This online simulation teaches students about the difficulties in cross-cultural communication and managing global teams. Communicating via chat, teams of 4 or 5 students race against the clock to prepare a VC presentation. Students are assigned the role of a native English speaker or a nonnative English speaker at their organization. The simulation constrains the ways in which the native and nonnative speakers can interact, and the resulting experience replicates communication patterns in real globally diverse and distributed teams. As their team struggles to collaborate, students experience first-hand how communication challenges can interfere with work goals.
Created by Tsedal Neeley, author of "Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems", "Language and Globalization: "Englishnization" at Rakuten" and other popular course materials related to global communication, this simulation illustrates how much can be lost in translation between people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Ideal for courses in Organizational Behavior, International Business, Business Communication, and Leadership and Teams. Students play this simulation synchronously, so each class (section) should be set up with its own coursepack.
Company: Harvard Business Publishing
Approximate price: $15.00
Playtime: 1 hour
Learning objectives: Experiencing the communication challenges for both native and nonnative English lingua franca speakers. Experiencing emotions associated with being assigned to a disadvantaged group. Introducing the concept of perspective-taking. Introducing the concept of 'mutual adaptation' as a way to manage differences. Learning practical skills on how to better communicate with foreign colleagues. Learning leadership skills on how to better manage the flow of cross-cultural interactions.
Link to simulation home page: https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/7101-HTM-ENG