Description
Intercultural Management Assignment
This assignment will help you to develop your business acumen and global mindset while becoming exposed to the business workplace. You will arrange, execute, and reflect on an interview with a manager who may or may not also be an entrepreneur.
This is an individual assignment and has two deliverables consisting of a two-page reflection, with appendix, submitted in Brightspace, AND your participation in an online survey using Microsoft Forms, both described as follows:
You will arrange an interview with someone, anywhere, who is or has been a manager in an intercultural environment. They may have worked with newcomer employees or recruited employees from outside of Canada. The person may be a family member or acquaintance, a sports coach, someone you worked with previously, or someone you connect with by networking.
You will plan a professional initial approach by phone, email, or indirectly through another person. Explain that you are a student and that as part of a course you would like to interview them about their experiences as a manager in a intercultural environment. You should explain that the interview is informal and that anything they say will not be recorded or attributed to them. Your reflection will relate to what you learned about intercultural management, not details of the manager or their organization. Do your best to create a safe, confidential, and casual conversation environment. You may want to share this assignment description. Arrange the interview as soon as you can because it may take a while to schedule, there may be delays or rescheduling required, and the assignment has a firm deadline posted in Brightspace.
You will conduct the interview in person, over the telephone, or via Microsoft Teams. You should expect the interview to be in the range of 30 minutes. Your objective is to understand the experience of being a manager in an intercultural environment from their perspective. You will be asking them to describe things like what they do, how they do/ have done it, and key skills they have drawn upon. Following is a suggested interview approach:
- Set the stage and build rapport. Some pleasantries, a description of your schooling, setting a casual tone for about a 30-minute conversational exchange, and an assurance of confidentiality are a good start. Ask open-ended questions, in sequence, and listen to understand the answers. A good first question might be something like, ‘Could you please describe what you do/did at XZY organization?’ And then maybe, ‘We have explored components of intercultural management but what does that mean to you?’
You might probe for the biggest perceived challenges working with people of diverse backgrounds as well as the biggest perceived benefits of intercultural teams. (collect these answers for your survey.)
Ask for a story of when conflict occurred based on cultural differences and another when having culturally diverse perspectives helped the team make better decisions.
Consider asking probing questions like, ‘Can you tell me more about (some specific aspect of management they referenced already) that?’ You might also ask, ‘What key skills do you consider important to being a good manager in an intercultural environment?’ Assuring confidentiality, you might ask, ‘Can you share any particularly rewarding or challenging situations you faced as a manager?’ It’s often good to close with something like, ‘Would you like to ask me any questions?’ And of course, don’t forget to thank the manager when the interview is concluded.
- You will write a two to three-page double-spaced reflection describing what you learned through the experience for submission to Brightspace as a pdf file. Highlight what you learned about both the interview process and the information shared in the interview. What did you learn about intercultural management? Specifically, what did you learn about skills for good intercultural management? What did you learn about interviewing? Don’t provide a transcript of the interview. Write about what you learned.
As an appendix to your reflection, included at the end of the assignment submission pdf file, your reflection should include an artifact as evidence of your experience. An invitation or thank you email, a picture from the meeting, or Microsoft Teams screenshot are great artifacts. An artifact must be submitted with the assignment and might also be useful later when you are preparing for job interviews and developing your NSCC portfolio.
Finally, you’ll answer a short survey about the interview experience at a link found in Brightspace. Survey results will be shared in class and will give you a sense of what was learned by the whole class.
short survey: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?i…
