2016 Bridging Cultural Diversity for Competitive Advantage

Description

With immigration, the workforce of most Canadian organizations looks increasingly like the United Nations. For most, cultural diversity is a double-edged sword that brings both challenges and opportunities. In most cases, the challenges come first because culturally different people have learned to think, communicate and respond differently in the same situations. When they work together, they initially experience miscommunication, frustration, rework, missed deadlines and dissatisfied customers. Once culturally different people have learned to work effectively together and, most importantly, to trust one another, they can achieve the creativity and innovation that their diversity of thoughts, approaches, and experience brings to the table. Using insightful diagrams, powerful anecdotes and experiential exercises, this workshop helps Canadian organizations identify the root causes of the most common cross-cultural challenges and provides concrete solutions on how to overcome the initial challenges and get to the innovation stage more quickly.

Keynote speaker;
Lionel Laroche, Ph.D., P.Eng.


Over the past 18 years, Lionel Laroche has provided cross-cultural training, coaching and consulting services to over 60,000 people in 15 countries. Lionel specializes in helping professionals and organizations reap the benefits of cultural differences in their work. His client list includes many Fortune 500 organizations in Canada, the US and overseas. Lionel is a thought-provoking, informative and entertaining speaker / facilitator who presented at over 250 conferences and venues. He is the author of over 100 publications examining the impact of cultural differences on Canadian organizations of all sizes and of  three books:

 

• Danger and Opportunity: Turning Cultural Diversity into a Competitive Advantage (Dec. 2013)
• Recruiting, Retaining and Promoting Culturally Diverse Employees (Nov. 2007)
• Managing Cultural Diversity in Technical Professions (Nov. 2002)

Born in France, Lionel obtained his “Diplôme d’Ingénieur Polytechnicien” from the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, France and his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, USA.