Intercultural Communication Institute

Differences in perceptual mindset can cause either deep mutual misunderstanding or enhanced creativity, depending on how they are approached. This session will show how perceptual gaps occur around concepts of future, past, actor, objects, language, etc. and how they become critical factors in the workplace and in personal relationships.

Designed for
Intercultural professionals who lead, facilitate and/or manage demanding multicultural interaction in any kind of organization. Researchers in intercultural communication and/or management would also benefit from this workshop.

Become more clearly aware of their own perceptual mindsets and mental models
Develop skills to identify other communicators’ perceptual mindsets and mental models for effective intercultural communication
Improve facilitation skills through understanding critical conditions that transform perceptual incongruities and conflicts into creative interactions
Develop conceptual flexibility and practical skills to reframe reality for reduced biases and new strategic ideas
Become prepared to start practicing paradigm shifts in daily life, in the workplace or at home
Become constantly aware of two separate, mutually contradictory but equally compelling approaches to a solution: analog and digital modalities

Learning Activities

Psychometric tests to start exploring one’s own perceptual mindset
Lectures and group discussions on action implications of different mindsets including future and past, analog and digital, subject and object
Experiential exploration of the different styles of leading, facilitating, managing, and interrelating through the use of modally different mindsets
Simulations to experience paradigmatic shifts for creative purposes
Experiential learning to reframe reality to create unbiased solutions

Faculty: Kichiro Hayashi

Dr. Kichiro Hayashi is a professor emeritus at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. He has trained roughly 3000 corporate executives and other leaders from more than eighty countries in the past twenty years. He taught for a total of ten years at Indiana University, UCLA, the former Western Behavioral Sciences Institute of UC San Diego, and McMaster University. Kichom was a recipient of the 1995 Outstanding Senior Interculturalist Award for Achievement, president of SIETAR Japan, advisor for the Association of Corporate Executives, a U.N. consultant, and president of the Japan Society for Multicultural Relations. He has written ten books, including Maverick Power, Intercultural Interface Management, Nativizing Japanese Corporations, and The U.S.-Japanese Economic Relationship: Can It Be Improved? For many years he was a member of the Japan Laughing Association.