Learning to negotiate reality: a strategy for teaching intercultural competencies more

Intercultural competencies are more important for people in business than ever before. In this article, the authors present an approach they designed and used for developing “negotiating reality” as a key intercultural competence at an international business school in Europe. They outline the theoretical underpinnings from intercultural communication and action learning, on which their approach is based. Then, they describe the iterative process through which they guide students in group work, starting by analyzing a difficult intercultural situation they experienced and leading to role-plays in which they experiment with alternative responses. The teaching materials are in the text and appendices.