Working With India: Cross-Cultural Business Training

Working With India: Cross-Cultural Business Training

Posted On: July 3, 2020

Working With India: Cross-Culture Training

Do you work with colleagues, stakeholders or clients in India? Our facilitators have worked with over 4,000 professionals, facilitating India cross culture training programs to Americans and U.S. culture training programs to professionals in and from India

Jennifer Kumar, our principle facilitator has extensive working, living, studying and running her own business in India since 1998. If you work with professionals from India on your virtual team, offshore team, or through your BPO, KPO or outsourced project, we answer the questions you have about creating better, more efficient working relationships with those who come from India and South Asia.  


Authentic Journeys’ Training Map in India


How you will feel better after working with us 
“We learned that taking the time to develop the trust might be a longer process than what we want, but it will be key in us getting the answers and support we need.”
~U.S. Team Member Building a New Team in India

“This program made me realize that I have to let go of my expectations that all business cultures are the same. The skills were presented in a way that used real life examples or discussions of real life situations.This will allow me to develop a relationship with them and earn their trust.” 

“I found the high level overview of their culture and learning about the things that make them tick interesting and useful. We were surprised to learn that India has so many different languages and regional cultures. Now we understand how people in one city do not completely relate and communicate with people in other cities.”

“The facilitators were knowledgeable, passionate and energetic. It was the best training program I ever attended! We are so happy to have selected you among all the training companies we interviewed. We will be referring you!” 

“After 5 years living and working in India, I returned to the US in June 2011, only to realize that what was once familiar seemed strange. Jennifer helped me to adjust, and to re-enter the job market with a better understanding of both professional cultures–from communication style, to managerial expectations. As is essential for a coach, Jennifer was a great listener and extremely supportive in the challenging period, and both affirmed my abilities while clearly explaining her suggestions.”
~Becky Band Jain

How this helps your team and why it’s important 
Understanding some of the key cultural differences and similarities between the U.S. and India can help not only to bridge business culture gaps but build confidence in handling a wide variety of situations in and out of the workplace when working with Indians. In this seminar, we dive into any of the topics below as prioritized by your team:

  • Power Distance: Small Talk, Relationship Building, Use of names/titles 
  • Teamwork: Gatekeepers of information, absentees, taking initiative/volunteering/ nominating, cross-training vs. working in silos, fun at work, family part of work experience 
  • Basic Communication Tenets: Requests, Denials, Questions, Modes of Communication (Face to Face, Phone, Email, Texting, others), Pleasantries in Indian English 
  • Planning, Time Lines, Goal Setting Orientation: Short vs. Long Term Orientation, Cyclic View of Time, Frequent interruptions, Things ‘getting in the way,’ Seeing time as ‘not in our control’ 
  • Getting & Giving Feedback 
  • Negotiation strategies: Pitching timelines and financial details, Understanding Yes, No, Maybe in words and actions, Written communication (documentation, emails, contracts, etc)

Ready to Start Working With Us?




…Keep Reading…


Audience Profile



Who attends this training? 
Professionals in the US working on global, virtual teams with professionals based in India are ideally suited for these sessions. Others who have attended versions of this training program include: 
  • U.S. Professionals preparing to go on international assignments to India, where they may stay or live for several weeks or months.
  • Other nationalities who are not familiar with India who are working with Indians. 
  • U.S. Expats in India who are preparing to repatriate or those who have already moved back to the U.S. 
  • Indian expats or Non-Resident Indian (NRI) professionals who have spent extended period of times outside India and want to learn about these topics in a 1:1 coaching or small group facilitation setting. 

Job Titles of Participants Include


  1. Account Manager
  2. Engineer
  3. Operations Manager
  4. Administrative Assistant
  5. Quality Assurance
  6. Production Control Specialist
  7. Production Control
  8. Senior Manager   
  9. Sales and Business Development

Duration
Most teams prefer an 8 hour program broken into two four hour sessions. 

For teams with more time, we can extend the modules to two to three days.
Most teams may prefer a face to face session. Live online instructor led sessions are also available for small groups or individuals. As these sessions are more customized, the duration would vary, with sessions of about 1 to 1.5 hours until the content or coaching is completed.


Syllabus Overview
We strive to provide you practical skills, tools and communication approaches you and your team can use today to build, maintain and enhance your business relationship and workflow with your Indian counterparts. Though we do utilize some theory, we do not base our full program on theory. We lean on real life experiences, your experiences, helping you navigate through them effectively. This is an effective blend of facilitation, advising and coaching. Though we provide you an outline of what is covered, we can also be flexible to the needs in the training room, if they have changed since our initial needs assessment.

Program Goals: 

  1. To explore and pinpoint key similarities and differences in Indian and American business cultures 
  2. To understand the Indian mindset, learn how Indians think, the cultural reasons behind the Indian approach to life and work, communication style, and how to apply tips to enhance a wide range of business communication situations. 
  3. Practice in applying concepts to real-life and simulated business scenarios to enhance successful outcomes.

Takeaways/Tangible Plans for Participants: 

  1. Cultural Blueprint: Participants will create a cultural blueprint that will identify the gaps between the US and Indian approaches. Start your personal cultural profile for free at GlobeSmart
  2. Action Plan: Based on the Cultural Blueprint, participants will create at least three individualized action items they want to apply to enhance relations with the Indian counterparts

Day 1 (4 hours): 
Understanding ourselves and U.S. Business Norms
Understanding India & Orientation to the Business Culture of India 
Case Study Review

Day 2 (4 hours):
Business Norms in India   
Successful Business Meetings with Indians
Cultural Blueprint and Gap Analysis

Let’s customize this India cross-culture training outline to your team’s business needs.  

Facilitation Method:

Our method is a blend of coaching, advising, and training. This not only offers you a flexible approach, but an approach that is not dependent on traditional training or classroom learning.


Our goal is to make each session have tangible, practical outcomes that you can use on the job today with clients, colleagues and stakeholders.


As a learner, if you opt for one on one coaching, you will take responsibility for your learning objectives and outcomes based on the highly interactive and individualized approach of our sessions.


Options/ Customizations

Add these bells and whistles:

  • E-mail thread analysis: To expand our facilitation, we may look into particular email threads to assess where a communication breakdown happens and ideas to fix it. While we teach you best practices in email communication, we also believe that since communication is happening between humans, we miss balancing these elements when we look solely at the academic approach to emailing. Some of our best consultation and problem solving has happened in these email analysis sessions. 
  • Real-life business situations: We can tackle the pressing issues you are facing today through the content facilitated and based on the facilitator’s expertise. 
  • One-on-one Executive Coaching: Individuals can be chosen to work one on one with our coaches to tackle cross-cultural business strategy, relationship building and other scenarios as they arise. 
  • Getting your India team ramped up: Are you starting to hire and set up your team or offshore service providers in India? We can work with you from the ground up preparing your US based team and business partners living in India to build cultural context and bridge the culture gap and start off the team building with a deeper understanding of each other. We can also facilitate sessions with the India and the US counterparts together in the same room!
  • Certificates: A digital certificate you can showcase as part of your career portfolio can be issued upon completion. 
  • Small Talk Newsletter: This newsletter, delivered to you about 10 times a year, just before most major U.S. holidays and observances will build context for non U.S. Americans to make connections with their US counterparts. Try it out for free below! 



U.S. Small Talk Newsletter












Related Training Programs:

  • The American Approach to Business 
  • Meetings With Clients from A – Z


Let’s start the conversation….


…Thank you for considering working with us!…


Contact us to start your program today or write in the comment section below.

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