November 2002 Workshop Report from our british participant

"When I registered for this CONSENSA workshop, I thought it might give me some useful tips on how to avoid rubbing foreign colleagues up the wrong way. In the event it turned out to be a highly interactive lesson in appreciating the differences in people and using them to the advantage of a project. Taking material from leading researchers, the trainers encouraged us to view each individual as a complex product of personal and environmental influences and to interpret their behaviour against the background of various cultural categories. For instance, does a person address problematic issues head on or deal with it behind the scenes? Does s/he value material individual success and progress, or caring for others and compromise?

Using the 10 very different individuals in the group as examples we began to understand life at the extremities of these categories. By applying the lessons to various project management situations (teambuilding, conflict-solving, planning, decision-making and others) we understood the wide range of possible behaviour in international project teams - and the consequences in terms of taking action.

These few lines cannot hope to do justice to two and a half days of enjoyable work in an inspiring setting on the Baltic Sea. There's a mouldy old joke about heaven being a place where the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, the policemen are british, and it’s all organized by the swiss. Now can you imagine hell…? Aside from being slightly lacklustre as a joke, it's also peppered with stereotypes that try to sum up a whole national culture in a couple of words.

This CONSENSA workshop helped me to put away these stereotypes and understand that each person is indeed unique in background and character. Believe it or not, there are some great English lovers! But it also made me understand that stereotypes do have a positive function in reducing complexity and helping to structure incoming information. All it needs is to continuously check back on them and allow for new information to pour in. it is one of the keys to creating synergies among unique people working together in unique projects."

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