemma Towersey
• Gaëlle Watson - @gaelledwatson

You can find out more about SyncSkills here: https://syncskills.net/working-with-us/virtual-training-production/