Using Critical Incidents to Improve International Business Communication

In this workshop, we look at how the use of critical incidents with course participants can help to improve their awareness of the potential dangers that are present in international and intercultural communication (in any language). 

The specific focus of the workshop will be on working in international business teams, whether remotely or face-to-face. We will brainstorm and discuss the factors that most commonly cause communication problems in such international teams.

We will then go on to consider what exactly we mean by a “critical incident” in communication training and what the aims are in using such critical incidents. Having defined the aims, we will go on to consider what characteristics a “good critical incident” should have in order to be effective in achieving these aims.

Participants will then be invited to analyse and interpret a number of critical incidents from the recent book Trainingsbuch Business English – Kommunikation und Zusammenarbeit in internationalen Teams, giving their feedback both on the communicative situations in the critical incidents and the extent to which these incidents meet the criteria discussed earlier.

Finally, we will explore the potential advantages and disadvantages of using critical incidents and discuss possible alternative methods of achieving the given communication aims.