Intercultural Communication Institute

16 | Making Multicultural Groups Work: Strategies and Interventions for Success

This workshop will present a wide range of practical tools and strategies that can be used immediately for achieving positive results in real-life groups. By means of hands-on experience and analytical discussion, participants will develop a sense of confidence in their ability to intervene safely and positively.

Designed for
Teachers, trainers, coaches, consultants, facilitators, and anyone involved with or interested in acquiring tools to help them understand the dynamics of multicultural groups with a view to creating shared awareness and consensus.

Experience a range of intervention approaches and strategies, including Appreciative Inquiry, positive language for change, Creative Café, multiple intelligences, equilibrium theory, and others
Learn and practice several quick and easy methods for creating “a-ha!” moments in groups
Understand the theoretical foundation of different interventions
Consider a new approach to understanding human error and minimizing its consequences
Use the Thomas-Killman instrument to understand their own and other’s attitudes toward potential conflict situations
Practice facilitating interventions in a safe, supportive environment
Discuss the intercultural implications of different intervention approaches
Devise and discuss specific approaches for their own individual situations and concerns

Learning Activities
The workshop will be highly interactive, and include:

Hands-on experience in facilitating interventions
Mini-lectures on intervention approaches
Frequent small and large group discussions
Use of different media to illustrate relevant concepts
Case studies based on participants’ experiences
Design and testing of interventions tailored to participants’ specific needs

Faculty: Todd Conklin and Richard Harris

Dr. Todd Conklin is a deputy group leader with nuclear material information management at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is interested in organizational culture, especially the cultures that seem to arise around workplace power and communication. Todd lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and works extensively in his home state with community groups, schools, civic clubs, and nonprofit groups with special social impact.

Dr. Richard Harris, born in London, U.K., is a tenured professor in the faculty of management at Chukyo University, Japan, where he has lived for over twenty-five years. He teaches intercultural communication in Japanese at undergraduate and graduate levels and travels extensively out of personal and professional curiosity. Richard’s eclectic research interests range from the influence of physical and psychological space on intercultural encounters to the representation of ourselves and the other in media, museums, tourism, and interpersonal interaction. He has written several papers on the cultural impact of space, on the representation of cultures in Southeast Asian museums, and is the author of Paradise: A Cultural Guide, a study of cross-cultural concepts of the ideal.